Digital Marketing and eCommerce Glossary

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that passes full link equity (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.

This HTTP status code signifies that the web page a user is trying to reach has been temporarily moved.

404 is an HTTP response code that shows that the page that a user has requested has not been found. It is usually accompanied by a message like “page not found" or “The page you are trying to access does not exist”.

Also known as Split testing is the process of comparing two versions of a web page, email, or other marketing asset and measuring the difference in performance to achieve better results.

An analytics feature that lets you see the percentage of people who began a defined conversion process but did not complete it.

Accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) are web pages with minimal HTML intended to optimise search results on mobile devices. AMPs can offer faster load times and less data usage, improving visibility on mobile devices.

A platform that facilitates ad placement bidding. Effectively an online, automated auction house.

Additional information about your business can be added to ad copy, such as an address, phone number or links to specific pages on your website.

Ad fatigue is when your audience sees your ads so often that they become bored with them and stop paying attention. This, in turn, causes your campaigns to become less effective, prevents users from moving down the sales funnel, and ultimately hurts your company's bottom line.

The process of scheduling ads to automatically show at specific times of the day.

An ad server is used to store, manage and display ads to users on a website.

Refers to the process of earning a commission by promoting someone else’s products or services.

The mathematical formula or a set of rules behind systems and programmes to provide users with the most relevant response to their queries.

The clickable text is displayed in a hyperlink that’s usually blue and underlined. The anchor text should give a clear indication of the page or file it’s linking to.

A set of tools and protocols used for building, developing and interlinking software and programmes.

Attribution assigns credit to the marketing source that turned a lead into a customer. Marketing attribution lets you identify crucial touchpoints in the customer journey.

An audience – or target audience – is a specified group of consumers who become the recipients of marketing efforts.

A website’s authority correlates with its popularity. A site’s authority is based on factors like traffic, backlinks and social shares.

The method of controlling or operating processes via automatic means. Many marketing departments automate repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and even ad campaigns -- not just for the sake of efficiency, but so they can provide a more personalized experience for their customers.

Average order value is a metric that tells you the average value of an eCommerce transaction in your online store. If your store has a total revenue of £25,000 from 550 orders, your average order value is £45.45.

These are acronyms used to describe who a company sells to. B2B stands for “Business to Business” and refers to companies that sell to other businesses. Meanwhile, B2C or “Business to Consumer” refers to companies that sell directly to consumers.

This is when other websites link back to your website.

Behavioural targeting is a marketing technique used in online advertising to tailor advertising to audiences by utilising their previous web browsing behaviour to drive more engagement.

Bid modifiers let you make adjustments to bids without altering your campaign’s targeting or ad groups.

SEO strategies consist of unethical and unprofessional techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, and using private link networks.

Also referred to as a 'Googlebot' or 'Spider,' a bot is a web crawler that discovers new or updated web pages or websites. When a user enters a search query to a search engine, Google's bot will crawl the internet to find the most relevant results for the user's search.

The percentage of visitors who land on a website but then leave without looking at other pages.

Brand positioning describes how a brand differs from its competitors and where or how it sits in customers' minds. It signifies how customers connect with your brand based on your values.

Refers to a keyword match type for PPC advertising that offers the broadest reach and widest range of targeting.

The bottom of the funnel is the last stage of the buyer journey, where your prospects are close to becoming new customers. Marketing tactics like remarketing, abandoned carts, email, referrals, discount codes, upselling & cross-selling can increase bottom-funnel conversion in your eCommerce store.

The buyer's journey is the lead's process from awareness to decision, from discovering your store to purchasing and becoming a loyal customer. This complete journey is also called a Marketing Funnel.

A call-to-action is a text link, button, or image that encourages a website user to visit a landing page and become a lead. Some examples include “Subscribe Today” on website popups or “Download Now” on app websites.

It is a suggestion to search engines that the content on that specific URL is not the master version of the copy.

Channels in digital marketing are platforms you can use to reach your targeted audience to sell or promote your brand, services or products. Digital marketing channels have evolved; the most common avenues companies can take are Website Marketing, PPC advertising, SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, Video Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, SMS Messaging, etc.

The churn rate is the number of customers you have lost during a particular period, such as a month or a year. If your business had 500 customers at the beginning of the month and lost 50 by the end, your churn rate would be 10%.

A content management system (CMS) allows web editors to manage content displayed on a site. WordPress is an example of a content management system.

Content marketing is an ongoing activity, using created content to engage customers. The content is usually valuable and made to influence people's behaviours.

The ratio of users who complete a specific action (such as filling out a form) compared to the total number of users. The conversion rate is calculated as a percentage.

A file used by websites that stores data on a user’s computer based on their activity on the site.

The average amount it costs to acquire a conversion through paid activity.

How much do you have to pay for every click on your advert or link.

Cost per mille (sometimes known as cost per thousand) refers to the amount of money it costs for your post or ad to be seen 1,000 times.

CRM focuses on managing positive interaction and communication with clients to achieve optimal client satisfaction and retention.

