The Complete Online Marketing Dictionary

image

Welcome to the Complete Online Marketing Dictionary, home to more than 475 marketing definitions for more than 475 marketing terms.

This dictionary aims to be the most comprehensive collection of marketing term definitions out there. As such, we’ll be constantly updating it and responding to user requests.

Each of the definitions has been written as simply as we could make them. If you’re still confused by a term, don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section and we’ll be happy to give you a hand.

Let’s get learning!

To skip to any section at any time, see our Table of Contents:

To download this entire dictionary as a PDF, click here

Term

Definition

301 Redirect
Causes one URL to redirect another (as designated by the site’s webmaster). 301 redirects are permanent.
403 Forbidden The request was a valid request, but the server is refusing to respond to it.
404 Not Found A standard response code which indicates that a requested URL can’t be found on a particular server (often because the page has been deleted or you typed in the URL wrong).
408 Request Timeout The server timed out waiting for the request
502 Bad Gateway The server was acting as a gateway between two servers but received an invalid response from the next server.
A/B Testing
A method of controlled online marketing experiments in which a control and variable are tested against each other to optimize for conversion. Also called “Split Testing.”
Above-the-Fold Above the fold means anything your visitor sees without having to scroll down on a page. An optimized website or landing page (generally speaking) keeps important marketing features above-the-fold.
Accessible Web Page A webpage that works for every visitor to it, no matter what browser or device they are using.
Action (Facebook Ads) Actions are the number of actions Facebook users took on your ad even if they didn’t click through it.
Ad Auction (Facebook Ads) All Facebook Ads go through the ad auction before they are made live on the newsfeed. Facebook pits ads against each other and determines which are most likely to be successful based on ad budget and targeted audience. Facebook only charges your ad the amount necessary to win the auction. This may be less than your maximum bid.
Ad Campaign A campaign is a group of Ads with the same ad budget that are generally focused around the same subject or product promotion. A campaign is extremely useful when split testing the effect of different variables on ad performance, as it makes comparing results simple.
Ad Extension Ad extensions are extra info you can put on your Google ad about your business – such as local address, phone number, coupons or additional websites.
Ad Fatigue Facebook Ad Fatigue occurs when your ad’s target audience is shown your ad too many times and your Click-Through-Rate drops as your Frequency rate (how many times it’s seen) increases.
Ad Group An ad group is your set of keywords, budgets and targeting methods for a particular objective within the same campaign.
Ad Rotation The strategy in which an ad’s variables are rotated to combat banner blindness/ad fatigue.
Ad Space The space within any web page in which online ads are placed.
AdSense A PPC ad application from Google which enables bloggers and webmasters to generate revenue from the traffic on their sites. Adsense plays middleman between advertisers and webmasters, and pays the webmaster whenever an ad is clicked.
Advertorial An online advertisement which is written (and appears) like an editorial.
Adwords Google’s advertising platform, encompassing search, display, YouTube and remarketing.
Affiliate Marketing A type of internet marketing in which you partner with other websites, individuals, or companies to send traffic to your site. You will typically pay affiliate marketers on a Cost per Acquisition (CPA) or Cost per Click (CPC) basis.
Aggregated Content Content that has been compiled from multiple sources, often via RSS feed.
Aggregator The tool or application which compiles content from multiple sources and displays it in one place (often via RSS feeds).
Ajax The primary technology used to create dynamic content (through a combination of Javascipt and XML). Stands for “Asynchronous Javascript and XML.”
Alerts (Google) Email notications which are sent to an individual or group when a company, product name, event or search term is mentioned or posted onto the internet.
Alexa Rank Updated daily, Alexa Internet Inc (owned by Amazon) ranks websites based on the browsing behavior of people worldwide (based on a sample of all internet users).
Algorithm The method used to determine the rankings of sites or posts within a search engine or social media newsfeed. Based on complicated mathematical rules and calculations, the most well-known are Facebook’s Edgerank and Google’s PageRank.
ALT Tags Because crawlers/search engines are generally unable to view text within images, alt tags (placed within an imae’s code) tell the crawler the contents of the image (improving SEO). Alt Tags are optional but recommended.
Anchor Text The word or words tied to a hyperlink. They generally appear as underlined blue.
App Short for “application”. Connotatively refers to helpful or fun programs designed for mobile.
Application Software that runs on your computer (particularly Apple). Every program you use (from internet browser to games and utilities) are applications.
Application Programming Interface (API) The set of protocols or routines used when building software applications. The API dictates how software components interact with each other.
Astroturfing Faking/spamming/hiding positive comments or reviews to market a product or service. Bad practice.
Atomisation The process by which large content (an ebook, for instance) is broken down and reformatted or adjusted in order to use it for another purpose.
Attribution Identifying the strategies or channels that resulted in a successful outcome (like a conversion). Also giving credit to a content source.
Audit Conducting an in-depth analysis of a site or strategy in relation to the objectives of that site or strategy. Used to optimize user experience, content monetization, SEO, etc.
Authority The overall SEO “oomph” a website has based on a range of factors such as popularity, traffic, [backlinks](https://blog.wishpond.com/post/115675438212/get-more-backlinks), social media shares and so forth. The more popular a website is, the more authority it has.
Authorship Google Authorship was used to identify the author of a particular piece of content on the web via their Google+ profile and Authorship rich snippet markup (removed in 2014).
Autoresponder A program or script within an email platform which automatically replies to emails (like when someone goes on vacation, for instance).
Avatar An online representation (image or graphic) of a real person. Usually seen on social networks, chat platforms or forums.
Backlinks
Links from other websites pointing to your own. Search engines use backlinks to determine the reputation and authority of your site. If someone is linking to you, search engines see it as a vote in your favor.
Baidu The second-largest search engine in the world. Baidu provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files.
Ban Removal from search results, social media platforms, forums, etc when a page, website or user breaks the rules of that search engine, social media platform, forum etc.
Banner Ad An online advertisement which is embedded on a web page by an ad server.
Banner Blindness The phenomena of web traffic to unconsciously ignore banner advertisements because they are advertisements (even if they are actively looking for the information or offer within those advertisements).
