17 Marketing Terms Every Business Needs to Know

Is your SEO manager constantly confusing you with their digital marketing lingo?

There are dozens of “buzzwords” we use in SEO every day.

For some business owners, this might come across as a completely foreign language.

Not to worry!

Below, we’re breaking down 17 of the top marketing terms every business owner should know…

A/B Testing

In digital marketing, when we talk about A/B testing, we’re referring to the practice of comparing two different versions of the same piece of marketing copy that have slightly different variants.

A/B testing can be used for everything form AdWords campaigns to landing pages and marketing emails.

Does this already sound too complicated? Don’t worry, it’s actually pretty easy!

Say you have copy for an ad that you will be running in Google AdWords. To A/B Test, simply run two very similar versions of the same ad. Change a small component of your copy you think your potential customers might respond to.

For example, if you’re offering a special discount you can run one ad that advertises free shipping and another that offers a dollar amount off their purchase.

After the ads have ran for a period of time, you can analyze the to see which message was more effective in generating leads.

From there, you know which version of the copy you should be dedicating your ad spend to!

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of visitors that exit your website after viewing a single page.

This is an important number to know because a “bounce” means that visitors to your website weren’t able to find what they were looking for.

If you’ve installed Google Analytics for your website, you can view your bounce rate in you GA dashboard.

Is your bounce rate on the high side? It may be time to have an SEO professional help you improve your website content.

Quality Sessions

Session Quality is an advanced Google Analytics metrics that essentially tells you how close a visitor to your website was to converting into a sale.

You can view your average session quality in your GA dashboard to determine how well your e-commerce website is converting.

If your session quality average is low, you know that it’s time to make some changes to you website.

Quality Score

Your Quality Score is Google’s way of rating the quality and relevance of your Pay-Per-Click ads and the keywords you use in them.

It’s important to have a favorable Quality Score because it directly affects your cost per click and rank in ad auctions for your desired keywords.

There are a few ways to improve your quality score, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that your ad text should be relevant to your business.

Impressions

Impressions is a term used throughout digital marketing to indicate the number of views an ad or piece of content receives.

While the number of impressions you get on an ad or social media post is important, striving for impressions alone is not a smart marketing tactic.

What’s more important is how many people acted after viewing your ad or content. Rather than concerning yourself with the number of impressions, take a look at your conversion rate for engagement, clicks, and of course, sales.

Backlinks

Backlinks, sometimes referred to as “incoming links” or “inbound links” occur when one website links to another.

In SEO, it’s important to try to gain high-quality backlinks to improve your website’s own rank.

On-Site SEO

On-Site SEO includes everything you do to make your website perform well in search engines.

Some examples of on-site SEO include the use of keywords, meta titles, and interlinking within within your website.

Off-Site SEO

Off-Site SEO is the practice of generating traffic to you website via other sites.

Examples of off-site SEO include link building and social media.

The goal of off-site SEO is to help people find your you website via other source and to give you increased credibility with search engines.

Landing Page

A landing page is a page that a visitor lands on after clicking on a link on a different page. The page could be your own homepage or perhaps an ad.

The purpose of a landing page is to compel a visitor to take a specific action.

Landing pages are a great way to gain new email signups or even sales.

Google AdWords

AdWords is Google’s advertising platform that allows you to target specific users that match a target demographic that you set within your ad campaign.

The most common position for AdWords ads is on the top of a relevant search results page. However, Google allows you to display your ads in other parts of the web as well.

 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click is an advertising model which charges you, the publisher/advertiser, each time someone clicks on one of your ads.

With a PPC ad, you are essentially purchasing visits to your website or landing page. If done properly PPC ads can be a great way to generate inexpensive leads for your business.

IYP Sites

IYP or internet yellow pages are directory sites that list local businesses.

SEO professionals typically recommend that business owners get listed on as many relevant IYPs as possible. This is an easy and often free way you can ramp up your off-site SEO efforts.

Responsive Website

A responsive website is designed to create a consistent user experience for visitors to your website regardless of what device they’re viewing it on.

When you have a responsive design, your website will look equally good on laptops, tables, and smartphones.

Algorithm

We talk a lot about Google Algorithms on this website, but what does it mean exactly?

An algorithm is a set of rules that (in this case) a search engine follows in order to determine the way it distributes data.

Essentially an algorithm calculates a quality rating for each relevant website in a particular search and uses a set of rules to create the search results we see.

Ad Copy

Ad copy refers to the text within a digital advertisement.

Although ad copy is typically very short, the strategy that goes into writing ad copy that converts is fairly complicated.

Great ad copy with quickly grab the interest of your potential customers and encourage them to click on your ad and enter the next phase in our sales funnel.

SEO Title

Title tags can be “read” by search engines and appear in search results.

It’s important to have a strong title tag because it can help boost a piece of content’s position in search rankings.

A great SEO Title should be clear about what your blog or web page is about and contain at least one relevant keyword or phrase.

Meta Description

A meta description is a brief summary of your blog or web page.

Keep in mind that meta descriptions can show up in search results and social media posts. That means they are your first opportunity to capture a reader’s attention!