The systematic process of using test and learn techniques to identify which aspects help to improve website performance by encouraging more users to take a specific, desired action.

A citation in digital marketing is an online reference or mention of your business's name, address, and phone number (NAP) on a website that isn't your own. Citation plays a crucial role in Local SEO. Search Engines like Google show results based on relevance and prominence, so consistency in your business NAP is the key.

A conversion path is a series of actions or steps by which an anonymous website visitor becomes a known lead. Typical steps in your conversion path may include a follow-up email with a lead form, a social media post or a landing page encouraging people to sign up, or it could be a thank you page with a blog subscription, etc.

Crawling is the process of scanning a website to discover new pages, updated pages, or removed or redirected pages to add to a search engine index.

A call to action is a button on your website to drive specific conversions or goals, like newsletter signup, a contact form or driving traffic on a dedicated landing page.

Customer acquisition refers to the actions or activities a business takes to attract relevant new people and convert them to customers. It is a process of building a relationship with your prospective customer. A successful customer acquisition strategy helps you win new business and improve revenue and ROI.

Customer retention refers to the rate customers adhere to your brand over a certain period. The higher your customer retention rate is, the more existing customers you have coming back for more.

Debugging is detecting and removing existing and potential errors (also called 'bugs') in a software code that can cause it to behave unexpectedly or crash.

Advertising (paid placements) on any digital platform. This can include social platforms like Instagram, Pinterest & Facebook as well as on search engines like Google or Bing and individual websites.

Direct-to-consumer or DTC means when a manufacturer, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand or any individual with a product on the market sells their product directly to their end customer (the consumer) while bypassing all middlemen, including retailers and wholesalers. Most of the time, DTC brands will facilitate these sales transactions through their website or app due to the low cost involved. Brands like Casper, Warby Parker, and Dollar Shave Club are DTC.

Advertising is shown on a web page that a consumer is using. Most often in the form of images, banners, video, or rich formats (animations or slideshows).

A unified technology platform used for collecting, organising and activating large sets of data from different sources.

The part of a network address that identifies it as belonging to a particular company or organisation. No two websites can have the same domain name.

A system that allows buyers of digital advertising inventory to manage multiple ad exchanges and data exchange accounts through one interface.

A substantial amount of identical content that features on more than one website or multiple places on the same website.

The amount of time between when a user clicks on a result on the search engine results page and when the user returns to the search engine results page.

DSA are search ads that use Google's organic web crawling technology to automatically target relevant search queries based on a retailer's website content. Dynamic search ads are used when trying to expand campaigns outside of the keywords already in the account to drive incremental traffic and results.

Any media exposure that does not come directly from your business. This includes things like shared posts, reviews of your business, or mentions from another site.

Stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, & Trustworthiness and is used in SEO to describe the quality of a website or content. The term comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.

It is the process of creating a website to sell or buy products or services online to help you generate more revenue and conversions for your business.

Metrics are used to measure the performance of the website, campaign or any landing page. These often include bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit, and social shares.

It is a method for analytics and social (e.g. using Facebook's pixel) that helps you track your customers' journey by analysing their behaviours as form fills, cart additions, or newsletter signups.

Technology that measures optical movement, visual attention and point of gaze.

Refers to a keyword match type for PPC advertising that offers the most specific and precise control over ad targeting.

Exit Pages are pages of the website from where a visitor leaves the site or are the last interaction page of a visitor on a website.

Also known as ‘position zero’, the featured snippet is an answer box that sits at the top of Google’s SERPs and aims to answer a user’s query by using featured copy from a relevant site.

Data about your audience that you have collected yourself, as opposed to data collected by a third party.

In digital marketing, frequency refers to the number of times your ad is displayed to a unique user in a specific period.

A marketing strategy based on ‘funnelling’ prospects through multiple stages of a customer journey to reach the end goal of a specified conversion.

Refers to the General Data Protection Regulations laws brought in in 2018 to better protect people’s personal information.

Using a person’s location to trigger a response when a person enters or leaves a virtually fenced area.

A targeting method that serves content to site visitors based on their location.

Google’s self-serving advertising platform lets marketers serve ads across Google and partner networks.

A free tool that collects data and organizes the data into reports used to show how users interact with websites.

GA4 is the next generation of Google Analytics which incorporates machine learning to surface user insights. It can be used with both web and app properties and is now the default version of Google Analytics.

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free platform for anyone with a website to monitor how Google views their site and optimize its organic presence. That includes viewing your referring domains, mobile site performance, rich search results, and highest-traffic queries and pages.

A free tool that allows you to host a variety of tracking codes, pixels, and tags – thus removing the need to rely on developers and hard coding of each tag.

A graphical user interface (GUI) is a layer of technology with which a user engages that allows them to visually interact through things like icons, menus, and other graphics.

Growth Marketing is a strategic process of constantly conducting experiments to optimise a business's growth. It's a long-term, holistic and data-driven approach to marketing.

Used on social media platforms as an identification of a certain theme or topic whereby the subject matter is preceded by the hash symbol.

