The Ultimate Digital Marketing Glossary: 100 Terms All Marketers Should Know

In this post, I will be listing the 100 most important digital marketing glossary, these are terms every online marketers should know.

1.     AdWords

A program owned and managed by Google used by many advertisers in order to place ads on Google’s results pages.

2.     Alt Text

An element added to a code, usually HTML, for images in order to provide information to vision-impaired site visitors.

3.     Analytics

A platform owned and managed by Google and used by webmasters in order to collect data about site visitors.

4.     Anchor Text

Words used in signaling Google for ranking. Provides context about the website.

5.     Automation

The use of computer programs and software to do repetitive tasks traditionally done by humans.

6.     Backlink

When a website links to another site with the use of HTML HREF code. Used by search engines to determine organic search rankings.

7.     Banner Ad

A popular form of a static digital ad placed on different websites.

8.     Bing –

A search engine owned and operated by Microsoft used to search the web for images, videos, and products.

9.     Black Hat

A term used to describe an unethical digital marketing strategy or SEO that undermines search engine guidelines.

10.Bounce Rate

The percentage of site visitors that leave without clicking or interacting with the page.

11. Campaign

A series of ad messages that share a common theme to market a service or product. May also refer to a detailed digital marketing strategy.

12. Click-Through Rate

A metric that shows how often visitors click on a search result or an ad after seeing it. Useful in determining whether or not the message matches what is searched.

13. Content

Pertains to online media that can be watched, read, or interacted with. Usually refers to written materials but may also include videos and images.

14. Conversion Rate

The rate of visitors on a website that completes a predefined goal.

15. Cost Per Click (CPC)

Money spent for each click on a Pay-Per-Click campaign. Prices change often as advertisers bid against one another for keywords.

16. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

In digital marketing, CRO is geared towards improving the conversion rate of a website to make it more profitable.

17. Dark Web

The part of the internet that is not or can’t be indexed by search engines. Used for illicit activities such as illegal information sharing or black markets.

18. Digital Assistant

Also known as a virtual assistant, the application or software is able to do tasks through verbal commands by its user.

19. Digital Marketing

A blanket term for work done online that includes marketing practices such as PPC, CRO, web design, and SEO.

20. Duplicate Content

When content appears in at least two places on the internet. It can cause issues in ranking for one or all sites affected.

21. eCommerce

A shortened version for Electronic Commerce, this term pertains to businesses and organizations that operate online.

22. Email Marketing

Using email as a way to acquire new customers, sales, or other forms of conversion.

23. Featured Snippet

Short and concise information on search results pulled from websites to answer quick and simple questions.

24. Facebook Advertising

Ads placed on the platform through Facebook’s ad network.

25. Facebook Business Page

A webpage created on Facebook that is publicly used to represent an organization or company.

26. Form Fill

When a visitor of a website fills out a contact information form upon entering. May be referred to as a form of conversion.

27. Google Analytics

A software created by Google and offered for free used to analyze every user who accesses a website.

28. Google Adwords

Google’s own advertising service.

29. Google Home

A smart device that connects to a consumer’s home network. It can do many tasks through voice commands.

30. Google Maps

A navigation and location service owned and operated by Google. Users use the service to search for restaurants, stores, and businesses anywhere in the world.

31. Google Panda

An algorithm update by Google that is focused on analyzing the overall quality of a site’s content.

32. Google Penguin

An algorithm update released by Google focused on analyzing a website’s backlink profile.

33. Google Review

Reviews and feedback left by customers on Google My Business platform.

34. Hashtag

A word or phrase that begins with the “#” symbol used in almost all social media platforms to tag content for other users to find.

35. Header

The top portion of a website where the logo and menu are typically found.

36. Header Tags

Used in HTML when categorizing text headings on a website.

37. HTML

An acronym for Hypertext Markup Language, HTML is comprised of codes used to instruct a browser on how to display a webpage.

38. Hyperlink

An HTML code that links one webpage to another; characterized by a highlighted word, phrase, or image.

39. Impression

The term refers to PPC ads representing how many times the ad was featured.

40. Inbound Marketing

Strategies and activities used to attract customers to a website.

41. JavaScript

A programming language used on web browsers to show interactive elements that is hard to achieve using HTML or CSS.

42. Keyword

A word or phrase that indicates the theme of a piece of content.

43. Keyword Phrase

Two or more words used to search for information using a search engine.

44. Keyword Stuffing

A term used to describe when a web page uses too many keywords without any context.

45. Landing Page

A webpage that a user ends up on after clicking a link or an ad.

46. Latent Semantic Indexing

An indexing method used by search engines to create links between words and phrases in order to build a better understanding of a topic.

47. Lead

A potential customer.

48. Link Profile

A group of links that points to a specific website.

49. LinkedIn

A type of social media platform focused on professionals, businesses, and other industries.

50. Long Tail Keyword

A keyword that is longer and specifically matches the query of a user.

51. Medium

A category of traffic on a website that is tracked in Google Analytics.

