A Beginner’s Guide To Digital Marketing Terminology

How go the SEO and PPC advertising efforts, Jeff? If our friend Jeff is new to the industry, he might have no idea what those two scary-looking acronyms mean. Safe Environment Operations? Particularly Painful Client? Like any other professionalised trade, there are acronyms that are intended to equal parts save time and impress clients. If you’re a Jeff, the last thing we want is for you to get EOYF (egg on your face). This DSM article takes a look at a selection common digital marketing terminology, and what each nugget of linguistic gold means:

 CMS

This acronym refers to a content management system. It is commonly found being used around the drinking fountains of web development departments and is the system used to manage the wording, images, and other content on a website. WordPress is an example of a website CMS.

 Copy

This word refers to online wording, found in every corner of the internet. Websites, social media posts, online adverts, and others all rely on written “copy” in headings and descriptions to transfer a message in a language that the reader understands. Copywriters, for example, are those digital professionals who write copy.

 SEO

Search engine optimisation involves the use of careful actions taken on a website in order to get it ranking higher on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. This includes researching keywords (see below) that internet users are typing into search bars and including them on website pages.

Organic

This phrase is most commonly thrown around in website analytics circles. There are two types of website traffic: organic traffic and paid traffic. SEO involves initial investment, but yields long-term web traffic that is organic (was not paid for). Paid traffic, in contrast, is web traffic coming from paid sources (see below).

PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising gives a business the opportunity to pay for traffic to an online resource. For example, brands can place paid Google adverts that appear at the top and bottom of page 1, or place “sponsored” ads on Facebook and other social media channels, where the advert appears in the target audience’s news feed.

UX

User Experience (UX) is a rather self-explanatory digital marketing term. It defines the experience that a user will have when interacting with a website or app. There are professionals in the marketing industry whose sole function is to optimise the user experience for a brand’s online brand/consumer interactions.

Keywords

These relate predominantly to search engine optimisation (SEO) and are the words and phrases internet users type into their search bars when they are looking for information. For example, someone with a severe toothache could search for an emergency dentist. Those are both keywords that can be used to optimise a dentistry website.

Plugin

Website plugins are widely used on WordPress websites. They are essentially a third-party content management system (CMS) add-on features that improve the core website in a variety of ways. Plugin development is an industry on its own, and these additional website features really do facilitate exceptional experiences for visitors online.

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