Terms and definitions from all courses
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404 page: A URL that tells the visitor that the webpage does not exist
301 redirect (permanent): An HTTP status code which signifies that the web page a user is trying to reach has been permanently changed to another page.
302 redirect (temporary): An HTTP status code which indicates that the web page a user is trying to reach has been temporarily moved.
A
A/B testing: A method of testing where two versions of content with a single differing variable are compared to determine which yields better results
Abandoned cart: When a potential customer adds an item to their cart, but doesn’t complete the purchase
Abandoned cart email: A follow-up email sent to customers who added an item to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase
Above the fold: All of the information that is viewable on a web page prior to scrolling.
Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP): A framework for building web pages that is used to provide an easier, faster mobile experience. Learn more about AMPs.
Accessibility: Considering the needs of people with disabilities when products, services, and facilities are built or modified, making them usable by people of all abilities
Acquisition email: An email sent to acquire new customers
Adaptive Web Design: A style of website design that creates web pages of different sizes in order to appear appropriately on devices with different screen sizes. It differs from Responsive Web Design in that it is actually multiple websites of different sizes rather than a single website which is coded to adapt to different screen sizes. Today, Responsive Web Design is now the recommended style, and Adaptive Web Design is no longer the recommended style for creating responsive websites.
Ad auction: A process that determines the best ad to show to a person at a given point in time
Ad extension: A Google Ads feature that shows additional information about the business, such as website links, a phone number, or address
Ad formats: Elements such as text, videos, images, digital content ads, and more that make up a Google Ad
Ad group: A group of ads that is organized by a group of keywords
Ad Network: A group of websites that have ad inventory for advertisers to purchase. In the digital space, popular ad networks include Google Display Network, Google Search Partners, and Facebook Audience Network.
Ad Platform: A place for advertisers to create advertising campaigns and select where to show their ads from the available inventory. Google & Facebook are two of the largest ad platforms.
Ad Rank: The rank of an ad in a given auction compared to other ads in that auction used to determine the ad’s position. Ad rank may be different in each auction.
Ad spend: How much a company spends directly on advertisements
Agency: An outside partner that fulfills a company’s digital marketing and advertising needs
Alt text: A brief, written description of an image with the primary purpose of assisting individuals who are visually impaired
Anchor text: The visible text in a hyperlink
Applause rate: The number of approval actions—such as likes, mentions, Retweets, or favorites—that a post receives relative to the total number of followers
App Store Optimization (ASO): A branch of digital marketing focused on strategies and techniques designed to improve visibility of apps in the app store. This can include optimizing the apps meta data with targeted keywords, enhancing app creatives, and more.
Area chart: Represents data in the same way as a line chart, but with the space under the line filled in to form a visual area
Artificial intelligence (AI): A field developing intelligent machines and software that simulate human thought or work
Attribution: Assigns credit for conversions from ads, last clicks, or other touch points along a user's path to conversion completion
Attribution project: Organization for macro and micro conversions in Google Analytics
Automated bidding strategy: A Google Ads feature that automatically sets a bid for an ad based on an ad’s likelihood to result in a click or conversion that helps achieve a specific goal
Autonomous marketing: Uses real-time analytics to automate marketing activities
Average Cost Per Click (CPC): The average price an advertiser pays when a user clicks on their ad.
Average Cost per Conversion (also known as Cost per Acquisition or CPA): The average amount of money spent to generate each conversion. This is calculated by dividing the total cost of advertising during a period of time by the total number of conversions over the same period of time.
Average Cost Per Thousand Impressions or Cost Per Mille (CPM): The average cost for every 1000 impressions that are received. This is measured by dividing the total cost of advertising by the number of impressions then multiplying by 1000.
Average daily budget: The average amount set for each ad campaign on a per-day basis
Average order value (AOV): The sum of individual order amounts divided by the number of orders
Average Position: A metric used to define the order of appearance of listings and ads on search engines.
Organic Search Results: The average organic rank of a website on the search engine results page.
PPC Advertising: The average rank of an ad in relation to the other ads. Average Position was sunsetted by Google as of September 2019 due to the confusion it can cause about actual ad position.
Average session duration: Reported in seconds, a calculation that divides the total duration of all sessions by the number of sessions
Awareness stage: The first stage of the marketing funnel, when a potential customer first becomes aware of the product or service
B
Backlink: A link that points to a website from another site
Behavioral data: Refers to information about the actions a customer takes—or doesn’t take—when it comes to shopping on a website
Banner Ad: A type of display advertising which appears alongside regular content on a website or app. Most often this ad type includes an image or graphic. Although the dimensions of banner ads range in size, common dimensions include 720×90, 300×250, and 160×600.
Best sellers report: A report in Google Merchant Center that provides information about the most popular brands and products used in Shopping ads and free listings
Bid: The amount a marketer is willing to spend each time a potential customer clicks their ad or calls their business
Bid modification: Bidding a percentage more or less than a starting bid
Bidding strategy: Tells an advertiser how much to pay for each user action related to an ad
Big data: A field in analytics that systematically mines and extracts information from very large datasets for insights
BigQuery: Google’s cloud-based data warehouse solution
Bing Webmaster Tools: A free tool with reports used to monitor how a website is being crawled, indexed, appearing, and performing in search results on Bing.
Black Hat SEO: Using malicious or mischievous SEO techniques that are against search engine best practices and use policies. It is often used to try to exploit or take advantage of loopholes in search engine algorithms in order to improve search rankings quickly.
Blog: A discussion or informational website published on the internet consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries
Blogging: Refers to self-published writing that lives online
Body (also known as HTML Body Element): The area of HTML code containing all of the page information, such as images, tables, text, and hyperlinks.
BOPIS: An acronym for “buy online, pick up in store”
Bounce rate: The percentage of website visitors who view one page and then leave the site
Brand: How a business or organization is perceived by the public
Branding: To promote a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand
Brand advocacy: Measures the number of customers who promote a brand through word-of-mouth marketing or other methods
Brand awareness: How familiar people are with a particular business or product
Brand awareness metrics: Metrics that measure the attention a brand received across all social media platforms during a reporting period
Brand equity: The value consumers attribute to one brand’s offerings when compared with similar products from another brand
Brand evangelists: Customers who are so passionate about a product or service that they enthusiastically promote it to others
Brand identity: The combination of elements that inform how people perceive a brand
Brand position statement: Outlines exactly what a company does and for whom, and what makes it different from competitors
Brand safety: Keeping a brand's reputation safe when they advertise online
Brand voice: The distinct personality a brand takes on in its communications
Brand voice guidelines: Describes the way a brand should be presented in writing
Branded content: Any post that features a third-party product, brand, or sponsor
Breadcrumbs: A row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the homepage
Brick-and-mortar: A traditional retail store with a specific location where customers can come to shop
Broad match: A keyword match type in Google Ads that shows ads when someone searches for a term related to a keyword
Broken link: A link that leads to a webpage that no longer exists
Bucket testing: (refer to A/B testing)
Budget spend: How much is allocated to or spent on a campaign
Business goal: A desired aim, achievement, or outcome for a business
Business Listing: Information about a business (see NAP+W) that is listed on websites and platforms such as Yelp, Google My Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other similar sites.