A visual summary of how users interact with a specific webpage. Heatmaps identify ‘hot spots’ where page aspects have high interactivity levels. This tool is widely used for conversion rate optimisation.

An interaction that results in data being sent to a tracking solution (i.e. Google Analytics). One session can include multiple hits such as page views, events, or social interactions.

A label attached to a host on the Internet, allowing an individual server to be identified.

HTTPS is an upgraded version of the network protocol standard HTTP. With HTTPS, websites create a secure online experience by encrypting data, like names, addresses, and credit card numbers, and ensuring its safe transfer to the site's server.

The number of times an ad or listing appeared. This does not always mean that a user viewed the ad or listing. Multiple impressions can come from the same person if that person saw the ad or listing more than once.

A measurement of the number of times an ad was shown out of the total number of times it was eligible to show. This can help measure how much of the available audience an ad is reaching.

A measurement of how often an impression turns into a conversion is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of impressions.

Inbound marketing is a customer-centric approach that focuses on attracting high-fit customers instead of blasting your message to anyone and everyone. Inbound marketing tactics include SEO, social media, content marketing, and more — and refer to tactics that attract your target users rather than reaching out to them.

A method of collecting, arranging and categorizing the information that crawlers, bots, or spiders find on websites.

A programming language that is commonly used for building website features that require user interaction.

Popular words, terms or phrases help to optimise a site’s ranking position. Keywords also allow paid search advertisers to bid for ad placements as sponsored links on SERPs.

Keyword cannibalisation is when two or more pages on your website have the same target keyword, appear for the exact search term, and as a result, have difficulty ranking.

The process of researching words, terms or phrases around a certain subject to determine their popularity.

Keyword stemming is a search engine's ability to recognise variations of the same word.

An unethical, black hat SEO technique refers to the over-optimisation of a webpage through excessive keyword density.

Used to reflect the performance and success of an activity in relation to the goals originally outlined.

A page on a website that serves as a destination page for users who have clicked through from an advert or link elsewhere on the web – including SERPs.

Lead nurturing is a strategy businesses use to maintain and grow relationships with potential customers while encouraging them to make a purchase. It takes place in all stages of the marketing funnel.

Link bait is an SEO practice geared to attract links. These links then help to improve the keyword rankings in search engines.

Local SEO is when you optimise your website to rank in local results. It includes strategies like claiming your Google My Business listing, writing pages based on local keywords, and more.

It is a subset of artificial intelligence that refers to an algorithm’s ability to learn from pattern recognition and inference to improve functionality.

Marketing qualified leads are typically prospects that have expressed interest in your company by engaging with your content and then providing identification details that allow you to convert them into a known lead.

Native advertising is the use of paid ads that match the look, feel and function of the media format in which they appear. They are often found in social media feeds, or as recommended content on a web page.

Any keyword or phrase that doesn't include a specific brand name is a non-branded keyphrase. An effective SEO strategy is needed to optimise your website for non-branded keywords unrelated to your business name.

Open Graph meta tags are snippets of code that control how URLs are displayed when shared on social media. For example, a company can set the image, title, and description they want to show on Facebook whenever someone posts that website’s domain to Facebook.

Also known as ‘natural’ search results, organic listings are SERP results that are not paid for. Optimising organic listings is the whole point of SEO.

Page speed optimisation is improving your site's load time to satisfy users. Tactics include compressing photos and cleaning up your HTML code.

Page Views represent all the visitors of your website. Each reloads of the webpage by the same visitor counts as a new page view.

A quick portrait of user types used to briefly describe goals and behaviour used in UX design and marketing campaigns.

A metric used by Google to determine the quality and relevancy of a site based on its ads, keywords and landing pages.

A query is another word for the search term or search query in SEO.

Refers to the hierarchy of websites on any given SERP. SEO is the practice of optimising websites to improve their rankings and help them reach the top positions.

Referral marketing is a strategy to promote products or services through current customer referrals to their friends and family. Although similar, it’s not the same as word-of-mouth marketing.

A sales qualified lead is a marketing-qualified lead that is accepted by the sales team and warrants a sales team member reaching out. An SQL is ready to be sold and is the most likely to purchase the company's product or service.

Code installed on a website that helps search engines return relevant, informative results.

The percentage of eligible impressions that your ads receive.

The estimation of how often your ad didn't show due to budget restraints.

The estimation of how often your ad didn't show due to poor ad rank.

An extension allows your ads to highlight specific aspects of your products and services. These ad extensions provide context on the nature and variety of your products and services before visitors click through to your site. Each snippet contains a header and list of features you would like to highlight.

It is a query where someone is looking to purchase something but hasn't yet decided where to buy it from.

TOFU content caters to new users learning about a topic and are not ready to use your services or buy your products. This content is more informational and focused on creating a relationship with potential customers.

A URL Slug is the part of the URL that follows the slash ("/") after the domain name or subfolder.

A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered to the end customers. It is a part of a company's overall marketing strategy.

An XML sitemap is an XML file that should detail the indexable pages on a website. Search engines use this information to understand which web pages are available to crawl to store in their index.