Below-the-Fold The area of the webpage that cannot be seen until the user has scrolled down the page.
Beta Version Release of software to an external group before public release in order to test it under real conditions. Beta versions are released after all in-house developers have checked over the software and the product is, essentially, complete.
Bid Bid (or, more accurately, maximum bid) is the maximum amount you’re willing to pay per click or impression. On Facebook, your maximum bid determines (along with your target audience) how often you’ll win the ad auction.
Bid Strategy How you set your online advertising budget to pay for viewer interaction with your ads.
Big Data Sets of datum too large to be analyzed using normal software or methods.
Billing Threshold The level of spending that triggers a charge to you for the cost of your ads.
Bing The second-largest Western search engine, Bing is developed by Microsoft.
Bitcoin A digital currency introduced in 2009. Bitcoin has no centralized bank, no physical representation and uses a P2P payment network of users with Bitcoin accounts.
Black Hat SEO An aggressive form of SEO which implements unethical practices and/or automation.
Blacklist A blacklist is a list of users, websites or IP addresses which have been banned from accessing a site or server.
Blog Element of inbound marketing. A regularly-updated website or web page of written content written designed to educate, inform, and elicit brand engagement in the form of subscribers, leads, and sales.
Blogger A free blog-publishing platform from Google. WordPress competitor. (Also, one who blogs).
Board An organization method on the Pinterest social network, generally organized by subject. Content is pinned (or “repinned”) onto individual boards to create a collage of ideas or content.
Boilerplate Reused company information (like the registration number, address, etc) which is placed in the footer of web pages and other official documentation.
Bottom-of-Funnel The last stage of the sales funnel, in which leads become customers.
Bounce Rate The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
Brand Awareness A measure of how well a brand is known by the general public.
Brand Evangelist A customer who has strongly positive feelings for a brand and recommends that brand through word-of-mouth or word-of-mouse.
Breadcrumbs A type of secondary navigation scheme that reveals the visitor’s location in a website (like “Homepage” – “About Us” – “Careers”).
Buffer Commonly seen when loading streaming media, a buffer is actually data stored temporarily within the computer’s memory.
Bug An unintended error in a program.
Business-to-Business (B2B) A business whose primary and direct market is other businesses.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C) A business whose primary and direct market is the public/consumers.
Buyer’s Journey A hypothetical or representational assesment businesses use to understand the stages or funnel a visitor goes through from discovery of a business to becoming a customer.
“Buzz” The aggregate excitement and interest generated by a story, new product or news item online.
Byte The smallest unit of data that can be saved to a computer’s memory, equal to 8 binary digits.
C/C++
A method of controlled online marketing experiments in which a control and variable are tested against each other to optimize for conversion. Also called “Split Testing.”
Cache Above the fold means anything your visitor sees without having to scroll down on a page. An optimized website or landing page (generally speaking) keeps important marketing features above-the-fold.
Call-to-Action (CTA) A CTA highlights the action/objective you want your site visitor to take.
Campaign (Google Adwords) An ad campaign on Google AdWords is made up of your ad groups, and has the same budget, campaign type and your other ad settings.
Campaign Type Your campaign type is where you want your ads to be seen. Google has: “Search Network only” (which means Google search only) “Display Network only” (which means your ad shows up in Google’s Display network of websites, videos, YouTube, Blogger and more. This is also known as AdSense) “Search Network with Display Select” (which is a combination of search and display).
CAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart”: generally an image or equation which much be “solved” and re-entered into a field in order to enter a web page.
Churn The percentage rate at which customers cancel a recurring subscription (extremely important for SaaS companies)
Clickbait Content with a title created specifically in order to elicit a click (through sensationalism, curiosity, etc).
Click Path The record of how a website visitor interacted with the site from entry to exit or conversion. Useful within user experience optimization.
Click Through Rate # of clicks / # of impressions. Click through rate is a common internet marketing measurement tool for ad effectiveness. This rate tells you how many times people are actually clicking on your ad out of the number of times your ad is shown. Low click through rates can be caused by a number of factors, including copy, placement, and relevance.
Cloaking A Black Hat SEO strategy in which the web page that is presented to a search engine is different to the web page that is actually seen by visitors.
Compiler A specialized program that converts source code into object code.
Content Any form of written, visual, auditory content created with the purpose of driving prospective customer, lead, or client action.
Content Curation The active management and promotion of an organisation’s content assets (both created in-house and externally).
Content Management System A content publishing platform provides a central interface from which your business can run its blog.
Content Marketing The marketing process in which a business creates and distributes valuable content with the express purpose of driving prospective customer, lead, or client action.
Content Shock The theory that the sheer volume of content being produced by marketers will reach a tipping point, resulting in more content than can be absorbed by prospecetive customers, and a lessening in the value of content marketing as a strategy.
Content Spinning When you take a single piece of content and turn it into a different pieces of content by changing words (but not the meaning behind them). Also called “article spinning.”
Contest Online promotion which incentivizes lead generation or social media engagement through a prize, discount or coupon.
Contextual advertising Advertising which is related to the content of a page.
Control In A/B testing, this is your initial page you want to improve.
Conversion The point at which a visitor completes your desired objective – acts on your “ask.”
Conversion Rate The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action.
Conversion Rate Optimization Refers to the strategies implemented by marketers to maximize conversion rates within a sales funnel.
Cookie Information stored on a user’s browser so preferences can be “remembered” in the future.
Copywriting The creation of written content for advertorial or marketing purposes.
Cost Per Acquisition A method of advertising whereby the advertiser only pays when an advert delivers an acquisition/sale/lead.
Cost Per Click Pay structure in which you pay every time a person clicks on your ad.
Cost Per Impression A bidding method that bases your costs on how many times your ads are seen (impressions).
Crawler An element of search engines which compiles the listings (also called a Spider or Robot) into the search engine’s index. Essentially, the crawler is the thing that implements a search algorithm.
Cross-Platform Software that can run on multiple types of computer systems. (Also, the practice of utilizing more than one platform to promote your presence on the other platforms. For example, using Twitter to promote your Facebook Page).
Crowdsourced Content Content created by an audience of people not formally affiliated with a business.