Business-to-business (B2B): In e-commerce, when businesses buy products or services from other businesses
Business-to-consumer (B2C): In e-commerce, when consumers buy items from an online store
C
Call Ads (formerly call-only ads): A type of advertisement used on mobile devices that allows the user to click on the advertisement to directly call the business rather than have to first visit the business website or dial the business phone number themselves.
Call to action: An instruction that tells the customer what to do next
Call Tracking Number (CTN): A phone number on a website that is used for tracking purposes, such as to determine how consumers found the business or their reason for calling.
Campaign: A plan of action for how a set of one or more ad groups that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings will be distributed online
Canonical (also known as a canonical link element or canonical tag): An HTML element that is used to avoid duplicate content problems by telling search engines which page of content is the preferred version.
Cart abandonment: When a customer adds an item to their cart, but doesn't complete the purchase
Cart abandonment rate: The percentage of customers who add a product to their shopping cart and leave the site without completing their purchase
Cell: A position in a spreadsheet with a column and row designation; for example, cell A2 is the unique position in column A and row 2
Change management: Methods, practices, approaches, and processes that organizations take to ensure changes are implemented smoothly
Channel: In Google Analytics, the Channel refers to the general group of sources that directed a user to a website. There are both default channels built into Google Analytics, such as social, organic, and direct, as well as the option to create custom channels.
Chatbot: A programmed system that responds to common customer questions
Chronological feed: A social media stream that displays the latest published content first
Citation: Any mention of a business online.
Click: An interaction with an ad and online user
Click-and-mortar: A type of retail store that sells online as well as in a brick-and-mortar store
Click Share: A Google Ads metric which notes the percentage of clicks your ads received out of the estimated total number of clicks your ads were eligible to receive.
Click-to-open rate: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links in an email
Click Through Rate (CTR): The number of clicks received divided by the number of impressions received expressed as a percentage. This can also be thought of as the average likelihood that a user will click on your ad or listing after seeing it. It can be helpful in determining the quality of a listing or ad.
Cloaking: A type of Black Hat SEO in which a website delivers different content to the search engine than it delivers to users.
Closed captions: Subtitles that are overlaid on video and can be turned on and off by users
Color contrast ratios: Measures the luminescence (or brightness) of a lighter color against the luminescence of a darker color
Comma-separated values (CSV): A file format in which a comma is placed between each data value in the file
Competition: The other sellers that exist already in the market
Complaint rate: The percentage of complaints recipients send to mailbox providers about receiving an email
Confidence interval: The range of possible values after accounting for the margin of error
Confidence level: How likely an experiment’s range of results would contain all results if the test ran longer; most researchers select a 95% confidence level
Consideration stage: The second stage of the marketing funnel, when a marketer provides customer with more detailed information
Consumer-to-business (C2B): In e-commerce, when businesses buy products or services from individuals (consumers)
Consumer-to-consumer (C2C): In e-commerce, when consumers buy items from each other
Contact page: A common webpage on websites that provides information for visitors to contact the organization or individual hosting the website
Container Tag: A single code snippet placed on a website, which holds other tracking codes or pixels and information on when to “fire” those other tags and pixels. The container tag code should be placed on every page of a website and allows for a single tracking code to be used, rather than placing many individual tracking codes on a website. Using a container tag, the individual tags are added via a separate user interface (UI) instead of editing the website’s code. A popular example of a container tag is Google Tag Manager.
Content buckets: Categories to group marketing content
Content Management System (CMS): A software or system used to organize the creation and management of digital content. Common examples include WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix.
Content marketing: A marketing technique that focuses on creating and distributing valuable content to a specific audience
Continuous metrics: Metrics that are measured and change over time
Conversion: The completion of an activity that contributes to the success of a business
Conversion paths: A feature in Google Analytics that enables a marketer to view the first and last touchpoints before conversion and touchpoints in between
Conversion rate: The percentage of users or website visitors who completed a desired action, such as clicking on a link in an email or purchasing a product
Conversion rate optimization: The process of increasing the percentage of users or website visitors who complete a desired action Conversion stage: The third stage of the marketing funnel, when a marketer capitalizes on the interest people have already shown
Cookie: A small file stored on devices that tracks user behavior and analyzes traffic
1st Party Cookie: A cookie set by the owner of the domain a user is currently viewing. This cookie is used to collect first-party data.
3rd Party Cookie: A cookie set by a third party used to submit information to a company other than the owner of the domain a user is viewing. 3rd party cookie use is being deprecated from most internet browsers in 2023
Cookieless Browsing: A term used to describe web browsers that do not support the use of third-party cookies.
Copy: Any written material that encourages a customer to buy a product or service
Core Web Vitals: A set of page experience signals which are being incorporated into Google’s search ranking algorithm as a known ranking factor. Core Web Vitals include measurements of a website’s Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Cost per acquisition (CPA): The average cost of acquiring a potential customer
Cost per action (CPA): The amount a marketer pays when someone completes a desired action
Cost per click (CPC): The amount a marketer pays when someone clicks on their ad
Cost Per Conversion: The price an advertiser pays for a conversion action. Most often abbreviated as CPA, meaning cost per (conversation) action.
Cost per thousand impressions (CPM): The amount a marketer pays for every 1,000 impressions an ad receives
Cost per view (CPV): The amount a marketer pays when a viewer watches a video ad for a minimum amount of time or interacts with it, such as when they click a link embedded in the video
Crawlers: Automated software that crawls (fetches) pages from the web and indexes them
Crawling: The process of finding new or updated webpages
Creatives: Any content that can be promoted in a campaign, such as text, images, GIFs, or videos
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): A software or technology used to collect and store information about a business’s customers and potential customers that is designed to help improve customer relationships and communication. Common CRM examples include SalesForce, Hubspot, Zoho & Pipedrive.
Cross-channel attribution: A model in Google Analytics that attributes a percentage of a conversion to all advertising channels with touchpoints
Cross-selling: A sales technique used to encourage customers to spend more by purchasing a product that’s related to what they’re already buying
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): Code used to style a web document.
Curriculum vitae (CV): A document that presents a full history of an applicant's full academic credentials and professional experience
Custom audiences: A platform feature that allows a marketer to create relevant remarketing campaigns to reach highly-specific groups of people by uploading email lists of existing customers and followers
Customer acquisition: The process of gaining new customers
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The average cost of acquiring a paying customer
Customer Data Platform (CDP): A technology used to combine data from multiple sources and tools for better organization and analysis of customer interactions and information.
