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Digital marketing terminology you should know

Do you have a business, and are trying to do your own digital marketing? Hired a digital marketing agency in Brisbane, but aren’t quite sure what everything means? 

Digital marketing is full of what can often be confusing acronyms and phrases. For people that don’t work in digital marketing, these can often be confusing. What do they actually mean, and what impact is digital marketing actually having on your business?

Don’t worry – we have put together a list of digital marketing terminology you should know. 

We’ve broken it down by service area – SEO, PPC and general marketing and so you can easily learn everything you need to know. 

SEO

SEO – search engine optimisation 

This refers to the process of improving your website so you can increase your rankings on search engines. 

This includes numerous different strategies, including keyword research, content marketing, backlinks, and making technical changes to your website to improve usability. 

DA – Domain authority 

You will often hear digital marketers refer to your websites DA, or domain authority. This is a ranking from 1-100 which is assigned to your website. The higher your domain authority, the better. Generally, a ranking above 40 is considered good. 

A stronger domain authority will help to improve your search engine rankings. Digital marketers will often talk about increasing your domain authority. 

PA – Page authority

Not only does your website as a whole have a ranking, but each page within your website also has its own ranking. 

You want to make sure each page has a good page authority to increase its chances of ranking. 

Backlinks

These are links that appear on other websites and link to your website. 

You may also hear backlinks be referred to as inbound links or incoming links. 

Backlinks essentially work as a reference – the more relevant backlinks your website has, the more trustworthy and authoritative your website will appear to search engines. This will help your domain authority to increase, as well as increase the traffic flow to your website. This will help to improve your search engine rankings. 

Just make sure these links are relevant – if you have lots of backlinks from spammy, untrustworthy websites, this can negatively affect your website’s performance. Make sure you are auditing your website’s backlinks regularly. 

On-page optimisation

This refers to changes that are made to your website to improve search engine rankings. This can include activities such as updating content or updating meta descriptions and titles. 

PPC & Facebook ads

PPC – Pay Per Click

Pay per click refers to digital ads where the user is charged each time someone clicks their ad. There are numerous types of PPC ads, however, the most commonly referred to is Google Ads

PPC involves using keywords that will trigger ads to appear in the search engine results. These will appear at the top and bottom of the search engine results. 

There are numerous different types of ads that you can use in your Google Ads campaign, including:

  • Expanded text ads: these will include headlines, descriptions and clickable links below the ad to encourage customers to view the website or call the business
  • Responsive search ad: this includes many headlines and descriptions; what is shown is chosen by Google
  • Dynamic ads: Google generates a headline based off the content on your website and other content within your websites
  • Display ads: these ads use images which appear on websites, rather than appearing in the search engines 
  • Shopping ads: these will appear when you are searching for a particular product. It will show an image, the name of the website, the price, reviews, and a link to the product. 

CTR – Click-through rate

This is the number of people who have received your ad, divided by the number of times your ad is shown. 

CPC – Cost per click

How much you are paying each time someone has clicked on your ad. This will vary depending on your industry, and depending on how competitive your keywords are. 

Conversion rate

This is the percentage of people who undertook your desired action from your ads. This could be making a purchase, submitting a lead form, or calling through to the business, just to name a few. 

This is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors. 

Impressions

This refers to how many times people have seen your ad.

Facebook Pixel

When setting up your Facebook ads or Meta ads, one of the first things you’ll hear is Facebook Pixel. 

This is code that is placed onto your website in order to be able to track data about your users who click through from your Facebook ads. 

Lookalike Audience

You can use existing customer lists to create lookalike audiences that are used within your Facebook ads. This will target customers who are similar to your existing customers. You can also choose to exclude these existing customers, so they will not see your Facebook ads. 

ROAS – return on ad spend

This refers to the amount of revenue your business earns for each dollar it spends on advertising. 

CPM

The average cost per 1,000 impressions. This is the total amount spent on the campaign, divided by the number of impressions and multiplied by 1,000. 

Engagement rate

How many users are interacting with your brand. This includes comments, likes and shares on your posts. 

The higher the engagement rate, the better – this will generally indicate the content is good and means more people will be clicking through to the website. 

Remarketing

This is a tactic used when a customer has visited a website but has not purchased. The customer will continue to see ads for the company, whether it is the same product or a different offering. 

TOFU

Top of the funnel in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey. This is the first stage of the journey. At this stage, the customers need to become aware of your brand.

MOFU

Middle of the funnel in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey. By this stage, the consumer has moved out of awareness and is into the consideration stage.

BOFU

Bottom of the funnel in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey. By this stage, the consumer will already be familiar with your company or products due to past advertising, and will be ready for purchasing. 

Relevance Score & Quality score

Your Facebook ads are each given a quality score. This score decides how relevant your ads are when compared to other similar ads. You may see this referred to as a quality score on Google ads. 

The higher your quality score, the more your ads will be shown, and the better results your ads will achieve. 

Thank you page

This is an essential page for any business. When customers make a purchase or submit a form on your website, they will be directed to a thank you page. 

This page thanks the customer for their purchase or form submission. 

Digital marketers are able to track how many people land on this page and the source of acquisition. 

CTA – Call to action

This is a button used within your advertisements or on your website which encourages the consumer to take an action eg. make a purchase, submit a lead. 

This needs to be very straightforward and make it clear what the next step is that the consumer needs to take.

General digital marketing terms

B2B – Business to business

Business to business describes a type of marketing. This means the business is marketing directly to other businesses. 

B2C – Business to consumer

Business to consumer describes a type of marketing. This means the business is marketing directly to consumers. This will be a different type of audience and ad strategy than B2B marketing. 

Analytics

This refers to data that is used to measure the success of the website. This can often refer to Google Analytics, but some marketers may use this term to refer to data from other sources. 

Organic traffic

This refers to traffic that is directed to your website that does not come through advertisements. Increasing organic traffic is one of the goals of search engine optimisation. 

Hopefully, these definitions are able to help clear up any confusion surrounding digital marketing terminology! 

Still need to understand digital marketing more? Need help with your own digital marketing? Contact Patch Agency today.

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