What is PPC?
To begin with, what does PPC stand for? PPC, or pay per click, is a form of paid advertising; it allows your brand to generate website clicks through paid promotion rather than earning them organically. The most common platform for PPC is Google AdWords, though there are options on Bing, Facebook, and elsewhere. PPC allows your brand to canvas the entire SERP, and to engage consumers at different stages of their buyer journey—allowing access to leads that organic reach might not provide.
Below are some terms that you may find useful for PPC:
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
- The CTR references the percentage of people who actually click on a link after they see it—as in a marketing email or a PPC ad display.
- Conversion
- A conversion happens when the user successfully completes the marketer’s desired action—for example, buying a product, downloading a file, completing a form, or subscribing to a newsletter.
- Conversion Form
- A conversion form is an interactive part of your site where the user can submit personal information—e.g., submitting their name and email address so that they can receive your newsletter, and so that you in turn can capture that contact information.
- Conversion Rate
- The conversion rate refers to the percentage of people who visit a site (or view an ad) and then take the desired action—for example, buying a product, downloading a file, completing a form, or subscribing to a newsletter.
- Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
- This refers to a method of budgeting for targeted traffic, wherein the marketer agrees to pay a set amount for every click.
- Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA)
- A ratio representing the total cost of a PPC campaign to the total number of leads/customers; in essence, this is the conversion cost.
- PPC, or Pay-per-Click
- PPC involves placing ads and paying only when a user clicks on the ad in question—e.g., Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc.
- Referrer String
- Every time you move from one site to another, your browser submits a piece of information called the referrer string, which basically shows all the sites you’ve visited previously, presenting how you arrive at a certain website.
What is SEO?
Again, let’s start by asking what does SEO stand for? SEO is shorthand for search engine optimization. SEO is the process by which you seek to earn website clicks—and high visibility—organically. Through a combination of many different factors, SEO seeks to appeal to search engine algorithms to earn high rankings for select queries.
Below are some terms that you may find useful for SEO:
- ALT Text, Tag, or Attribute
- ALT text (or an ALT tag or attribute) is a brief piece of text, explaining to search engine bots what your image represents; search bots do not actually view images themselves, so embedding this text in your HTML is a must.
- Anchor Text
- The anchor text refers to the actual words in a hyperlink—the ones that you click on, and that are typically blue and underlined.
- Bookmark
- When you bookmark a website within your Web browser, you are saving that link to read at a later date.
- Directory
- A directory is an online listing of websites—sort of like an updated version of the old Yellow Pages, only instead of phone numbers, there are URLs. Submitting your site to a directory is a great way to win a citation, which is helpful for local SEO.
- Heading
- H1, H2, and H3 headings refer to text that is made larger/bolder than the other text—usually, a section title of subheading. Headings are important places to include keywords.
- Inbound Link
- An inbound link simply refers to a link from one site to another; inbound links are important SEO ranking factors!
- Internal Link
- This refers to any link from one page to another page within the same site—i.e. a link from your home page to your About Us Page.
- Indexed Pages
- Indexed pages are the pages within your website that are stored by search engines.
- Keyword
- When a search engine user inputs a word or a phrase to find content, that’s a keyword. A big part of SEO is aligning a site with certain, targeted keywords in mind.
- Link Building
- An important SEO activity, link building means campaigning to get more inbound links to your site—with the intention of increasing its ranking.
- Long Tail Keyword
- Long tail keywords are actually phrases, typically containing more than two words; they are meant to reflect very precise or colloquial search queries. For example, instead of the keyword plumbing, you might optimize for the long-tail phrase best plumbers in Orange County.
- Metadata
- Metadata refers to the information that explains to search engines what your site it actually about.
- Meta Description
- The meta description is a piece of text—160 characters or less—that summarizes what your page is about. It informs the search engines of how they should categorize your page, but it also appears on the Google search engine results page, summarizing your site’s contents to users.
- Meta Keywords
- In the earliest days of SEO, meta keywords were used to tell search engines what a page was about. Meta keywords are not really used any more, however.
- Nofollow
- You can use nofollow to ensure that, when you link to another site, you don’t pass along any SEO credentials. You would use this when linking to a site that you wish to reference, but don’t wish to endorse.
- Page Title
- This is the title that appears at the top of the Web browser; when giving your page a title, it’s usually wise to include a keyword or two, as naturally as you can.
- PageRank
- Google assigns your page a number between 0 and 10, which reflects how good your SEO is overall.
- Panda
- Panda was the codename for a significant algorithmic update, in which Google introduced severe penalties to thin or substandard Web content. It remains an important consideration for all SEO endeavors.
- Ranking Factor
- A ranking factor is anything the search algorithms use to determine how your content should be ranked.
- RSS Feed
- “Really simple syndication” is an easy way to subscribe to new content updates from a particular website.
- SERP, or Search Engine Results Page
- This is the page you see when you conduct an online search—typically, a list of 10 sites, complete with hyperlinks and meta descriptions. The SERP may also include news results, map results, shopping results, etc.
- Spider
- A spider is a computer program that traverses the Web to collect information about different websites.
- Traffic
- Traffic Rank
- This is a ranking for how much traffic your site actually gets, compared with other sites on the Web.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing essentially refers to the promotion of products, services, or brands through online channels, as opposed to traditional print media, radio, TV, etc. Digital marketing is noteworthy for a number of reasons, high among them easy access to data and analytics, which allows for a truly informed and highly targeted campaign. PPC, SEO, and other disciplines are encompassed by digital marketing. (See also: What is online marketing? The terms are essentially interchangeable.)