Customer engagement: The interactions and emotional connection between a customer and a brand
Customer journey: The path customers take from learning about a product, to getting questions answered, to making a purchase
Customer journey map: A visualization of the touchpoints a typical customer encounters along their purchase journey
Customer lifetime value: The average revenue generated by customers over a certain period of time
Customer persona: Represents a group of similar people in a desirable audience
Customer persona barrier: What is preventing the customer from achieve their goal
Customer persona goal: What the customer wants to achieve
Customer referral: A word-of-mouth initiative that encourages existing customers to introduce their family, friends, and contacts to become new customers
Customer relationship management (CRM) system: Software that helps a business manage and monitor its interactions with existing and potential customers
Customer retention rate: The percentage of customers that a company retains over a certain period of time
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey: A tool that measures how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectations
Customer service: The advice and support a company provides to its customers before, during, and after a purchase
D
Dashboard: A tool to track, analyze, and display KPIs, metrics, and insights dynamically based on interactive user criteria
Data: A collection of facts or information
Data analysis: Examining data to draw conclusions, make predictions, and drive informed decision-making
Data analytics: Monitoring and evaluating data to gain actionable insights
Data anonymization: Techniques to mask or remove personal information from data to protect the identities of people
Data bias: Human error that skews data collection or interpretation of data in a certain direction
Data ethics: The study and evaluation of moral challenges related to data collection and analysis
Data privacy: Rights of individuals under the law to control how their personal information is collected, processed, shared, archived, and deleted
Data-driven attribution: Measures customer engagement with marketing content across channels to understand what is motivating them to take action
Data-ink ratio: The proportion of ink (or pixels in digital content) that is used to present actual data compared to the total amount of ink (or pixels) used in an entire visualization
Data pulling: Collecting data from analytics tools and putting it in a spreadsheet or database
Data reporting: Organizing and summarizing data to track performance across marketing and sales efforts
Data storytelling: Conveying data insights to a specific audience using a clear and compelling narrative
Data visualizations: Graphical representations of data that convey information
Dead stock: Inventory that remains unsold for a long period of time and has little chance of selling in the future
Demand: How much consumers are willing and able to buy a certain product over a given period of time
Demographic targeting: Delivering an ad based on user information, like age
Demographics: Information specific to the customer, such as age, gender identity, income, family size, occupation, education, and location
Digital advertising: Communication made by a company to promote its brand, product, or service using various platforms and online channels
Digital Advertising Audit: An inspection or examination of a business’s current digital advertising performance and tactics.
Digital channel: Any communication method or platform a business can use to reach their target audience online
Digital Garage – Digital Garage is a free online learning platform that helps you to learn more about everything digital and will help you to understand other Google tools.
Digital marketing: The practice of reaching consumers online through digital channels with the aim of turning them into customers
Digital shopping cart: The virtual equivalent of a physical shopping cart
Digital PR – Digital PR (public relations) is the act of building links through online campaigns, thought-leadership articles and expert comments. PR teams have strong relationships with journalists, who can work for authoritative websites.
Dimensions: Attributes or characteristics of an event that determine the metrics collected in Google Analytics
Discrete metrics: Metrics that have specific values, can be counted, or are binary—like on/off or true/false settings
Display ad: A visual ad format placed on websites or applications
Display campaign: A Google Ads tool that allows businesses to place image advertisements across various websites
Display Network: A group of websites where display ads may be shown. For example, the Google Display Network (GDN) is a display network comprised of over 2M websites that can show ads to users when the advertiser uses the Google platform to advertise.
Domain: The core part of a website’s URL, or internet address
Domain Authority: A search ranking score from 1 to 100, created by Moz, used to measure the SEO weight a website domain carries in the eyes of a search engine. A higher score indicates a more authoritative domain.
Domain Name: The portion of a URL which indicates the host or web server. Example: scayvergraphix.com is a domain name.
DR – DR stands for Domain Rating. It is a links metric created by the marketing platform, ‘Ahrefs’ to define the authority and ranking potential a website holds. A similar metric to this is DA, or Domain Authority which was created by Moz, another marketing platform. The higher the domain rating, the more authority and ranking potential a website has.
Dropshipping: A fulfillment method in which products are shipped from the supplier directly to the customer
Duration: How long a campaign will run
Dwell Time: The amount of time between when a user clicks on a result on the search engine results page and when the user returns to the search engine results page.
Dynamic remarketing: A process that allows a company to show previous visitors ads that contain products and services they viewed on the company’s site
E
Earned Media: Any media exposure that does not come directly from your business. This includes things like shared posts, reviews of your business, or mentions from another site.
E-A-T: Stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, & Trustworthiness and is used in SEO to describe the quality of a website or content. The term comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
E-commerce: The buying and selling of goods or services using the internet
E-commerce platform: A software application that allows businesses to sell products or services online
E-commerce point-of-sale (POS) system: Software that allows a business to process payment transactions from customers online
E-commerce store: A store that sells its products online
E-commerce strategy: A working plan to promote an online store and increase its sales
Earned media: Any positive digital exposure generated through personal or public recommendations
Elevator pitch: A short, memorable description that explains a concept in an easy-to-understand way
Email body: The text in the main content of an email
Email bounce rate: The percentage of emails sent that could not be delivered to the recipient's inbox
Email copy: The text in a subject line, preview text, and email
Email marketing: The process of sending messages to a list of existing subscribers to share information, drive sales, or create community
Email marketing provider: A company that offers email marketing or bulk email services
Email marketing report: A collection of KPIs presented to the team and stakeholders to inform them of a campaign’s progress
Email marketing strategy: A set of procedures that a marketer identifies and follows to achieve their desired marketing goals with email advertising
Engagement: How an audience interacts with a brand on social media
Engagement marketing: (refer to experiential marketing)
Event: An activity that causes data collection to occur in Google Analytics
Evergreen content: Content that will be relevant over a long period of time
Exact match: A keyword match type in Google Ads that shows ads when someone searches for a term that has the same meaning or same intent as a keyword
Exit Page: The page from which a visitor leaves a website.
Experiential marketing: The process of encouraging consumers to not only purchase a brand or product, but to experience it
External link: A link on a website that leads to content on other sites
F
Facebook Business Manager: A platform created by Facebook designed to help marketers manage the Facebook ads and pages of multiple businesses from one central account.
Featured snippet: A special box that displays information about a search in the results page
Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC): Grouping people together when they have similar browsing characteristics without the use of a unique identifier per browser; may be used for internet-based advertising which is an alternative to using cookies
First click attribution: Assigns all the credit to the first touchpoint that eventually leads to a conversion
Flight: (refer to duration)
Follow-up interview: A more in-depth meeting that often includes members of the team that the applicant will be working with
Follower: Someone who opts in to receive updates from a business or brand on a social media platform
Footer: A navigation section at the bottom of a website
Forecasting: The process of predicting the future demand for products
Forward rate: The percentage of recipients who click on the “share” button to post to social media or who click the “forward” button to send to others
Frequency: How many times an individual encounters an ad
Frequently asked questions (FAQ): A section on a website that provides answers to the questions that customers might have regarding a business, their products or services, policies, processes, and more
Fulfillment service: A third-party company that prepares and ships orders from their fulfillment centers
G
Generalist: Someone who is knowledgeable about many topics and has various interests
Geographic segmentation: The grouping of customers with regards to their physical location
Geofencing: Using a person’s location to trigger a response when a person enters or leaves a virtually fenced area. For example, a person with GPS enabled on their cell phone enters a one-mile radius of a smoothie shop and they are sent a text message with a 10% off coupon for that smoothie shop.