Examples include:

• organic
• email
• CPC
• referral

52. Metadata

Snippets added into a webpage’s code in order to add context information for search engines.

53. Meta Description

A form of meta tags that provides a description of a page limited to 160 characters.

54. NAP

An acronym for “name, address, phone number” used for local citations; integral in any local SEO campaign.

55. Organic

A type of website traffic from a search engine result that is not paid; a primary measure of how effective an SEO campaign is.

56. Pay-Per-Click

Shortened to PPC, this refers to an advertising model online where advertisers pay for their ad placement once it has been clicked.

57. Position

Refers to the placement in a search engine’s results page. Examples include:

• featured snippet
• first page
• map pack

58. Quality Score

A rating metric by Google Adwords in order to determine the quality of keywords that are used in PPC campaigns.

59. Query

The term used when referring to what users type and search using search engines like Google and Bing.

60. Rankings

The general term applied to where a site appears on a search engine results page. May increase or decrease depending on the terms and queries.

61. Reciprocal Link

When two websites link one another in the hopes of increasing their search engine ranking.

62. Redirect

When a web browser takes the user to another web page without the user typing or clicking anything.

63. Referral

A website visitors coming from another website, as opposed to one coming from a search engine.

64. Remarketing

Also referred to as retargeting, this is a type of paid where advertisers show their ads to users who have already visited their website.

65. Responsive Web Design

A guiding philosophy in web design in which all content are displayed regardless of the size of the screen.

66. Return On Ad Spend

Shortened to ROAS, this is a metric used in PPC to show profit made against money spent on those ads.

67. Return On Investment

Abbreviated to ROI, this refers to money earned after spending on marketing campaigns.

68. Schema Markup

A type of code added to a site’s HTML code in order to give search engines like Google more information about the business, place, person, or product.

69. Search Operator

 A sort of shortcut in searching for specific results.

70. Search Engine Marketing

SEM for short, the term is applied to digital marketing activities that make use of a search engine.

71. Search Engine Optimization

The process of improving the performance and rank of a website through different tactics and methodologies include content creation, link acquisition, and code improvement.

72. Search Engine Results Page

SERP for short, refers to the page that features a list of the top results after submitting a keyword or phrase.

73. Sitelink

In Google AdWords, Sitelink is a form of ad extension that links to a page within the website.

74. Sitemap

A file or page within a website where pages and posts are listed for search engines to index quickly.

75. Source

In Google Analytics, this term is used to categorize where traffic comes from.

76. Spam

A term applied to any nefarious activities online done to harm a competing website or to boost a site’s ranking.

77. Spider

A program that visits other websites and “crawl” them. Google uses it to rank sites.

78. SSL Certificate

Data files added to servers to allow websites to use HTTPS protocol. Used to secure data transfers and logins among other things.

79. Style Sheet

Short for Cascading Style Sheet, or CSS, a programming language that instructs a browser how to display a website onto a screen.

80. Tag

An identifier to classify posts using keywords.

81. Title Tag

An element in HTML used to describe the topic of a web page.

82. Tracking Code

A script that passes information to tools for the purpose of gathering data; often found in the header or thank-you page of a site.

83. Twitter

A popular social media platform where users interact by posting “tweets” limited to 280 characters.

84. Twitter Advertising

Marketers promote tweets on the feeds of users without those users following the profile.

85. Unique Visitors

A metric that shows the different types of people that visited a website at a given time.

86. URL

An abbreviation that stands for Uniform Resource Locator; essentially the address of a web page.

87. User Interface

The area in which users interact with an element of a website through a device.

88. User Experience

Often referred to as UX, this refers to how a user interacts with an app or a website. It can be influenced by colors, layouts, content, etc.

89. Visitors

In digital marketing, these are users who visited a website over a period of time. This can be classified as either new visitors or returning visitors.

90. Web 2.0

The second phase of development for the World Wide Web. It marked the shift from static pages to dynamic content.

91. Website

Documents, content, and media that are accessible on the web. Websites are typically identified with a domain name and a web server.

92. Webinar

An online seminar.

93. White Hat

A term applied to ethical marketers.

94. Wireframe

The first step in the web design process where the layout of the webpage is drawn.

95. XML

Similar to HTML, XML is used to categorize data in order for humans and computers to use it effectively.

96. Yelp

A platform focused on gathering reviews about businesses. Also serves as a search engine.

97. YouTube

A video-sharing platform owned by Google. It is considered to be one of the largest and most popular search engines in the world.

98. YouTube Advertising

YouTube offers different ad formats namely:

• display ads
• overlay ads
• skippable/non-skippable ads
• sponsored cards
• bumper ads

99. Yahoo Search

Another popular search engine; powered by Bing.

100.  Yahoo Advertising

Both Yahoo and Bing are operated by Bing Ads platform.

Final Words on Digital Marketing Glossary

I have taken my time to research on these digital marketing glossary, this will help you identify and understand most of the terms use in digital marketing. I hope these list help you know new words or increase the numbers of digital marketing terms you already knew.