The flyte new media Digital Marketing Glossary
At flyte new media, we pride ourselves on building digital marketing strategies and websites that are detailed and intricate while still being digestible. Yet our industry is steeped in marketing vocabulary that is often difficult to understand. Did someone really just write an email about “the YTD ROAS of our B2B PPC ads?!” And as hard as we try, we often need to use these digital marketing terms in our blogs, client reports, and other materials too.
So we figured a digital marketing glossary might help dispel some confusion around all the marketing jargon and teach you about key elements of any digital plan. We cover advertising terms for Google and Meta, SEO lingo, email marketing vocabulary, metrics and dimensions from GA4, general business terms, and much more. Plus our marketing terms glossary is always growing, with new definitions, examples, and helpful resources being added.
A/B Testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a powerful tool for optimizing your marketing strategies, and helps you ensure that you're making the best decision possible. It enables you to systematically test different versions of your website, content, and ad features, to see which performs better.
A/B Testing Examples & Ideas to Level Up Your Google Ads
Ad Assets
Ad assets, formerly ad extensions, are content pieces that make up your ad with useful business information—giving people more reasons to choose your business. Assets include the headlines, descriptions, links to specific parts of your website, call buttons, location information, and more that come together to make up the eventual ad format that is shown to a user.
Ad Groups
An ad group contains one or more ads that target a shared set of keywords or audiences. It acts as a way to organize your ads within a campaign and control which ads are shown when users search for specific keywords or fit certain audience criteria.
AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities.
Alt Text
An HTML element that briefly describes a visual asset such as an image, logo, or icon. The best alt text is simple, concise and avoids using the phrase “an image of…”
Audience Segments
Groups of people with specific interests, intents, and demographic information.
B2B
Business-to-business (B2B) is a business model where a company sells products or services with other businesses.
B2C
Business-to-consumer (B2C) is a business model where a company sells products or services directly to consumers, without involving middlemen like wholesalers or third-party retailers.
Backlink
Backlinks are links on websites other than your own that go back to a page on your website. Backlinks are also called inbound links because they represent another website's traffic coming to your own site. The quality and quantity of your backlinks can help you rank higher in search engines such as Google and Bing.
Bid Strategy
Google bid strategies are automated or manual approaches used to set bids for ads in order to achieve specific goals such as maximizing clicks, conversions, or return on ad spend within a given budget.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking any actions on the page.
Broad Match
Google Broad Match keywords trigger ads for searches that include variations, synonyms, related terms, and relevant queries, allowing for a wide reach and capturing diverse search intents.
Call to Action (CTA)
Phrase/copy that encourages the audience to take action by buying, entering a contest, learning more, etc.
Campaign
A set of marketing strategies executed with a common goal.
CDN “Content Delivery Network”
A collection of servers spread out around the world that get your website content up faster no matter where your audience is. A great way to bring down your page load time!
Competitor Campaigns
A Google Ads campaign that boldly uses competitor names as keywords in order to get your ads in front of their audience.
Content Marketing
A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience in order to drive profitable customer action.
Conversion
A conversion can be any action taken by a user takes at the bottom of the funnel, such as a purchase, an email subscription, or a request for directions to your local business.
CPA
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is the average dollar amount spent to acquire a new customer, often measured by their first purchase, email subscription or lead.
CPC
Cost Per Click (CPC) is the average dollar amount spent to result in a click.
CTR
Click Through Rate (CTR) is the number of times something was clicked on (such as an ad, button, product, etc) divided by the number of times it was seen by a user.
Display Ads
Google Display Ads are a visually driven form of advertising that allows brands to engage users across the web through targeted placement and creative ad formats.
Display Network
The Google Display Network (GDN) is a network of websites that allow Google Ads to be featured on their webpages; these can be text or image ads, and are shown on the same page as content that is relevant to your keywords.
Drip Campaign
Series of emails sent over a period of time to encourage users to convert.
Dynamic Search Ads
Google Dynamic Search Ads automatically generate and target ads based on the content of a website, helping to capture relevant search queries without the need for extensive keyword lists.
Earned Media
Media and exposure that a brand receives through organic, non-paid means such as press articles.
Editorial Calendar
A structured space for you to lay out some type of creative content for a certain period of the future.
Engaged Sessions
A session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate = engaged sessions / total sessions. The inverse of bounce rate.
Exact Match
Google Exact Match keywords are search terms that trigger ads only when a user's query matches the keyword exactly or is a close variant, offering precise targeting for highly specific searches.
GA4
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's current, free data collection tool for website owners that measures website traffic and user behaviors. Replaced Universal Analytics in July 2023.
GTM
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free tool that allows users to add marketing tags to websites. These tags are snippets of code that track analytics data. GTM then shares that data with web analytics platforms like Google Analytics.