Geo-modifier: Appending a location-based term to a keyword, such as “Dentist in Bend.” Here, Bend is the Geo-modifier.
Geo-targeting: Showing ads to people based on their physical location. Locations are usually determined by IP address or mobile GPS signals.
GIF: An animated image
Goal-based automated bidding: A bidding strategy where a marketer sets an ROAS or cost per action target to maximize the advertising goal at a certain efficiency
Google Ads: An online advertising platform where advertisers bid to display brief
advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users Google Algorithm Update – Google regularly updates its algorithm to ensure that users are receiving the most relevant and trustworthy search results. Historic algorithm updates include the Google Penguin update, which penalised websites for buying links, and Google Panda, which targeted spammy and “thin” content. More recent Google Algorithm Updates have focused on mobile friendliness and page speed, as well as broader consideration around E-A-T.
Google Analytics: A web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic
Google Analytics 4 (GA4): The next generation of Google Analytics which incorporates machine learning to surface user insights. It can be used with both web and app properties and is now the default version of Google Analytics.
GoogleBot – GoogleBot is Google’s specific user-agent that crawls web pages and other assets before sending information to Google’s index to eventually display and rank in their search engine. For a breakdown of other Google-owned user-agents, read Google’s Overview of Google Crawlers.
Google Business Profile: A tool that allows local businesses to tailor how their information appears on Google Search and Google Maps
Google Display Network: A group of websites, videos, and apps where ads can appear
Google knowledge panels: Information boxes that appear on Google when someone searches for people, places, organizations, or things that are available in Google’s knowledge database
Google Merchant Center: A tool advertisers use to upload their store and product data to Google and make it available for Shopping ads and other Google services
Google Search Console: A tool that helps users better understand how a website is performing on Google Search
Google Trends: A free Google tool that lets people explore what citizens around the world are searching for on Google
Googlebot: The generic name of Google's crawler
Google Tag Manager: A free tool used to organize website tagging and tracking codes all in one place.
GTM – Google Tag Manager is another free tool from Google that allows you to manage and implement tags (snippets of code) on your website, without having to modify the site code. It is commonly used to make user behaviour tracking easier.
H
H1 Tag – A H1 tag is the main heading tag on a webpage, often the title, and is considered the most important tag. It is followed by a H2 tag for a subheading, a H3 tag for a smaller heading and so on.
Hashing: A security method which turns the personal information in email lists into randomized code
Hashtag: A word or phrase preceded by the pound symbol that indicates that a piece of content relates to a specific topic or category
Heat map: A data visualization tool that demonstrates how visitors interact with a website
Headers (also known as HTML Headers): An HTML element that defines the introductory content. This information is displayed on the actual web page often in a larger font to tell users what the next section of text will be about. There are headers of different weights which function as subheaders. This information is important for the user experience as well as telling search engines the information contained on the page and how important it is.
Histogram: Shows individual data points that have been categorized into ranges, with the frequency of each range represented by the height of a unique column
Hits: An interaction that results in data being sent to a tracking solution (i.e. Google Analytics). One session can include multiple hits such as page views, events, or social interactions.
Home page: The main page of a website
Horizontal bar chart: A 90-degree rotation of a vertical column chart
Hreflang: Code which tells the search engines the written language of the web page being indexed.
HTML – HTML stands for “Hyper Text Markup Language” and refers to the code which is used to build web pages and to arrange the layout of the page.
HTTP Requests – ‘Hypertext Transfer Protocol’ is a protocol that allows information to be shared and passed between your browser and the website.
HTTPS: An internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data between the user’s computer and the site
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS): A method of transferring information over the internet that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data between the user’s computer and the site
I
IDFA or Idenifier for Advertisers: A technology formerly used by Apple to allow advertisers to track and target users within iOS14 devices. As of the iOS14.5 update, users of Apple devices need to specifically opt-in to allow the information to be passed to app owners.
Image optimisation – Ensuring an image is high-quality and compressed enough so it loads quickly on a webpage while not disrupting user experience.
Impression: When a piece of content is displayed to a target audience
Impression Share: A measurement of the number of times an ad was shown out of the total number of times it was eligible to show. This can help measure how much of the available audience an ad is reaching.
Impression to Conversion Rate (Imp CVR): A measurement of how often an impression turns into a conversion, calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of impressions.
Inbound links – Links that appear on other domains that lead to your site.
In-house: Within a single company
Inclusive marketing: The practice of improving representation and belonging within the marketing and advertising materials that an organization creates
Indexing: The process of Google saving and organizing website information to display in the search engine
Influence: The degree to which a stakeholder can convince people to take certain actions
Influencer: A person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media
Influencer-generated content: Any post created by an influencer that promotes a brand’s products and services
Influencer marketing: The process of enlisting influential people to endorse or mention a brand or product to their followers on social media
Influencer marketing platform: Software that provides influencer discovery tools such as large searchable databases of potential influencers
Informative report: A report used to provide company leadership with a broad understanding of campaign performance, focusing on larger metrics like return on investment (ROI) and other key performance indicators (KPIs)
Insight: Information that is discovered through research or data analysis and that can be actioned upon to benefit a marketing strategy
Insight report: A report that finds meaning in the data and aims to communicate that meaning at a high-level to stakeholders
Interest: The degree to which a project informs or impacts a stakeholder’s objectives
Interest targeting: Delivering an ad based on user preferences
Internal link: A link on a website that points to other pages on the site
Internet troll: A person who intentionally antagonizes others online by posting inflammatory, unnecessary, or offensive comments or other disruptive content
J
Javascript: A programming language used to create interactive or dynamic elements on a web page.
K
Key performance indicator (KPI): A measurement used to gauge how successful a business is in its effort to reach a business or marketing goal
Keyword: A search term that people use to find information, products, or services online
Keyword Bid: The maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for a click in an ad auction.
Keyword Density: A measurement of the occurrence of a keyword on a page or website in relation to the total number of words on the same page or website.
Knowledge Graph: A collection of information about real-world objects and entities that search engines use to create knowledge panels. Introduced by Google in 2012.
Knowledge Panel: A box of information that appears on the search engine results page and is meant to give the searcher a brief look at the information available on the web about the topic. The knowledge panel is automatically generated by the search engines and is shown for entities that are included in the knowledge graph.
Keyword – A keyword refers to common denominator search phrases that people search for when looking for transactional, navigational and informational content. When implemented correctly on relevant pages, they enable users to find your website in the search results. Keywords can be tracked in order to review site performance and optimized further to improve rankings.
Keyword research: The process of finding terms and phrases that people use in search engines
Keyword stuffing: The practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in the search results
L
Landing page: The first page a visitor encounters when they go to a website
Last click attribution: Assigns all the credit to the last known touchpoint before conversion
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) (also known as Latent Semantic Analysis or LSA): A technique that uses statistical formulas to determine the meaning of a body of text based on the context.
