Glossary

Digital marketing glossary

Keep up-to-date with all the digital marketing terms you need to know.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing that rewards associates for each visitor or purchase acquired by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.

Algorithm

An algorithm is a set of steps in a computer program that review information in order to provide the most appropriate response. Many marketing software programs use algorithms to determine where to serve ads and when reach out to a target audience.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. Commonly, the text is blue and underlined.

Attribution Model

An Attribution model determines how credit for a conversion or sale is assigned to various marketing and sales touchpoints in a conversion path.

B2B (Business to Business)

Also called ‘business-to-business,’ B2B is commerce between businesses, rather than between a business and its consumers (B2C).

B2C (Business to Consumer)

Also called ‘business-to-consumer,’ B2C commerce is the selling of goods and services to consumers, i.e., the general population.

Backlinks

Sometimes referred to as an inbound link, a backlink is a hyperlink that links from a webpage to another webpage or website.

Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting is a technique that utilizes a user’s web browsing behavior to help ensure the most targeted and relevant messages are displayed to that user.

Branding

Branding is a marketing practice employed by companies in order to effectively associate their product with a specific image, logo or theme to improve their brand recognition.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a quasi-fictional depiction of a company’s perfect customer. Buyer personas are based on market research which include true information about potential and recurring customers.

Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is a structure that follows a buyer’s progression through the research and decision-making process and ends with the purchase of a product or service.

Call to Action

Often referred to as ‘CTA,’ a call-to-action is often a button or link used to prompt visitor engagement. The engagement goal may differ based on the ultimate goals of the website and business.

Click Bait

Click bait describes content whose focus is to generate online advertising revenue at the expense of content quality or accuracy. Click bait often relies on shocking or inflammatory headlines.

Content Advertising

Content advertising is the process of developing content for promotion via paid advertising channels, which include paid social campaigns and pay-per-click ad placement.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is an important metric in order to understand the long-term relationship your business will have with each customer. CLV is a prediction of the overall net profit of the future relationship with a business’ customer.

Domain Authority

Domain authority measures how likely a site is to rank in search engines. Domain authority is based on several factors which include domain age, popularity and links to the site.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content refers to large amounts of content within or across domains that match or are very similar to one another. While often non-malicious, duplicate content can be considered an attempt to manipulate search engine placement.

Earned Media

Earned media are media mentions and brand awareness awarded to a brand through organic and grassroots efforts rather than paid channels.

EBook

An eBook is an electronic version of either a traditional print book or a publication developed specifically for online consumption. eBooks can be read on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone with an eBook reader app.

Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is used by publishers, businesses and bloggers to plan the publication of content across different media channels, such as blogs, email newsletters, social media and print articles.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is when a blogger or business writes content for another site or business. This practice is used to gain access to larger audiences.

HTML

HTML stands for ‘HyperText Markup Language’ and is the standard document format for web pages. In order to change the font, colors or graphics of a website, the HTML must be edited.

Hyperlink

A hyperlink, when clicked, takes the viewer to another webpage or another page of a particular site and can typically be recognized as highlighted text.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a method to obtain potential customers by utilizing SEO best practices, social media and content marketing.

Influencer

An influencer is an individual who has a higher-than-average impact on a specific area of interest.

Integrated Campaigns

An integrated marketing campaign combines multiple marketing tactics such as content, email, dedicated landing pages, display advertising, etc. in order to promote a consistent message to a targeted market.

Interactive Tools

An interactive tool can come in many different formats but is often a page which includes either a quiz, calculator, tracker or other interactive form of content for the viewer to engage with.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language used to make interactive web pages. If a website uses dynamic content or video, these are added with JavaScript.

Keyword

A keyword is a specific word or phrase that describes the content within a webpage. When developing new content for a webpage, the central point should be summed up in a keyword or keyword phrase.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is a mathematical equation that indicates how often a keyword appears or should appear within a piece of content. While many marketing professionals debate an acceptable keyword density, many feel that 3% is the best density.

