Digital Marketing Glossary of Terms

Like all industries, marketing and digital marketing have plenty of their own acronyms and jargon. I’ve made this list to help clear up any confusion over any terms you might read on this site or on other marketing websites.

It’s a work in progress, so if you can’t find what you’re looking for please let me know so I can add it.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

AdMob – Google’s advertising platform for mobile apps and mobile games

AdSense – A Google product that allows qualifying publishers (websites) to earn revenue by placing text and/or display advertisements on their website(s)

AdWords – A Google product that allows qualifying advertisers to buy advertisement placement on Google search results pages as well as on websites in the Google display network

Analytics – Software used for the purpose of recording and analyzing the visitors to a website

B2B – Businesses focused primarily on marketing and selling to other businesses

B2C – Businesses focused primarily on marketing and selling to consumers

Back Link (or Backlink) – A link pointing from an outside website to your website

Black Hat SEO – The term for SEO practices that break search engines’ terms of services and abuse loopholes with the objective to rank a website; black hat refers to the most extreme tactics, which are sometimes illegal

Click Bait – A headline or image that is created in such a way as to be almost impossible to ignore

CMS – Short for Content Management System; software that makes it easier to build and organize a website

Conversion – A used to measure the completion of a desired action of a website visitor such as filling out and submitting a form

CPC – Cost per click, or the amount you have to pay each time someone clicks on your banner or display ad

Digital Marketing – Marketing on the Internet and mobile devices

Domain – The name you choose for your website

Domain Metrics – A way to attempt to measure the authority of a domain; notable metrics are Moz’s domain authority & page authority and Majestic’s trust flow & citation flow

Domain Squatting – Buying and holding domains with no intention of using them to build a site, but instead holding them until they can be sold to someone else for a considerable profit

E-commerce – Selling products or services through the Internet as opposed to through a brick and mortar store or through telemarketing

Email Marketing – Selling products or services through an email list

Facebook Marketing – Marketing strategies specific to Facebook and the ever-growing Facebook ad platform

Flippa – An online marketplace for buying and selling websites and domains

Footer – the very bottom part of a website; it’s usually the same on every webpage of a site

Forum – An online community where members discuss common topics of interest; forums and be free or premium

Geolocation – A way to specify which countries, cities, states, or other geographical areas are the targets of your marketing efforts, from SEO to paid ads

Google Dance – When a new website jumps erratically in the search engine results before settling into a more confined and predictable placement; an example of a dance would be moving from page 2 to page 10 and back if the search results for the same keyword

Gray Hat SEO – The term for the use of questionable methods for ranking websites; gray hat tactics are often against search engines’ terms of service, but are not as extreme as those of black hat SEO

Header – The very top portion of a website, usually the same on every page of the site

Heading – The title and subtitles of your content

H Tags – The part of HTML code that makes your text into a heading

HTML – The acronym for HyperText Markup Language which is the coding language used to create websites

Hyperlink – A clickable word or image that will take you from one page or post to another page or post

Impressions – The number of times a text or display ad is shown to users

Inbound Marketing – Marketing focused on drawing customers to your business by creating products or services of quality rather than forcing customers’ attention through forced advertisements or or other interruptive methods

Inbound Links – Links coming from an external website to your website

Internal Links – Links from one part of your website pointing to another part of your website

Internet Marketing – Any marketing done online, such as banner ads and SEO

JavaScript – One of the three main programming languages that make up the majority of the Internet, also referred to as JS

Jump Link – A link on a webpage that when clicked moves the user to another part of that same page

Keyword – A word that a user types into a search engine; many SEO tasks involve creating content around keywords

Keyword Research – Using data to determine which keywords to attempt to rank a page, post, or website for

Keyword Stuffing – Overusing a keyword or keywords on a single page or post

Link Building – Attempting to create back links to your website through direct tactics like directory submissions or indirect tactics such as email outreach

Local SEO – SEO strategies focused on ranking websites for local regions; this tactics is especially important for brick and mortar businesses

Long Tail Keywords – Keyword phrases usually containing at least three words

Menu – An area of a website also referred to as Navigation that allows users to quickly find the pages they want to visit

Meta Description – The description of a webpage that shows in the search engine results

Micro Site – A small website consisting of only a few pages

NAP+W – A common acronym used in local SEO standing for name, address, phone number, and website

No Follow – A tag added to a back link to stop it from passing Page Rank

Offline – Anything handled away from or off of the Internet

Organic Traffic – The term for when people find your website through search engine results; it does not include any visitors coming from paid ad placements

Outbound Marketing – Attracting customers by reaching out for their attention; an example of outbound marketing is making cold calls

Outsource – Paying a person or business outside of your business to do work for your business

Paid Traffic – Spending money to get visitors to your website through banner ads or other means like paying to promote posts on social networks

Power Editor – Facebook’s paid advertising management dashboard

PPC – Short for pay-per-click; you pay a fee whenever someone clicks on an advertisement for your website on another site

Quick Link – A back link that is created quickly with minimal effort

Quick Win – A marketing term for achieving a positive result in a short amount of time

Rank – How high a page or post on a website appears in the search results for a certain keyword

Reciprocal Link – The name for when two websites swap back links

Remarketing – The term for specifically targeting website browsers that have previously visited your website

Search Engine – An data used to search the Internet for information, such as Google or Bing

SEM – An acronym meaning Search Engine Marketing; refers to any method of improving the visibility of a website in search engine results

SEO – An acronym meaning Search Engine Optimization; refers to using strategic content and website architecture as well as off-site signals such as back links to improve the visibility of a website in the search engine results

SERP – An acronym for Search Engine Results Page; refers to the websites returned after a query using a search engine like Google

Text Ad – An ad that uses only text and no images

TLD – An acronym for Top Level Domain; refers to the final string of characters in a URL after the last dot

Tracking Tag – A string of code placed on a website to help analytics programs track data

URL – An acronym for Uniform Resource Locator; refers to the website address typed into a browser

User Testing – Paying a third party person or service to test a website or application with the goal of discovering previously undetermined problems

Unique Value Proposition – Also referred to as UVP; what makes your product or service different from your competition

Viral Marketing – A form of digital marketing focused on generating mass amount of social sharing

Virtual Assistant – A person who you pay to do work that you do not employ and typically works remotely

Web Browser – A piece of software used to read and process HTML and therefore serves as a way to navigate the Internet; popular browsers include Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Explorer

White Hat SEO – The term for SEO practices that strictly adhere to search engines’ best practices guidelines

Wiki – A website that consists solely of user generated informational content

XML – An acronym for Extensible Markup Language; refers to coding rules that make content readable by both humans and machines

XYZ – A newer top level domain extension that is often used by gray hat SEOs due to sales making the TLD extremely low-cost

Yandex – A Cyrillic search engine

YouTube – A Google owned video-sharing website that is also the second largest search engine in the world

Zilch – The amount of “Z” digital marketing words I can currently think of