Law of diminishing returns: An economic principle stating that if investment in a particular area increases, the rate of profit from that investment will eventually decrease if other variables remain constant
Lead: A potential customer who has interacted with a brand and shared personal information, like an email address
Lead generation: The practice of collecting a potential customer’s email address
Lifetime ROAS: The result of multiplying the number of new customers by the total LTV and dividing the result by the ad spend
Lifetime value (LTV): The average revenue generated by customers over a certain period of time
Line chart: A chart in which individual data points for a changing variable are connected with a continuous line
Linear attribution: Assigns equal credit to each touchpoint along the customer journey
Link Building – Link building is the methodology of influencing external websites to position a hyperlink back to your website. Link building is considered to be one of the most effective ways to grow your organic visibility along with on-site content creation.
Link Juice: A slang term used in SEO to describe the value of links pointing to another site.
Link Equity/Link Juice – Link equity, or “link juice”, is a term which describes the authority a link can pass from one page to another. The authority can be passed through both internal links (from the same website) and external links (from another website). PageRank was Google’s original algorithm which took link equity and the overall link graph into consideration when ranking websites for users. However, there are now multiple other factors which also affect page rankings.
List growth rate: The rate at which an email subscriber list grows
List-based remarketing: Uses lists of existing customers or visitors who have provided their email address and shows specific ads to them
Live chat: A customer service technology that allows customers to communicate in real time with a business representative
Live View: A feature in Shopify that provides a real-time view of an e-commerce store’s activity as it happens
Local Service Ads: A Google Ad format that uses a pay-per-lead pricing model and is only available to businesses that are verified by Google. This ad type is only available in certain areas and only to specific types of businesses. Local Service Ads are managed on a separate platform outside of Google Ads.
Local search: A search query that generates local-based search results
Local SEO: Optimizing content so that it displays in Google's local search algorithms
Location targeting: Delivering an ad based on user location
Long-Tail Keywords – Long-tail relates specifically to keywords with lower search volume. They’re less popular than other higher volume keywords (i.e. short- and mid-tail keywords) but with that, they also come with a higher intent, more choice with lots of demand at scale, lower competition and a tendency to convert exceptionally well
Lookalike audience: People with similar demographics and behaviors who haven’t yet been introduced to a brand
Loyalty stage: The fourth stage of the marketing funnel, when customers become repeat customers and brand advocates
LTV to CAC ratio: The total LTV (total lifetime value) divided by CAC (customer acquisition cost)
M
Macro conversion: A completed purchase transaction
Macro-influencers: Influencers with between 100,000 and 1 million followers
Manual action: Google’s way to demote or remove webpages that are not compliant with its webmaster quality guidelines
Manual bidding: Managing bids based on the criteria the marketer selects
Margin of error: The statistically-calculated difference between a test result and the theoretical result that could have come from a test with a lot more users
Market research: The process of gathering information about consumers’ needs and preferences
Market size: The total number of potential customers within a specific industry
Marketing automation: The practice of using software, programs, and technology to create and implement applications to automate marketing tasks
Marketing funnel: A visual representation of the process through which people go from learning about a brand to becoming loyal customers
Marketing goal: An objective in a marketing plan or strategy that supports a business goal
Marketing mix models: Statistical models advertisers use to predict the effectiveness and ROI of an advertising spend
Marketing return on investment (ROI): A metric calculated by subtracting the marketing cost from the total sales growth and dividing the result by the marketing cost
Maximum bid: The highest amount a marketer is willing to bid on a platform; also known as the ceiling
Media mix: A combination of digital channels marketers use to reach their goals and how they divide their budget among them
Media mix models: (refer to marketing mix models)
Media plan: Contains details about where, when, and how often an ad will appear across all media channels
Medium: In Google Analytics, the Medium refers to the way a user came to a website. Examples include “organic” meaning they found a website via an organic listing in the search results, “none” meaning they came directly to a website by typing it into the browser, or “referral” meaning they came to a website via a link on another website.
Mega-influencers: Influencers with 1 million or more followers
Meme: An amusing or interesting item—such as a captioned picture or video—that is spread widely online
Merge tag: (refer to personalization tag)
Metadata – In the context of digital marketing and web development, metadata refers to a page’s “hidden information” that’s typically stored in the <head> of a document. For SEOs, metadata that’s of particular interest is the title tag and meta description as these are the components that appear in a search result. They can give users a concise overview of what they will find on a page while promoting higher rankings when optimised correctly.
Meta description: Text that provides search engines a summary of what the page is about
Metrics: Quantifiable measurements that are used to track and assess a business objective
Micro conversion: A completed response that indicates a user is moving toward a completed purchase transaction
Micro-influencers: Influencers with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers
Microblogging: Blogging on a smaller scale; Ideal for distributing short-form content quickly and frequently
Minimum bid: The lowest amount a marketer is allowed bid on a platform; also known as the floor
Mobile First Indexing: Indicates that the mobile version of a website is the version that is crawled and indexed by search engines. Any information that does not exist on the mobile version of a website is not indexed.
Mobile Friendliness: A measure of how easy a website is to use and access on mobile devices.
Mobile-friendly webpage: A webpage that is designed to load quickly and render well on a phone screen
Monthly active users: Refers to the number of unique customers who visit a platform over a month-long span
Multi-channel customer service: Refers to providing customer service across multiple channels
Multivariable testing: (refer to multivariate testing)
Multivariate testing: A method of testing where two or more versions of content with several differing variables are compared to determine which combination yields better results
N
Nano-influencers: Influencers with 10,000 followers or fewer
NAP+W: An acronym for name, address, phone, and website that is often used in relation to citations or business listings as a part of Local SEO.
Navigation bar: A collection of links to other pages within a website
Negative keywords: Search terms excluded from an ad campaign
Net profit: The amount of money left over after expenses are paid
Net profit margin: The percentage of revenue left over after expenses are paid
Net Promoter Score (NPS): A metric that helps predict future customer engagement by asking customers, “How likely is it that you would recommend our product to a friend?”
Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey: A single-question survey that asks respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or a service to a friend or colleague on a scale from zero to ten
Newsletter: An email sent to subscribers on a regular basis, containing news and informational content relevant to the company and of interest to subscribers
Nofollow/rel=”nofollow” – Nofollow is an attribute value used to suggest that search engines should not crawl and therefore shouldn’t pass link equity through any given link. One implied application of this is to prevent any association with intentional bad practice, such as purchasing links.
Noindex: An HTML tag intended for web crawlers, which requests that the crawler does not index the page.
O
Off-season: The period where customers tend to take more time in making purchases, especially if it’s for a larger ticket item
Off-Page Optimisation – This refers to external measures away from a website which may improve its organic performance. It is mainly used to describe link-building practices through an array of methodologies, including digital PR, but can also refer to engaging with social media, consumer review sites and other platforms that can promote a business’s trust and authority.