CSS Short for Cascading Style Sheet, CSS is a way to move and style elements of website content.
Cumulative Optimization Gain This is the overall result of a series of A/B tests to gain higher conversions.
Cursor Tracking See “Mouse Tracking.”
Custom Audience (Facebook Ads) A custom audience is an ad targeting strategy in which you import your existing business contacts (merchants, email subscribers, etc) into Facebook’s ad tool. Facebook will find the Facebook user that corresponds to the email you’ve provided. This list of users can then be targeted with a Facebook Ad.
Customer Acquisition Cost The cost associated with acquiring a new customer.
Customer Lifecycle A framework for understanding and managing a customer’s relationship with a company from initial contact through to purchase and beyond.
Customer Relationship Management Software which enables businesses to manage their customer (or lead) lists and relationships.
Dedicated IP
An IP address dedicated to a single website.
Deep Web See “Invisible Web.”
Description Tags HTML tags are used in SEO to describe your website to a search engine crawler.
Design Matching Ensuring that design elements and copy match between an ad and a landing page. Used in conversion rate optimization.
Desktop The primary user interface of a computer.
Destination URL The URL of the page your ad sends traffic to when it is clicked.
Digital Footprint The digital trail you leave while using the web, including the websites you visit, cookies you’ve triggered, emails you have sent, and all information you’ve submitted.
Direct Traffic (Google Analytics) Theoretically, direct traffic is all traffic that comes to your website by typing in the URL or clicking on a bookmark. In actuality, direct traffic is an umbrella term for all traffic which couldn’t be identified by the analytic platform.
Directory A collection of websites manually compiled (rather than automatically). Often given a description and placed within a secondary category.
Display Ad Display advertising is a type of online advertising that comes in several forms, including banner ads, rich media and more.
Display URL Your display URL is what shows up with your ad copy.
Do Follow A backlink that can be followed by search engine spiders/crawlers/bots.
Dollar Index (Google Analytics) Essentially the value of a single page based on how often it was visited by site traffic prior to conversion. The higher the number within analytics, the more often the page was visited.
Domain Name Your web address. (For us it’s www.wishpond.com).
Doorway Page A strategy of black-hat SEO in which a page is created solely for the purposes of ranking on a search engine (keyword and link heavy).
Downvote A vote on Reddit which negatively affects a user’s comment or answer, decreasing its chance of being seen.
Drag-and-Drop Moving the mouse over an object, selecting it, holding the mouse down, and moving the object to a new location.
Duplicated Content Content that has been copied from a previous source. Unfavored in SEO.
Dynamic Content Content that changes depending on who is visiting the website, completed using either Ajax, Javascript or XML.
Earned Media
Also called “free media”, this is publicity gained without paid advertising.
Ebook A digital version of a book which can be delivered in a number of formats, primarily (for marketing purposes) PDF. The most common example of email-gated content.
Ecommerce A business sector defined by selling B2C products online.
Edgerank See “Facebook Edgerank.”
Editorial Calendar A document used to outline and schedule the creation and publication of content.
Email Automation Emails (or a series of emails) automatically triggered by the actions of leads.
Email Marketing The promotion of products, services or a business relationship through email.
Email-Gated Restriction which requires a visitor to provide information in order to receive your content or offer (a main strategy of lead generation)
Embedding The addition of blocks of code to a web page so that videos, images or other content that is hosted externally can be viewed by visitors to the page.
Emoticon Expressions or emotions (or ideas) represented by keyboard characters or small images.
Encoding Refers to the process of translating data from one format to another.
Encryption Refers to the process of translating data into a “encrypted” form in order to protect it and limit access to authorized people only.
Engagement Engagement is a general term for any online interaction between a client, prospective client, lead or user and a brand.
Enhanced Bidding (Adwords) When you select enhanced bidding, you’re giving AdWords the power to adjust your bidding in order to increase conversions. With this feature, you can pay up to 30% over the bid you set.
Essay Contest A type of online contest where users submit text entries for a chance to win a prize. Can be run on Facebook, Twitter and websites.
Facebook
With 1.55 billion monthly active users as of September 30, 2015, Facebook is the world’s largest social media network. It was founded in 2005.
Facebook Behavior Targeting Behaviors are activities that people do on or off Facebook that inform on which device they’re using, purchase behaviors or intents, travel preferences and more. Behaviors are constructed from both someone’s activity on Facebook and offline activity provided by data from Facebook’s trusted third-party partners.
Facebook Contest An online contest run on the Facebook platform through a Page tab or direct on the newsfeed. Wishpond’s contests can be run on Facebook, your website or a Wishpond-hosted webpage
Facebook Custom Audience Facebook custom audiences gives advertisers the ability to reach customers that they already know, on Facebook, by uploading a list of email addresses or phone numbers (of at least 20 contacts).
Facebook Demographics Targeting As an advertiser, you can refine your ad’s target audience based on content people have shared about themselves in their Facebook profiles, such as age, gender, relationship status, education and career path.
Facebook Edgerank The algorithm facebook uses to rank a page’s or profile’s posts to determine which of those posts will appear in the newsfeeds of users connected to those pages and profiles (or pages and profiles tagged in the posts). The higher an EdgeRank, the more likely you will appear in the newsfeeds. Facebook does not release this data publicly, neither for the pages, nor individual posts.
Facebook Group Dedicated spaces on the Facebook platform where you can share updates, photos or documents and message other group members.
Facebook interest Targeting Interest targeting with Facebook Ads enables advertisers to target ad sets to Facebook users based on information they’ve shared on Facebook (ex: Pages they like), and information from their account (age, gender, location, etc).
Facebook Like A social endorsement on the Facebook platform. Signifies a user’s approval of a Post or, equally, their active desire to Follow a Page.
Facebook Page A Facebook page is a public profile specifically created for businesses, brands, celebrities, causes, and other organizations. Unlike personal profiles, pages do not gain “friends,” but “fans” – which are people who choose to “like” a page.
Facebook Retargeting While this term can also refer to other forms of retargeting, it is most often used to mean serving ads to prior site visitors while those visitors are on Facebook. Facebook opened its ad exchange in December 2012 to allow partners to offer Facebook retargeting.