Below are some terms that you may find useful for Digital Marketing:
- Blog
- The blog is a key part of both SEO and content marketing. It allows you to regularly publish new content to your website—company announcements, industry insights, etc. Each new post is its own unique page, and thus a new SEO opportunity.
- Social Media
- Online media sites that are created for users to share with one another is a social network. Just a few of the most significant ones are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+.
What is Web Design?
Web design is a field that encompasses the planning, creation, and ongoing maintenance of a website. It involves everything from the information architecture of the site to the layout, colors, fonts, images, and written content. A related question: What is responsive Web design? This refers to developing a website that scales to fit any sized screen on any device—e.g., Web design with mobile and tablet users in mind.
Below are some terms that you may find useful for Web Design:
- Fold
- The fold refers to the part of your website where the content is cut off by the browser screen/monitor—in other words, the user has to scroll to see anything below the fold.
- Hero Image
- In Web design, the hero image refers to the first visual element that visitors see when they visit the page—usually a large banner image, positioned front and center on the page, serving as a focal point.
- User Experience (UX)
- An effective website will provide a positive user experience, or UX—meaning a site that is easy to access, easy to read, and easy to navigate.
- User Interface (UI)
- Closely associated with user experience, user interface refers to the way a visitor actually interacts with the site. This might include look and feel, presentation and navigation, and more.
- White Space
- In Web design, white space is any part of the page that’s left unmarked—left blank. This may be the empty space between graphics, text, columns, etc.
- Wireframe
- In Web design, the wireframe is a page schematic—basically a visual blueprint, showing the site’s bare-bones, skeletal framework.
What is Web Development?
More specifically, what is front end Web development? Front end Web development refers to the website that the user can actually see and interact with, as opposed to back end stuff—the information architecture that remains invisible, but is vital for keeping the site up and running.
Below are some terms that you may find useful for Web Development:
- 301 Redirect
- A 301 redirect tells browsers that the page in question has been permanently moved to a new URL, and redirects them accordingly; pages marked in such a way will redirect to the appropriate URL automatically.
- 404 Error
- When a user tries to display a Web page that has been moved or terminated, they may receive a 404 error, which stands in for File Not Found. It’s recommended that website owners design custom 404 pages to gently invite their readers to explore alternate pages or resources.
- Canonical URL
- In a situation where the same information can be found at different sites, the canonical URL represents the best place to find it; for search engines, the canonical URL represents the optimal place to find certain information.
- CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets
- CSS refers to the part of your code that determines how certain elements look on your site—such as headers or links.
- Domain
- The domain refers to the primary address of your website—for example, our domain is www.eodigitalmarketing.com.
- Landing Page
- A landing page is usually designed to sell one specific product, or perhaps to get a signup for an email list or a downloadable offer; it is a succinct piece of web content that’s designed to convert, and often serves as the target destination for PPC ads.
- HTML
- This is the actual code in which your site is written; the HTML is what’s read by search engine bots, so keeping it clean and pristine is important.
- Hyperlinks
- Hyperlinks, or just links, are short words or phrases that can be clicked on, taking the user to a new URL. Most of the time, Web copy will display just a few short words of “anchor text” rather than the full URL.
- Javascript
- This is a scripting language that lets you apply different effects and stylistic flourishes to your site—and while it can look nice, it’s also hard for search engine algorithms to read. Thankfully, this is improving steadily over time.
- URL
- This is the Web address for a specific page—for example, https://www.eodigitalmarketing.com/earned-traffic.
- XML Sitemap
- Made with search engines in mind, an XML sitemap contains all the URLs housed on a particular domain. The XML sitemap supports search engine indexing.
What is Digital Marketing?
One of the great assets of digital marketing is the ease with which marketers can obtain data, helping them to shape, tweak, and focus their efforts. Web analytics encompasses data about total website traffic, where that traffic is coming from, the nature of audience engagement, and more. Analytic reporting and analysis is an integral part of the digital marketing process.
Below are some terms that you may find useful for Web Analytics:
- Direct Traffic
- Direct traffic refers to the website visitors who arrive at a site either by typing the URL directly into their browser’s navigation bar, or by accessing it via their browser bookmarks.
- Funnel
- The funnel refers to the path you expect website visitors to take (usually a series of Web pages) before they achieve your website’s ultimate goal (conversions).
- Organic Search
- In Web analytics, organic traffic refers to the visitors who arrive at your site via a search engine query, as opposed to paid advertisements or other methods.
- Pageview
- Quite simple, a pageview refers to every time your page is viewed. This is a common metric in website analytics.
- Session
- In Web analytics, a session is a single visit from a visitor, and refers to all the actions they take within that span of time.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing allows your brand to reach out directly to consumers via their email inbox; ideally, it’s highly targeted and personalized, and even splits the company contact list into different segments. Email marketing can be a powerful content delivery system, and an important source of website traffic.
Do you have additional questions? We’d love to hear them. Contact EvertyhingOnline, a leading Orange County digital marketing agency, to learn more about what it is we do.
Below are some terms that you may find useful for E-mail Marketing:
- CAN-SPAM
- The CAN-SPAM act is a federal law that governs email marketing; basically, it requires you to give recipients a way to have you stop emailing them, such as an Unsubscribe feature.
- Email Blacklist
- Also known as a spam blocking list. This can block you from sending emails from your mail server, and is enforced against those who send a lot of “spam” emails.
- Hard Bounce
- A hard bounce refers to any email that’s returned to the sender when the recipient’s address is found to be invalid.
- Open Rate
- When an email message is sent to multiple recipients, the open rate is a ratio expressing how many of those recipients actually open it.
- Soft Bounce
- A soft bounce makes it as far as the recipient’s email server, but then it’s returned to the sender—often because the recipient’s inbox is full.
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