Omnichannel: The integration or synchronization of content on multiple channels
Online advertising: A form of marketing which uses the internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers
On-Page Optimisation – This refers to the measures which can be taken within a website itself to improve its organic performance. This includes tasks such as improving keyword targeting, writing meta descriptions and creating content.
On-season: The period where customers are much more likely to buy products due to related weather variables or special events
Open captions: Subtitles that are embedded directly in video and can’t be hidden or turned off by users
Open rate: The percentage of users or customers who open an email
Open-source: Software that allows the user to access and edit the original source code
Operational report: A report that provides real-time updates and information on metrics like audience growth rates, impressions, click-through rates, and more
Optimization score: An estimate of how well a Google Ads account is set to perform
Order fulfillment: All the steps that take place between receiving an order and delivering the order to the customer
Organic Listing: A listing on the SERP that is achieved without directly paying the search engine. The entire field of search engine optimization is dedicated to improving the performance of organic listings on the SERP.
Organic results: Search results not paid for by advertisers
Organic search: Unpaid results a search engine produces when a search is performed
Organic social media: Any social media activity that does not require a paid promotion
Organic Traffic – This is the number of people who visit your website through natural search engine listings, i.e. without clicking an advertisement or a referral link. Similarly, you can also receive traffic through Organic Social – again, via users who found you on social media through unpaid means – though this is often tagged simply as “Social” through analytics platforms. Organic Traffic does not include what is called “Direct Traffic” – when a user types your URL directly into the search bar, or clicked on their saved bookmark.
Owned media: All the digital content a brand fully controls
P
Page Authority: Similar to domain authority, page authority is a search ranking score from 1 to 100, created by Moz, used to measure the SEO weight a specific web page carries in the eyes of a search engine.
Page Experience Signals: A selection of measurements used to better understand the user experience of a website. Page experience signals include Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitials.
Page Head (also known as HTML Head Element): The information contained in a web page prior to the body, which defines information about the contents of the page. This is commonly where tags, such as Google Analytics tags, and metadata are placed in a web page’s code.
Page Speed: A metric from 1 to 100 that measures how quickly a website page loads. According to Google, Page Speed is a ranking factor as it has a direct impact on user experience.
Pages per Visit: The number of web pages an average user views during a session on a website.
Paid Ad: Any advertising placement earned via a payment. See also Digital Advertising.
Paid media: Any form of digital promotion a brand pays to put online
Paid results: Search results that advertisers pay to show whenever a user runs a search containing certain keywords
Paid social media: Displaying paid advertisements or sponsored marketing messages on social media platforms to target a specific audience
Pain point: A specific problem faced by current or prospective customers while interacting with a site
Payment service provider: A secure way to process transactions online
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: A type of advertising that allows the advertiser to pay only when someone clicks on an ad link
Penalty (search engine): A negative action against a website brought by a search engine for ignoring or intentionally violating policies or best practices.
Performance goal: A target that has a measurable, numeric value
Performance marketing: The process of using concrete information about customer behaviors to plan and refine marketing and sales strategies
Performance Planner: A Google tool that allows an advertiser to forecast the impact of different spending scenarios and events during upcoming seasons
Performance reporting: (refer to data reporting)
Personalization: The practice of delivering a customized experience for each customer
Personalization tag: A code that allows the writer to insert unique user data from their mailing list into emails
Personalized advertising: A type of advertising that relies on user interest or behavior data to determine the right audience for ads
Personally identifiable information (PII): Information that could be used to directly identify, contact, or locate an individual
PESTLE analysis: An audit that identifies political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors that may affect a marketing strategy
Phone-through Rate (PTR): An advertising metric measuring the number of phone calls received from an ad divided by the total number of times the phone number was shown in an ad.
Phrase match: A keyword match type in Google Ads that shows ads when someone searches for a term that includes the meaning of a keyword
Pie chart: A chart that shows data with partial and whole results
Pillars of social media marketing: The pillars that can help guide an effective social media marketing campaign: strategy, planning and publishing, listening and engagement, analytics and reporting, and paid social media
Pivot table: A visualization that changes the view of data in a spreadsheet to a different perspective to categorize it or to identify an insight or trend (without changing the data itself)
Pixel: An invisible image file placed on a website that is used to pass information, such as a cookie, to a server. Pixels can be used to determine touchpoints with a brand across different platforms.
Pixel-based remarketing: A process that sends ads automatically to users after placing a cookie into their web browser that tracks the pages and products they view
Podcast: An episodic series of digital audio files that users can download to a personal device to listen or read a transcription
Point of diminishing returns: The point at which revenue-to-ad spend is at its highest
Points model: A rewards program that offers customers a point equivalent for a determined monetary value spent over the course of several purchases
Portfolio: An edited collection of an individual’s best projects intended to showcase work experience, style, or methods
Position Zero: Another name for a featured snippet. So named because it shows up above the first traditional, organic result on the SERP.
PPC (Pay per Click): A type of digital advertising in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their advertisements.
Post-purchase communication: Any direct interaction customers have with a brand after they make a purchase
Potential reach: A metric that measures how many people have potentially seen a post
Power grid: (refer to stakeholder map)
Predicted lifetime value (pLTV): The predicted revenue generated by customers over a period of time that includes the future
Predictive analytics: Uses historical data to predict what might happen
Preliminary interview: A fast-paced meeting conducted over a phone call or video chat
Preview text: Text next to an email’s subject line in the inbox that gives extra insight into what’s inside the email
Primary research: Research obtained first-hand
Privacy policy: A legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a business gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer's data
Product analytics: Monitoring and evaluating data to gain insights into how users interact with a product or service
Product description: The text on the product detail page of an e-commerce store that provides details and information to customers about the product
Product detail page (PDP): A page on an e-commerce site that provides information about a specific product
Product conversion rate: The percentage of customers who purchase a product after viewing it
Product recommendation engine: Software that uses artificial intelligence to analyze customers’ data, learn which products might interest them, and display those products to the customer
Product sourcing: How a business acquires the products they sell to customers
Product viability: The sales potential for a specific product
Programmatic Advertising: An automated bidding method used to purchase display ad inventory for a specific audience. Often called real-time bidding (RTB).
Progressive Web Apps: A type of web page that functions like an app and is designed for a more immersive user experience. Learn more about Progressive Web Apps.
Promoted post: A social media post that a marketer pays the platform to make more visible
Promotional email: An email sent out to inform subscribers of new or existing products or services
Property: A website, mobile application, or web page that is associated with a unique measurement ID in Google Analytics to enable metrics collection
Psychographic data: Refers to information based on customers’ activities, interests, and opinions
Python: A programming language used for data analysis and data visualization
Q
Qualified traffic: Traffic made up of visitors who are likely to become customers
Qualitative data: Information that describes qualities or characteristics
Quality control: The process through which a business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved
Quantitative data: Information that can be counted or compared on a numeric scale
Quality Score: A score out of 10 given by Google Ads to indicate how closely related an ad & landing page are to the keywords. Since Quality Score is one of the factors in Ad Rank, it can have an impact on the number of times an ad is shown and the price an advertiser pays for ads.