Keyword Frequency

Keyword frequency refers to how often a specific keyword or keyword phrase appears on a specific website page. It is important to limit the number of times a keyword appears on a webpage in order to avoid the potential of appearing as spam to Google.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a best practice for search engine optimization (SEO) to identify search terms for a specific piece of content or website. SEO professionals use tools such as the Google Adwords Keyword Planner to identify alternative keywords as well as their associated average monthly searches.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

A KPI is a measureable value (or values) that businesses use to measure performance relative to business goals. KPI stands for key performance indicators.

Landing Page

A landing page is the page of a site that users land on when they click on a hyperlink. Traffic may reach a site through paid, organic, referral links or a number of other channels.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is a marketing process which focuses on capturing a user’s information, but not directly selling them a product or service.

Lifecycle Marketing

Lifecycle marketing focuses on guiding potential customers through specific milestones in the sales funnel or brand relationship to get them to remain loyal customers or subscribers. Each step of the lifecycle marketing cycle will have its own custom message so the consumer or potential customer remains engaged.

Lifetime Value

Lifetime value (LTV) is the projected revenue a customer will generate during their purchase lifetime with a business.

Link Baiting

Link baiting is the process of developing content designed to get other sites and individuals to link to it. The entire purpose of link baiting is to create as many inbound links to a website as possible.

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are three-word, four-word or even longer keyword phrases that are often lower search volume but higher intent.

Meta Description

A meta description is a short snippet of information that summarizes a page’s content. A meta description will often appear in a SERP when a site search is performed.

Meta Tags

A meta tag is an HTML tag that identifies the contents of a webpage. Meta tags are not displayed on a page, but within the HTML code of a web page. Meta tags can be viewed by selecting View/Source from the menu of a browser.

Meta Title

A meta title, commonly referred to as a ‘title tag,’ is the main title of a webpage and describes the subject of the page. A well-written meta title is an important SEO component.

Nofollow Links

A nofollow link is an HTML attribute (rel=“nofollow”) used to instruct search engine bots that a hyperlink should not be crawled. It impacts the link’s ranking in the index of the search engine.

Page Title

A page title, also known as a title tag, is the text that describes a webpage and appears at the top of a browser window. It is considered by many SEO professionals to be one of the important on-page elements for optimization.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

In pay-per-click advertising (also referred to as PPC advertising), advertisers only pay when someone in their target market clicks and interacts with an advertisement.

Podcast

A podcast is an audio program that users download from the internet. They often come in a series and attempt to pull in recurrent subscribers and listeners.

Query

A query is a request for information from a database. When a user types something into google, they are using a search query.

Retargeting

Retargeting (or remarketing) serves ads to people who have already visited a website or expressed interest in a company.

RSS

RSS, an acronym for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication is a text-based format for delivering content that changes on a regular basis. RSS presents information in a standard XML file format, which makes sure it is compatible with different RSS readers known as aggregators.

Schema.org

Schema.org, founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex, is a collaborative effort to promote schema for structured microdata on the Internet and other forms of electronic communications.

SEM

SEM is an acronym for Search Engine Marketing, which refers to the process of gaining site visibility, traffic and conversions via paid search. It is also often referred to as pay-per-click (PPC).

SEO

SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is a marketing process that works to increase the visibility of a website in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO requirements change often, so it is important to stay up-to-date on the latest best practices.

SERP

An acronym for ‘Search Engine Result Page,’ a SERP is a page that displays search engine query results.

Thought Leadership

Thought leaders are well-informed and highly-respected opinion leaders within a niche audience. Thought leadership is the ability to tap into those leaders and develop content based on the information they provide.

What is Owned Media?

Owned media is any online property completely owned and controlled by a brand. Examples of owned media include websites, blogs and social media channels.

TOP
Straight to your inbox

Get the best email and digital marketing content delivered.

Join 250,000 in-the-know marketers and get the latest marketing tips, tactics, and news right in your inbox.

Subscribe

Get started with Campaign Monitor by Marigold today.

With our powerful yet easy-to-use tools, it's never been easier to make an impact with email marketing.

Try it for free