Facebook Tabs A separate page that can display a variety of different things within your Facebook fan page. For example, your Facebook “Wall”, “Info”, “Photos”, “Discussions”, etc
Facebook Website Custom Audience Facebook website custom audiences give advertisers the ability to target people on Facebook who have visited their website by using a Facebook pixel that’s placed on the advertiser’s website.
Firewall The barrier placed between a system or network and outside connections (including, but not limited to, the internet).
Flash Video software which uses vector graphic animations. Created by Adobe.
Footprint Generally refers to the “Powered by [Blank]” signature at the bottom of pages. For instance, Wishpond’s landing pages read “Powered by Wishpond” on all but our white label plans.
Form An encapsulated element of your landing page in which visitors submit their lead information. Made up of at least one form field and a CTA button.
Form Field The input fields you want your potential customer to fill out on a form. When you are generating leads from your landing page, this includes an email field.
Forum Websites characterized by featuring public (or private) discussion boards used to answer questions, discuss subjects or simply “chat” online.
Freemium A marketing technique in which a business offers a free basic version of their advanced product (which costs).
Frequency How many times an individual ad is seen by a single user. As frequency increases, so too does banner blindness/ad fatigue.
Frequency (Facebook Ads) The average number of times each Facebook user saw your ad. We recommend you rotate your ad’s creative or targeted audience when your frequency reaches a maximum of 5. Test your own optimal frequency.
Frequency Cap Restriction on the amount of times a specific visitor can be shown a single online advertisement.
Frequently-Asked-Question (FAQ) A page featuring the most often-asked questions (and their corresponding answers) pertaining to a product or service. Used in support.
Friction The elements on your page that are preventing a viewer from converting to a lead.
Friend An online friend is simply a person added to your list of friends on a social networking website.
Geo-Targeting
The ad and social media post capability of reaching a target market based on their physical location in the world. Primarily done by tracking IP addresses.
Ghostwriter A content creator not publicly credited with their contribution. Often paid for their services.
GIF A graphic which (like old movies) creates the effect of video/animation with the rapid rotation through a set of static images.
Gigabyte A unit of information equal to one billion bytes.
“Go Viral” The rare phenomenon in which content is shared massively across the internet, seemingly taking on a life of its own.
Google Google is the world’s most popular search engine.
Google +1 A social endorsement on the Google+ platform. Signifies a user’s approval of a post.
Google Analytics A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
Google Drive A software created by Google offering the sharing and storing of files and information online (5 gigabytes of free storage).
Google PageRank The algorithm used by Google to rank websites in their search engine results.
Google+ Google’s social network, Google+ was founded in 2011 and is (depending on how it’s defined) one of the top 3 largest social media platforms.
Google+ Community SImilar to Facebook Groups, Google+ Communities are dedicated spaces on the platform where you can share updates, photos or documents and message group members.
Graphical User Interface (GUI) The digital interface on which a user interacts with a computer. Differentiates graphical interfaces from text-based interfaces (which were made technologically obsolete in the late 1970s).
Grey Hat SEO SEO practices that push the boundaries of what is considered to be ethical in SEO.
Growth Hacking A system/ethos of marketing in which the supreme goal is growth. Characterized by high-technological know-how and aggressive marketing strategy.
Guerilla Marketing Unconventional marketing strategy intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.
Guest Posting Writing a blog post to be published on another blog as a featured author.
GYM Google, Yahoo and Microsoft: the big three search engines.
Halo Effect
The positive effect conferred upon other products by a consumer’s positive feelings towards another product by the same company or brand.
Hashtag An organizational label used on social media sites to compile messages/posts on a specific subject.
Hashtag Contest See “Instagram Contest.”
Header/Heading Tags Used in SEM to communicate priority/hierarchy within a webpage to the search engine crawler. Words placed in H1 (the largest size) are deemed more important than paragraph tags or H2 through 6.
Heatmap A graphical representation of data where varying degrees of a single metric are shown using a color scale.
Hit (Google Analytics) An umbrella term for every request seen by Google Analytic’s system. Includes events, pageviews, custom variables, etc.
House Style A set of copywriting rules agreed-upon by a business which dicatates the branding, tone and style of all brand communication/content.
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language, the programming language used to create websites.
HTML 5 The most up-to-date version of HTML, the standard programming language for describing the contents and appearance of Web pages.
Hummingbird Update (Google) A major update to the Google search algorithm made in 2013. The Hummingbird update aimed to improve the relevancy of search results (primarily by rewarding long-tail keywords).
Hyperlink The primary way to navigate the internet. Hyperlinks often appear blue and underlined.
iFrame
An HTML tag device which allows a section of a website to be displayed simultaneously on another website – often by embedding said iFrame.
Impressions The number of times someone views a page displaying your ad. Note that this is not the same as actually seeing your ad, making placement and an understanding of the site’s traffic particularly important when paying on a Cost per 1,000 Impressions basis.
Inbound Marketing A marketing strategy characterized by its reliance on content, education, and other drivers of organic traffic.
Index (Noun) The collection of information within a search engine’s results.
Index (Verb) To add a web page to a search engine index.
Influencer An individual with a great influence in a particular area, often due to considerable expertise and their breadth of connections with other people.
Influencer Marketing A marketing strategy in which you develop relationships/appeal to influencers for the promotion of your brand.
Infographic A representation of information in a graphic format designed to make data more easily understandable/palatable.
Instagram An online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take and share pictures and videos.
Instagram Contest A type of online contest that collects photos from Instagram (that contain a hashtag specific to the contest) and displays them in a voting gallery on your Facebook Page and/or website.
Interest Targeting (Facebook Ads) Interest targeting lets you target your ad based on what Facebook users have included on their timelines as well as what other Pages, groups and other content they’ve engaged with. This information includes everything from favorite books and movies to relationship status, changes in job title and car ownership.
Internal Linking Placing hyperlinks on a page to other pages within the same site. This helps users find more information, improve site interaction, and enhances your SEO efforts.
Internet Marketing See “Online Marketing.”
Interstitial Ad An online ad that loads between two content pages.
Invisible Web The portion of the Web not indexed by search engines.