Hashtag
A word or phrase prefixed with the symbol # that is used on social media platforms to highlight keywords, facilitate searches, and enable users to easily follow topics of interest
Headers or Headings
Header tags are used to separate headings of a web page from body content. They are marked in HTML ranging from H1 to H6 in order of importance. They improve the readability of a page and are important to both SEO and user experience.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used in the creation of web pages and tells browsers how the content should be displayed.
Impressions
The number of times an advertisement is displayed to and seen by users, regardless of whether they interact with it.
Keyword Match Type
Google Keyword Match Types are settings that determine how closely a user's search query must match a keyword for an ad to be triggered, including Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match.
KPI
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable metrics that reflect your progress toward a specific goal.
Landing Page
The page a consumer lands. A landing page is designed to move visitors down your sales funnel without distraction (like a tunnel!)
Local SEO
Businesses with a physical location or that serve a limited geographic area are ranked in organic results with additional algorithmic considerations. Local SEO is a strategy to improve local businesses' search visibility.
Logo
A graphic mark, emblem, symbol, or typographic stylization used to identify a company’s products, services, or brand
Long Tailed Keyword
Specific and niche search terms that tend to have lower search volume but less competition and a better reflection of the searcher's intent.
Marketing Funnel (Bottom of funnel, top of funnel)
The process in which customers are first made aware of the product (top of funnel) to making a conversion (bottom of funnel)
Media Kit
A set of documents/materials provided to an advertiser that contains information on your business.
Meta Description
An HTML element that describes and summarizes a webpage as displayed in search engine results or link previews. Meta descriptions should be under 150 characters and unique to each page.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords work exactly the same as regular keywords, but instead of choosing search terms you want your ads to show up for, you're choosing the terms you don't want your ads to show up for.
Organic Search
A search engine's method of ranking and finding web content without the influence of paid advertising. Organic search results are unpaid and appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) based on a search engine's algorithm.
Winning the Marathon: Generating More Traffic with an Effective Organic Search StrategyOrganic Social
Non-paid social media posts
Paid Search
A form of digital marketing that allows advertisers to pay to have their ads shown higher on search engine results pages.
Paid Social
Paid social media posts with the intent of advertising a product
Performance Max
Google Performance Max campaigns are an automated, goal-based campaign type that uses machine learning to optimize and deliver ads across all Google channels, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and more, to maximize performance.
Phrase Match
Google Phrase Match keywords are search terms that trigger ads when a user's query includes the exact phrase or close variations with additional words before or after, allowing for targeted but flexible ad placements.
PPC
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a digital advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked.
Predictive Analysis
Data used to predict future trends or events.
Quality Score
Think of this as your ad's report card from Google. This provides insight into how they feel your ad quality stacks up against other advertisers, ranging from 1-10. A higher quality score indicates that your ad and landing page are more relevant to user's searching for your keyword.
Retargeting
Advertising to the previous visitors of your website or page.
ROI
Return on Investment (ROI) measures how much money is earned relative to the amount of money spent on an investment.
Schema
Schema is a code block of data that lives on your web pages for only search engines to consume. Users on your site will not see it unless they look at your site’s source code.
Search Ads
Google Search ads are text-based advertisements that appear at the top of Google search results, targeting users based on their search queries to drive relevant traffic to a website.
Search Impression Share
The percentage of times your ads are shown out of how often they could be shown.
Search Intent
The assumed intent of a user typing a query into a search engine. There are four common types of search intent, including informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.
SERPs
Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) appear when a user completes a search on Google or any other search engine. They include both paid and organic results in many formats such as maps, videos, images, the classic “blue links,” and much more.
Shopping Ads
Google Shopping ads are product-based advertisements that appear in Google search results, showcasing product images, prices, and store information to attract potential buyers.
Sitemap
An outline of a website that helps the search engine crawl for information.
Target Audience
A specific group of consumers that would be the most likely to convert.
Title Tag
An HTML element that specifies the title of a web page as displayed in search engine results or link previews. Title tags should be under 55 characters and unique to each page.
UGC
User-Generated Content (UGC) is content generated from users of a product. Example: a consumer using a skincare product and posting it online.
Unique Visitors
A unique visitor is a term used in marketing analytics which refers to a person who has visited the website at least once and is counted only once in the reporting time period. So if the user visits the web more than once, it counts as one visitor only. It’s also called a “Unique User”.
UTM
Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are five variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media.
UX
The user experience (UX) is the experience a user has when interacting with a digital landscape.
XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file that lists a website’s essential pages, making sure Google can find and crawl them all. It also helps search engines understand your website structure. You want Google to crawl every important page of your website.