Quarter: A three-month time period based on a company’s financial calendar
Query: The words typed into a Google Search bar
R
Rank: A webpage’s position in the search engine results pages (SERPs), which is determined by an algorithm
RankBrain: A component of the Google algorithm that uses machine learning to determine the most relevant results for search queries, especially queries that are entered for the first time.
Ranking Factors: These are items that are used in search algorithms and impact how and where a webpage appears on search engine result pages.
Reach: The total number of unique individuals who encounter an ad across their different devices
Real-time analytics: Monitors immediate data for insights to respond to events more quickly
Real-time marketing: A marketing approach that involves responding to current events, trends, or feedback in real or near-real time, almost always on social media
Redirect testing: A method of testing where two ads or webpages with different URLs are tested against each other to determine which yields better results
Referral: Refers to how someone was guided to a website
Remarketing: A strategy in which a marketer uses paid ads to target customers who have visited a website, app, or social media profile
Remarketing ad: An advertisement delivered to previous purchasers, subscribers, or visitors to a brand’s website or social media
Replenishment emails: Emails used to prompt customers to make a repeat purchase when the items they previously bought are about to run out
Repurposing content: The process of recreating and republishing content in different formats
Responsive display ad: A display ad that automatically adjusts its size, appearance, and format to fit available ad spaces
Responsive website: A website that is designed to work on all types of devices, including computers, mobile phones, and tablets
Resume: A document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments
Retention email: An email sent to a current customer with the intent of keeping them as a customer
Return on ad spend (ROAS): How much revenue is gained versus how much was spent
Return on investment (ROI): A ratio of net income (money made) to investment (money spent)
Return policy: A document that describes, in detail, a business's process and requirements for accepting returns
Return rate: The percentage of products sold that are returned by customers
Revenue-per-click: The average revenue for each individual click on all of a company’s pay-per-click keywords and ads
Rewards program: A marketing strategy designed to build customer loyalty by providing incentives for customers to continue shopping with the brand
Rich results: Enhanced results in Google Search with extra visual or interactive features
Robots.txt: A file used by webmasters that give search engine robots [like Googlebot] directives on how to crawl a website.
Rule of seven: A marketing concept that states a potential customer must see a message at least seven times before they’re ready to take action
S
Schema: The type of code used for structured data markups
Schema Markup: A website markup language created in cooperation by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex to help search engines better understand specific parts of a website. Learn more at Schema.org.
Screen enlargement application: Technology that helps users see content more easily by magnifying text and images on a computer or digital device screen
Screen reader: An application that converts text, buttons, images, and other screen elements into speech or Braille
Search algorithm: An automated process that helps locate information to answer a user’s query
Search campaign: Text ads that appear on search results when people search on Google for related products and services
Search engine: Software that provides information on a search query
Search engine marketing (SEM): Increasing a website’s visibility on a search engine results page through paid advertising
Search engine optimization (SEO): The process of increasing the visibility of website pages on search engines to attract more relevant traffic Search engine results pages (SERPs): The results pages that appear when someone performs a search query
Search Intent: The goal or meaning of a user’s search query.
Search Query: The word or phrase that is typed into a search engine to signal the information the user would like to find.
Seasonality: The regular and predictable fluctuation of e-commerce traffic around special holidays, events, and weather on a quarterly or yearly basis
Second Price Auction: One type of auction that advertising networks employ to place advertisements where the winner of the auction pays only $0.01 more for their ad placement than the second place ad placement.
Secondary research: Research done by others
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate: A digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and enables an encrypted connection
Segment: A subset of analytics data that features a common characteristic; examples are a user segment, an event segment, or a session segment
Segmentation: The practice of dividing an email subscriber list into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location, or purchase history
Session recording: A rendering that captures a visitor’s actions as they navigate a website, including mouse movement, clicks, taps, and scrolling
Shopping Ads (also known as Product Ads): A digital ad format designed specifically for products that are sold online.
Shopping campaign: Product listings that appear on search results and the Google Shopping tab
Sitemap: A file that provides information about the pages, videos, and other files on a site, and the relationships between them
SMART: A goal-setting method that can help define and measure the success of the goals of a campaign; Stands for “specific,” “measurable,” “attainable,” “realistic,” and “time-bound”
Smart bidding: Automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value with each auction
Smart campaign: An automated campaign management tool within Google Ads that helps promote a business
Smart Shopping campaign: An advanced Shopping campaign that uses technology to optimize for more sales and reach Google shoppers across Google’s sites and networks
Social ads: Paid advertisements on social media platforms targeted to social media users
Similar To Audiences: A Google Ads audience type comprised of a group of users defined by their similarity to another group of users. In order to create a Similar To Audience, there must be a seed audience to act as a base or seed list.
Sitelink (or Sitelink Extension): A type of rich result that shows links to various pages on a website, resulting in a larger listing for the website on the SERP. Sitelinks are sometimes automatically generated by search engines if deemed relevant to the user’s search query.
Sitemap: A file in a specific format used to provide information to search engines about the content on a website and the relationship between the content. Sitemaps make it easier for search engines to crawl websites and find pages to index.
Site Navigation – The movement from one web page to another web page via internal links within the same domain.
Site Structure: The organization of a website including it’s page hierarchy and internal link structure. A well organized site structure can have a positive impact on both user experience and SEO.
Slug: The portion of a URL which defines a specific webpage. For example, in “intigress.com/digital-advertising” the “digital-advertising” portion is the slug.
Social listening: Refers to tracking and analyzing conversations and trends related to a brand
Social listening tool: Software that helps track mentions of a brand, relevant keywords, and direct feedback from multiple social media platforms in one place
Social media: Any digital tool that enables users to create and share content publically
Social media algorithm: A way of sorting posts in a user’s feed based on relevancy rather than the order in which they are published
Social media analytics: The process of collecting data from social media platforms and analyzing that data to make business decisions
Social media calendar: A calendar of all social media posts
Social media engagement: Refers to the actions people take on social media, such as likes, favorites, comments, shares, Retweets, saves, clicks, hashtags, and mentions
Social media marketing: The process of creating content for different social media platforms in order to drive engagement and promote a business or product
Social Media Optimization (SMO): A branch of digital marketing focused on strategies and techniques used to effectively market a business on social media platforms. Social Media Optimization can include enhancing profile information, planning and posting organic content, engagement, and more.
Social media report: A document that presents relevant data and analysis about a brand’s social media activities
Social media sentiment: The attitude and feelings people have about a brand on social media
Social media target audience: The specific group of people a company wants to reach on social media platforms
Social share: When a customer shares a product or service with their social media followers
Social testing: A process that provides data-driven insights about a brand’s social media performance and audience preferences
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Web-based software available on a subscription basis
Source: In Google Analytics, the Source is the origin of the user prior to visiting a website for any type of traffic, whether it is organic, paid, social, referral, or direct. Examples include “google”, a visit originating from the search engine, “yelp.com”, a visit originating from a certain web page, or “direct” a user typing in the URL of the visited website directly into the browser.