IP Address The code made up of three sets of numbers (separated by three dots) which represents a particular computer’s connection to the internet. Also known as “IP number” or simply an “IP.” Required to access the internet.
Jargon
Specialist words or phrases which may not be intelligible to the people not within that specialized group, sector or familiar with the subject.
Java A programming language characterized by its independence from platforms, meaning it can be run on multiple computers and operating systems without breaking.
JavaScript Object Oriented Programming language used to improve website UX by making the website more functional/personalized.
Junk Mail See “Spam.”
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Key Performance Indicators are the specific metrics you use to track and measure your campaign objectives. For example: number of leads, number of visitors to site, pages visited, etc.
Key Phrase See “Keyword.”
Keyword The words or phrases searched for in a Search Engine. Also refers to the words you bid on within the Google Adwords platform.
Keyword Density The percentage of text within any given website which contains your keyword. 10% keyword density equals 1 in 10 words on any given page are your target keyword. Used in SEO.
Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) The measure of a keyword’s value based on how many people are searching for it and how many competing pages there are.
Keyword Stuffing A black-hat SEO strategy in which a keyword or phrase is placed excessively within a page to increase keyword density beyond best practice levels.
Kilabyte A unit of information equal to 1,024 bytes.
A page within your website characterized by having a single conversion goal. Used primarily to collect paid or organic traffic and facilitate a conversion.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) See “Long Tail Searches/Keywords.”
Lead An interested prospective customer who has provided contact information but not yet bought.
Lead Generation The practice of using email-gated content and offers to elicit lead information from prospective customers.
Lead Nurturing The process of communicating with leads in order to elicit a conversion.
Lead Scoring The process of assessing and ranking new leads in order to assess their relative value/likelihood of becoming customers.
Like-Gate A barrier requiring a user to “Like” a brand’s page before they can access certain content from that brand on Facebook (removed from the Facebook Platform in November 2014).
Link Building The process of obtaining hyperlinks (links) from websites back to yours. Link building is a crucial part of Search Engine Optimization.
Link Checker A tool used to check for broken hyperlinks.
Link Farm A website exclusively devoted to listing a very large number of links without groupings, categories, or structure. (Also called a content farm).
Link Juice Equity given to an external site through links. When you link to another site you give them some of your site’s SEO authority. When they link to yours they give you theirs. Link juice is the basis of link-building (the foundation of SEO), as links function as votes in favor of your site and content.
Link Popularity The metric arrived at by looking at how many websites link to yours, how much authority the linking sites have, and how related your website is to the one linking.
Linkbait A content title specifically designed to appeal to a reader’s curiosity.
Linkedin LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking service launched in 2003. LinkedIn reports more than 364 million acquired users (as of March 2015).
Linkedin Ads The paid promotion platform on the LinkedIn platform. LinkedIn Ads can be promoted Posts or targeted brand advertisements (text, video or image).
Linkedin Groups Similar to Facebook Groups and Google+ Communities, LinkedIn groups are dedicated spaces on the platform where you can share updates, photos or documents and message other group members.
Local Search A search function which allows users to find businesses and websites within a specific geographic area (for instance, typing “restaurants” into Google and seeing all restaurants in your vicinity).
Long Tail Search An SEO strategy in which you target entire phrases (corresponding to how many searches are actually written). For instance, “how to generate leads” instead of “lead generation.”
Lookalike Audience (Facebook Ads) A lookalike audience is created from a custom audience list. Facebook finds users similar to your existing custom audience. Lookalike audiences can be generated with either 1% or 5% similarity. 1% similarity gives you a tighter targeting strategy, while 5% gives you a larger, but less specific, audience.
Marketing Automation
The use of software to automate repetitive tasks related to marketing activities and connect/optimize different parts of the marketing funnel.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) A lead that meets the set of qualification criteria set by your business. This could include page visits or frequency as well as lead-info like company size, industry, position, etc.
Media Kit A resource created by a provider which helps prospective advertising clients evaluate the platform and ad opportunity.
Megabyte A unit of information equal to one million bytes.
Meme An image or phrase (generally) which develops and evolves of its own accord as it is passed and shared from one internet user to another.
Mentions Instances of a brand name being used externally on the internet.
Merge Tag Pieces of simple code which allow you to insert data from a contact database directly into email campaigns (often to personalize said email campaigns).
Meta Search Engine A search engine that compiles the results from more than one search engine.
Meta Tags Like description tags, meta tags allow you to better communicate with search engine crawlers.
Metric Umbrella term for the standard measurement used within an analytic tool.
Middle-of-Funnel The intermediate stage of the sales funnel, in which leads are assessed and qualified.
Mirror Site A duplicated copy of a website, used to increase response time for high-traffic websites.
Mobile Optimization A landing page or website that is optimized to be seen on any device including phones and tablets.
Moderator Someone entrusted to help discussions stay productive and within the guidelines. Applicable on forums and within CMS platforms.
Monetize/Monetization Introducing features to a website or page to increase its dollar index/value.
Mouse Tracking The use of software to collect users’ mouse cursor positions on a website with the objective of gathering information about what people are doing and how they’re interacting with a website in order to improve its usability/monetize/optimize for conversions.
Multireddit A collection of subreddits that you discover or create – a custom collection of Reddit for any topic or interest. Multireddits can be tools to aggregate your favorite networks of subreddits or to showcase a variety of different perspectives.
Multivariate Testing A method of testing in which multiple variables are changed and tested in order to improve the chance of a conversion.
Native Advertising
An advertising strategy designed to be less intrusive. Introduces ads that look like content or the rest of the page.
Navigation The act of moving around a website, for example moving from one page to another by following links.
Network Effect The phenomenon in which a product or service becomes more valuable as its user base increases, encouraging an ever-growing user base.
New Visitor (Google Analytics) Website traffic who does not have any cookies from your site, who are seen by Google Analytics as new to your site. Includes people who have been to your site but have since deleted cookies.
“Newbie” or “Noob” A person new to, or unfamiliar with, the internet, computers, or anything relating to the internet and computers.
Newsfeed A compilation of events, Posts, and images from your social media network friends.
Niche A specific topic or group which, because of a narrowed focus, allows you to reach a highly-specific and active group of prospective clients.
