Digital Marketing in today’s world is not simply about going online with the traditional concepts of marketing, it’s more about the understanding of two worlds: DIGITAL and MARKETING. Today’s consumers are hungry for information; and when there is so much information, they are selective about what they want to know.

Digital Marketing is not only about being seen by consumers, it’s about educating and engaging consumers and getting them to take action, buying a product, or downloading a whitepaper for example. To understand digital marketing better, it is important to know some basic definitions, and to make things easier for you, here’s a list of the keywords that will get you ahead of the curve.

A/B TESTING

Comparing two variations of a single variable to determine which performs best in order to help improve digital marketing efforts. 

ANALYTICS

Data that is collected from one or more data points and interpreted into meaningful information usually to gain specific insights regarding the aforementioned data points.

BACKLINKS

An inbound link from one web page to another. This is a backlink to this dictionary’s landing page.  

BLOG

A site maintained by individuals or companies to serve as a publication platform for content. We have an online marketing blog, called Bable. 

CALL TO ACTION

An instruction to the audience to respond to a given advertisement (or action). Download the PDF version of this article for future reference!

CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR)

Click-through Rate identifies the percentage of people who click on a link. Usually placed in an email, an ad, website page in a digital marketing campaign… etc.

CONTEXT

Valuable content customized for the right audience.

CROWDSOURCE

The process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from your online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. The Daily Star did a digital marketing campaign with crowdsourcing content to celebrate its 25th anniversary. 

CURATION

Curation means gathering and filtering content.

IMPRESSION

The number of times an ad (or content) is displayed.

INBOUND MARKETING

The process of utilizing multiple channels and content with the goal of bringing the target audience to a website and converting them into paying customers. 

LANDING PAGE

A web page containing a form that is used for lead generation. Serves to capture visitor information in exchange for a valuable offer. “Learn how to monetize your social media in 15 minutes” is an example. 

MICROBLOGGING

The practice of making short and frequent posts, usually only a few sentences long. Twitter is a micro blogging site. 

MOBILE MARKETING

Marketing time and location sensitive personalized information on a mobile device, usually a smartphone.

NO-FOLLOW LINK

It tells search engine crawlers not to follow linked websites to avoid association with spam content or inadvertently violating webmaster guidelines.

OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATIONS

Incoming links and other outside factors that impact how a web page is indexed in search results. These include factors like linking domains, social media, and not what you code on your page.

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATIONS

All measures can be taken directly on the website in order to improve its position in search rankings.

PAY PER CLICK (PPC)

A digital marketing cost model that charges advertisers for each time a user clicks a specific link (or an ad).

QR CODE

A machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing URLs or other information for reading by a smartphone camera.

RETARGETING

When previous users are encouraged to return to your website via advertisements usually with a very specific call to action. Remember how those airline ads follow you around after you browsed their site? 

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Promoting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s natural search results.

SOCIAL ADVERTISING

The process of advertising via social media platforms such as Facebook. Twitter etc.

SOCIAL TARGETING

A digital marketing process that enables businesses to target specific customer groups on social media platforms.

TARGET AUDIENCE

A group of consumers that a business aims to reach via advertising.

UNIQUE PAGE VIEWS

Refers to the number of individuals who have viewed your pages. 

XML SITEMAP

A document that helps Google and other major search engines better understand your website while crawling it.