Spam: Unsolicited and unwanted junk email sent out in bulk to a broad recipient list
Specialist: An expert in a specific field
Spend-based automated bidding: A bidding strategy where a marketer sets a daily budget to maximize their advertising goal
Spend-based model: A rewards program that offers customers incentives based on an amount spent during a single purchase
Split testing: (refer to A/B testing)
SSL Certificate: A small data file that enables encrypted connections between a web server and a browser to ensure site security.
Stakeholder: Someone with an interest in or a concern for a project and its results
Stakeholder map: A grid with four quadrants and two variables—interest and influence—that can be used to keep track of the influence and needs of stakeholders and the level of communication required to work with them
STAR method: A strategy for answering interview questions that focuses on a specific situation, task, action, and result
Statistical significance: A determination of whether a test result could be due to random chance or not
Stock keeping unit (SKU): A unique code that retailers use to identify a product
Strategy: A plan to achieve a marketing goal
Structured data: Code used to describe a webpage’s content better to search engines
Structured query language (SQL): The standard language used to communicate with databases developed by different vendors and hosted on multiple platforms
Subdomain: The subset of a larger domain used to organize an existing website into a different page URL
Subject line: The first text recipients see after the sender’s name when an email reaches their inbox
Subpage: A lower-level page that appears below the homepage of a website
Subscription model: A rewards program that requires customers to make a recurring payment in order to receive an exclusive incentive
Suggested bid: A recommended bid range
Supply chain: The flow of goods from the beginning stage of sourcing raw materials all the way to the finished product that is delivered to the customer
SWOT analysis: An audit that identifies a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
T
Tactic: An action a marketer takes to make a marketing goal happen
Tag management system (TMS): Enables the deployment and management of many tags for multiple advertising platforms and systems in a simple and centralized way
Target audience: The group of people most likely to purchase a company's products
Targeted location: The towns, cities, or countries in which an ad will appear
Technical SEO – Activities that improve how your website is crawled, indexed and rendered for organic search.
Terms of service: Legal agreements between a business and customers
Theme: A pre-built website template that creates the design and layout of an e-commerce store
Third-party cookies: Cookies that aren’t developed and distributed by a website’s owner but are distributed through third-party tools
Tier-based model: A rewards program that allows customers to graduate to new customer status levels based on the amount of money they spend with a company over time
Title Tags: An HTML element that defines the title of a web page. This is displayed in search engine results, but not on the actual page.
Tone: How a brand’s voice is applied
Total LTV: The average revenue generated by customers over a period of time that includes the past to the present
Touchpoint: Any interaction a customer has with a brand during their purchase journey
Tracking Code (or Tracking Snippet): A piece of code that monitors how a user is interacting with a website. The code is stored on each page of a website and sends data to an analytics tool to be used by businesses for marketing purposes and other business purposes.
Traditional advertising: Non-digital ad placements, like newspapers, radio, TV, or billboards
Traffic: The number of visits that a website receives
Transferable skills: Skills from other areas that can help someone progress in a career in marketing
Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate: (refer to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate)
TruView: A measurement used by Google to indicate the number of times users choose to watch a video ad.
Tweet: Any message posted to Twitter; May contain elements like text, photos, videos, links, and audio
U
Universal Resource Locator (URL): The online address of a resource, website, or page.
Unique selling proposition (USP): An explanation of why a product or service is better than the competition
Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of email recipients who unsubscribe from a send list after opening an email
Upselling: A sales technique used to encourage customers to spend more by upgrading to a more expensive product
UR – UR stands for URL Rating. It is a links metric created by the marketing platform, ‘Ahrefs’ to define the authority and ranking potential an individual URL. A similar metric to this is PA, or Page Authority which was created by Moz, another marketing platform. The higher the URL rating, the more authority and ranking potential a page has. UR is a counterpart to Ahrefs’ other link metric, ‘DR’.
URL: The address of a webpage or file on the internet
URL Parameter: A code appended to a URL that can change the functionality of a website or be used as a tracking dimension. A parameter often starts with a question mark and is followed by the items that define the parameter after an equals sign.
Usability survey: A survey that assesses the customer’s satisfaction with a company’s website and identifies any problems the customer may experience along their shopping journey
Users: People using a website. The same person may be counted as multiple users if that person uses multiple unlinked devices to access a website.
User Engagement – An assessment of a website visitors’ response to a product or service page, or articles and blogs, on a website.
User experience: How a person—the user—feels about interacting with or experiencing a product
User Interface (UI): The conduit on a display that allows a human to interact with a computer more easily.
User-generated content (UGC): Any content created by people, rather than brands
UTM: A text tag added to a URL to help monitor that content
V
Variables: Refers to the segments, dimensions, and metrics configured in a Google Analytics account
Vertical column chart: A chart in which individual measurements are each shown as a vertical column
Video campaign: A Google Ads tool that allows businesses to place video advertisements before, during, or after YouTube videos and in the search results
View-through Conversion: A type of conversion in which a user views an ad, but does not click on the ad and later completes a conversion action.
View-through Conversion Window: A conversion setting in Google Ads which defines the maximum length of time that a view-through action will still be attributed as a view-through conversion. As an example, if the view-through conversion window is set to 30 days, any conversion action completed by a user who saw an ad but did not click on the ad within 30 days of seeing that ad will be counted as a view-through conversion.
Visitors: The total number of times people have been to a website or app as a result of clicking an ad
Visual hierarchy: A structured organization of visual components that groups elements together, places elements in a natural or predictable pattern (such as reading from left to right), or leads to the most important elements to click on
Voice Search: Refers to any search query conducted using voice technology. This can be a search on a mobile device or on a smart speaker such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home.
W
Web accessibility: The practice of designing and developing a website or mobile app so that people with disabilities can use it
Webinar: A presentation, typically educational, that is provided online
Webpage title: An element that provides both users and search engines with a page’s topic
Webpage title element: Text that provides both the users and search engines with a page’s topic
Website prompt: A digital banner that calls on a website visitor to act in some way
Welcome email: An email sent out to brand new customers or subscribers
White Hat SEO: Using approved SEO techniques and best practices to improve search rankings over time.
Wireframe – A wireframe is a visual guide which represents the contents of a webpage. It is used during the web design process to decide upon the best arrangement of the contents for usability.
X
XML Sitemap – An XML sitemap is an XML file that should detail the indexable pages on a website. Search engines use this information to understand which web pages are available to crawl to store in their index.
Y
Yoast: A highly valuable SEO plugin for WordPress websites that helps website owners to optimize their sites for search engines.
YMYL: An acronym used in SEO to describe topics that could have an impact on a person’s future health, finances, safety, or happiness. YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life”. These topics include news and current events, government, finance, e-commerce/shopping, and others. The acronym comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
Z
Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT): The moment at which a buyer decides he or she is going to make a purchase and researches that purchase.