No-Follow An HTML tag that, when added to links, tells search engines to ignore them, thereby stopping any link juice/authority from being sent through the link.
Object Code
The result/output of a compiler after it processes source code.
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) A programming language model, characterized by being object-based rather than action-based and data-driven rather than logic-driven.
oCPM (Facebook Ads) Optimized cost per impression (oCPM): This bid type is best for showing your ad to the people who are most likely to take action on your ad. For example, liking your Page or clicking a link.
Offer/Incentive For instance, a content asset such as an eBook, that generates leads by persuading website visitors to enter their contact details on a landing page form in order to receive the content.
Online Advertisement n individual ad is defined as both its ‘creative’ (the body copy, headline and image) and the audience you’ve targeted for that ad.
Online Contest An internet-hosted contest (sweepstakes, hashtag contest, photo contest, etc) that you can run on Facebook, Twitter, and other websites.
Online Marketing Umbrella term for the advertorial and marketing efforts utilized by businesses online in order to drive sales.
Open-Source Computer software that is open to the general public to edit or improve.
Opengraph The addition of tags to images and content within a website which allows social media networks to “see” the content.
Opt-In Registration choice which requires that prospective leads or clients request to be contacted by a business. Relates to the natural balance-point between quality and quantity of leads.
Opt-Out The act of choosing to no longer receive brand communications.
Organic Search Unpaid search results, or the search results which occur naturally through SEO.
Organic Traffic The number of people who visit your site from organic sources, such as SEO, social media, content links, etc.
Original Content Content that is new and unique. Favored in SEO.
Outbound Links Links on any Web page leading to another Web page, whether they are within the same site or another website.
Outbound Marketing Marketing strategy (opposite to inbound marketing) in which prospective clients are actively sought (through advertising or SEM).
Owned Media Content created and delivered within a company’s owned marketing channels (like a blog, email marketing strategy and webpages).
Page View (Google Analytics)
A request by an internet user to load a single page of a website.
PageRank A value attributed to the websites/pages within the Google index based on the thousands of factors in its algorithm.
Paid Search Allows advertisers to pay for their links to be listed above organic results within the search engine results for specific keywords or phrases chosen by the advertiser.
Paid Traffic The number of people who visit your site from paid sources like ads.
Pay-Per-Click See “Cost-Per-Click.”
Pay-Per-Lead Ad payment model in which advertisers pay based on lead conversion.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) A network comprised of “peer” computer system connected to each other through the internet, allowing files to be shared directly without a central server.
Penalty A punishment to your site’s SEO based on an algorithmic or manual (human) site review.
People Taking Action (Facebook Ads) The number of unique people who took an action (Liking your Page, installing your App, etc) as a result of your Facebook ad. Remember this is a metric based on people: if one person Likes, comments and shares your promoted post this will count as only one PTA.
Permalink A link that points directly to a piece of content, often a blog, that remains unchanged in order to reliably access that content in the future.
Permission Marketing A marketing strategy characterized by the idea that a business will convert traffic/leads at a higher rate if that traffic or lead has given their permission to be targeted or communicated with. See “Opt-in.”
Persona (Content or Social Media) A personality type imagined when crafting content or a product, in order to better cater to your target market.
Personalize Umbrella term for creating content which appears unique to a visitor or recipient, often through the use of merge tags or Javascript.
Phishing The (generally) illegal practice of driving internet users to pages designed to access their personal information, often by imitating a trusted site.
Photo Contest A type of online contest where entrants submit a photo for a chance to win a prize.
PHP A programming language (also referred to as Hypertext Preproccesor) which is utilized to serve dynamic content and database interaction.
Pinterest Pinterest is a social bookmarking and photo sharing social network started in 2010.
Plugin Pieces of software that extend the functionality of an already installed piece of software.
Podcast Generally serial pieces of audio content.
Popup See “Website Popup.”
Portable Document Format (PDF) A file type created by Adobe. Typically the format chosen for email-gated content like ebooks, guides and whitepapers.
PortaL Entry-site serving as a starting point to the internet, generally featuring often-used websites as links. Most modern web browsers have a portal function.
Position See “Rank.”
Potential Reach (Facebook Ads) The approximate number of people your ads or sponsored stories can be seen by based on your targeting criteria. The amount of Facebook users who actually see your ad (the percent of your potential reach) is determined by your ad budget.
Press Release A content type created with the express purpose of updating the outside world about a development within a business.
Promotion Refers either to the act of driving buzz/awareness/attention toward a piece of content or an incentive-based marketing campaign in which an offer is used to attract interest or leads.
Proxy A piece of software which enables internet users to hide their IP address in order to hide their location/identity from the sites they visit.
Public Relations (PR) The strategies implemented by a public relations representative to retain a positive brand image.
QR Code
Scannable, two-dimensional barcodes used to hold information (primarily website addresses).
Qualified Lead A lead characterized by their interest in a product/service alongside the ability to purchase.
Quality Assurance (QA) An element of software and product development focused on assuring that quality requirements are met.
Quality Score A ranking or score given to advertisements by search engines, which dictates the advertisements place within the paid search ads.
Query See “Keyword.”
Quora Founded in June 2009, Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by a community of users.
QWERTY The design and layout of most keyboards used in most Western countries.
Rank
How highly a particular webpage or website is listed in search results.
Reach The number of people who have seen an advertisement, social media post, or piece of content.
Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Feed The technology which enables content (such as blog posts, podcasts, etc) to be regularly updated and syndicated to subscribers.
Reciprocal Link A mutually-beneficial link exchange between two businesses or websites. Not as valuable (in SEO terms) as a one-way link.
Reddit An entertainment, social networking, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links. Registered users can then vote submissions up or down to organize the posts and determine their position on the site’s pages.
Reddit Ads Reddit’s advertising platform, allowing advertisers to reach its more than 170 million registered users with (among other variables), subreddit targeting.
Reddit Karma Reddit karma is one of the gamification techniques used to engage users on reddit. You get more karma when your posts/comments get upvoted, and lose some when they get downvoted.
Redirect When you redirect a user from one webpage to another automatically. (see 301 redirect).
Referral Contest A type of online contest where entrants can earn rewards in exchange for referring other people to enter. You can run this contest on Facebook, Twitter and/or your website.
Referring Sites (Google Analytics) A analytic term referring to traffic coming to your site which is able to be identified and is not a search engine.
Registration The process of signing up to participate in an online forum, community or social-media network. At minimum, this act usually involves sharing a name and email address. Also “subscription.
Remarketing What Google Adwords calls Retargeting (see below).
Repin The act of pinning something on the Pinterest platform which another user has already “Pinned”, thus featuring it on one of your own Page and Board.
Required Form Field An obligatory field that must be filled out in order to complete a form.
Retargeting Someone performs an action (often a visit to your site) and has a cookie placed on her or his browser. Then as they go visiting other sites around the Web, your ad appears in front of them, as a banner or other type of display ad, on whatever sites they visit – so long as that site accepts ads from the ad network you use for retargeting. Retargeting can be done through various ad networks and platforms.
Return on Investment The determining metric indicating a successful or failing campaign. Arrived at by subtracting cost from profit and dividing by cost.
Returning Visitor (Google Analytics) A visitor with existing Google Analytics cookies from a previous visit.
Retweet A retweet is the re-sharing of a fellow Twitter user’s Tweet, indicating approval and increasing the reputation of the original poster.
Review Opinion or description of a product or service generated by the public or experts.
Rich Media Online ads or pages that are animated and/or interactive.
Rich Pins Rich Pins are Pins that include extra information right on the Pin itself. There are 6 types of Rich Pins: app, movie, recipe, article, product and place.
Rich Snippet A piece of code in the back end of your website or blog visible only to search engines. Gives a small sample/description of a site’s content.
Ruby on Rails Sometimes known as “RoR” or just “Rails,” ruby on rails is an open source framework for software or website development within Ruby, an object-oriented programming (OOP) language.
SaaS
Software-as-a-Service: Software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted.
Sales Accepted Lead A lead moved from marketing automation to sales based on their meeting set criteria which deems them ripe for a paid conversion.
Sales Funnel Your sales funnel is made up of the stages involved in getting a sale for your business, product or service.
Sales Qualified Lead A lead that has evolved into a qualified pipeline opportunity, yet to be accepted by sales.
Search Engine A program that indexes sites, pages and content in order to match said sites, pages and content with relevant search requests.
Search Engine Marketing A strategy within internet marketing involving the implementation of a set of rules (and often hunches) which influence how a site, page, or content is ranked within a search engine’s results.
Search Engine Optimization The process of optimizing a site, webpage, or piece of content in relation to the set of rules, best practices and hunches which will positively influence how that site, webpage or piece of content is ranked within a search engine’s results.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP) The entire collection of web pages displayed by any Search Engine for any given search (both paid and organic results).
Search Engine Traffic (Google Analytics) Website traffic labelled as coming from a search engine (both paid and organic traffic).
Search Remarketing The online marketing strategy characterized by showing advertisements to your bounced web traffic within Google’s search results.
Search Terms See “Keyword.”
Segmentation The division of current or potential customers into categories in order to better market to those segments.
Server A computer or computer program that manages access to a centralized resource or service in a network.
Session The period of activity that a user with a unique IP address spends on a Web site during a period of time.
Share The act of passing a piece of content or website link to another internet user. Typically by forwarding/sending an email or posting a link on a social media network.
Shopping Cart Element of e-commerce websites in which site visitors can add, view, delete, view, and purchase selected products from the online catalog.
Short URL A shortened version of a website address (most typically on Twitter).
Site Map A page or group of pages which link to every user-accessible page on a website. Created with the express purpose of improving site usability.
Social Bookmarking Saving and sharing content on different public sites (such as Delicious, Digg, Pinterest and Reddit) to create external links.
Social Endorsement Also known as social proof, social endorsements provide proof that other internet users trust and approve of your business, service, page or content.
Social Facebook Ad A Facebook ad that includes social information (i.e. “Jane Smith Likes This”). These ads perform better across the board than non-social ads (though they are also more expensive).
Social Media A type of online media where information is uploaded primarily through user submission.
Social Media Contest Online promotion which incentivizes lead generation or social media engagement through a prize, discount or coupon.
Social Media Groups Micro-communities within a social network created by and for individuals who share a particular interest.
Social Media Handle A unique identifier (not your name) of an individual or brand on a social media platform.
Social Network A website characterized by enabling its registered users to communicate with each other through the posting of content (comments, images, messages, etc).
Social Optimization The marketing practice of designing content so that it is both easy to and likely to be shared.
Social Signals An external SEO metric arrived at by measuring social media mentions.
Source Code The version of a computer program as written by a developer in any programming language.
Spam The practice of placing unwanted information in front of possible customers.
Spammer A person who uses spam to pursue a goal.
Splash Page A page arrived at before visiting the main page of a website (generally promotional or informational in nature).
Split Testing See “A/B Testing.”
Statistical Significance The degree of confidence with which a split or multivariate test is said to be conclusive. Most tests aren’t deemed conclusive until either the control or the variation is 95% likely to beat its opposition.
Stickiness The amount of time spent at a site over a given time period.
Streaming Media Video or audio content sent over the Internet and played immediately rather than being saved to a computer’s hard drive.
Structured Query Language (SQL) A programming language designed with the express purpose of managing data.
Style Sheet A template used by designers to define the layout of multiple pages (with a single branding, for instance) usually written in CSS.
Submission Submitting a URL for indexing within a search engine.
Subreddit Areas of content organization within Reddit structured based on subject matter. Subreddits include food, sports teams, life help, entrepreneurism, etc.
Subscriber When a user subscribes to your site either through an email subscription, RSS subscription or by following you on social media.
Suggested Bid (Facebook Ads) Suggested bid is based entirely on the ad auction currently running for your targeted audience. The suggested bid range is determined by the CPC or CPM bids that have won the ad auction recently. You can check the current range of suggested bid at any time to see when it’s at its most cost effective.
Sweepstakes A type of online contest where entrants provide minimal information (such as their email address) for a chance to win a prize.
Tags
Words or phrases used to describe and categorize content (generally within a CRM).
Target Audience/Market The group of people likely to be interested in your product or content.
Targeting The structuring of internet marketing strategy based on attracting/reaching specific groups of prospective clients with content likely to be of interest to their group.
Terabyte A unit of information equal to one million million bytes.
Text Ad An online ad which contains text only. Search ads on Google are text ads. Facebook ads are not.
Thought-Leader An expert individual or organisation focused on a specific area who, through the creation of original ideas and theories in that area, shapes its future.
Time on Page (Google Analytics) The span measured between a website visitor’s first arrival on a page and navigation to another page.
Time on Site (Google Analytics) The span measured between a website visitor’s first page view and last (within one session).
Title Tag The tag used to define the text in the top line (or tab) of a web browser. Also the text which appears as the title within a search listing.
Top-of-Funnel The first stage of the sales funnel, normally involving a content or advertising offer to attract visitors and convert them into leads.
Touch Point Also called “contact point”, this is every interface between a customer and a company or brand.
Tracking Code Information generally included in the URL that allows an advertiser to track the effectiveness their ad campaign (most often traffic source or search engine).
Troll An internet user who intentionally posts controversial content or comments with the express purpose of creating discord.
Tumblr Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website. The platform allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. It currently hosts 238.8 million blogs (as of June, 2015).
Tweet A “tweet” is the special name for an entry made on the microblogging site, Twitter. Up to 140 characters long, tweets can consist of random status updates, news, commentary, or anything an individual wants to communicate to followers at that moment, including personal messages to other users or groups and links to external content (articles, photos, videos).
Twitter An online social networking service that enables users to post and read 140-character messages called “tweets”, Twitter was founded in 2006 and (as of May, 2015) has more than 500 million users.
Twitter Ads The paid promotion platform on the Twitter platform. Twitter Ads can be promoted Posts or targeted brand advertisements (objective-based ads a benefit)
Unique Pageview
The total of individual visitors who have looked at your webpages. Repeat views will only be counted once as a unique pageview within a set time period.
Unique Resource Locator (URL) The letters, numbers, and symbols which signify your unique website address.
Unique Selling Point (USP) The answer to the question “What it is that sets your product, service, company, or offer apart from others?” Placed prominently on landing pages and product pages to convince visitors to convert.
Unique Value Proposition (UVP) See “Value Proposition.”
Unique Visitors Individuals who have visited a Web site (or network) more than once in a fixed time frame.
Upvote A vote on Reddit which positively affects a user’s comment or answer, increasing its chance of being seen.
Usability See “User Experience.”
User Acceptance Testing The process of checking that new products, services or features can actually be used by the customer in the intended way.
User Experience (UX) Refers to the way in which users or website visitors interact with a website or product. Optimizing for UX makes for a more pleasurable experience with your business. UX also refers to the field concerned with developing/optimizing user experience.
User Generated Content All content (images, customer testimonials, etc) created by visitors, site traffic, social media leads etc and submitted to your company.
Value Proposition
The reason engaging with your business is worth it to a visitor.
Variation In A/B testing, this is the iteration being tested against the Control (or original) with hopes of improving a desired outcome.
Veblen Effect A seemingly irrational consumer behaviour where consumers purchase highly-priced products as a status symbol rather than buying similar but lower-priced products.
Vine An online service owned by Twitter allowing users to record, post and share video clips up to six seconds in length.
Viral Marketing A newer method of internet marketing that attempts to make advertisements and content so interesting that viewers will pass them along to others free of charge to the creator.
Visit (Google Analytics) A visit consists of a series of pageviews that a single visitor makes during a period of activity. A visit ends after the visitor either closes the browser, clears cookies, or is inactive for 30 minutes (the timeout length is customizable in the tracking code settings).
Visitor Individuals who have visited a Web site (or network) at least once. Measured based on IP address.
Visitors (Google Analytics) Website traffic defined based on a single ID (usually stored within a cookie). Analytics views all single IDs as a single website visitor, and will add one if an old iD can’t be found (when the tracking code is run).
Vlog A blog that publishes video content.
Web 2.0
The modern internet, characterized by quick access to streaming video, original content, interactive community-driven media and social networking.
Web Analytics The measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.
Web Browser The program you use to access the internet. Common web browser include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple Safari
Web Design The creation, coordination, and formatting of design components used to create the layout and look of a website.
Web Presence The entire spread of a business’ online presence, including website, social media profiles, blog, etc.
Webinar Online, live seminars hosted by sector experts and attended by visitors all over the world. A great strategy for lead generation.
Webmaster The owner/manager of a website.
Webmaster Tools Usually referring to Google Webmaster Tools, you can get additional information about your website’s SEO status.
Website Custom Audience (Facebook Ads) Like with retargeting, a WCA is generated by tracking visitors to your website to Facebook, and showing them a brand-related ad which drives them back to your site.
Website Hosting Hosting (or storing) a website or database on a server so that it can be viewed and accessed by internet users.
Website Popup An ad, banner or window automatically triggered to appear on top of the current web browser. Used to generate leads or funnel site visitors.
Website Traffic The amount of visitors and vists a website receives.
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) The representation of text on a page in a form exactly corresponding to its appearance on a corresponding page (usually you’ll have code on one side and the denoted code display on the other).
White Hat SEO Using ethical SEO practices to increase your site’s popularity and ranking in search engines.
White List A list of email addresses which will not be marked as spam. Declared safe to open.
Word-of-Mouse A spin on the phrase “word of mouth”. Refers to content and news that is spread online.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing A marketing method that relies on social interactions to promote a product. As word-of-mouse isn’t yet ubiquitous, can also refer to online recommendations as well as verbal ones.
WordPress The most popular content management platform, WordPress offers a free and paid platform which hosts blogs and websites.
XML (Extensible Markup Language)
A programming language which allows developers to define their own elements within a dataset and pull necessary data at their own behest.
Yandex The fourth-largest search engine in the world, with about 60% market-share in Russia.
YouTube A popular video hosting and sharing site founded in 2005 and purchased by Google in 2006.

If you need clarification for any of these terms, or want another one defined, don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section!

To head back up to the Table of Contents, click here.

james-scherer-2

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *