Firespring’s resident all-things-digital expert, Blake Waggoner, guest writes today’s blog to inform and excite on the ever-changing and oftentimes intimidating world of digital. Let’s hear what he has to say about today’s digital landscape.
At times it feels as though digital marketing has its own language made up of alphabet soup acronyms and foreign phrases: CPA, CPC, CPA, Lookalike Audiences, Quality Score and more.
There is no doubt that these terms and phrases can be confusing and a bit overwhelming to understand at times. Lucky for you, Firespring is here to serve as your interpreter and translator so that you can speak the digital language.
Being literate in the digital language will allow for you to optimize your campaigns in almost real-time and ensure they achieve their maximum result.
Let’s start with the basics:
- Algorithm: Essentially, an algorithm is a specific set of rules defined in order to solve problems in an automated way.
- Alt Text: Short for alternative text.
- Backlinks: Also known as incoming links, inbound links and inward links, these point towards your website from other websites.
- Call to Action (CTA): We all want our users to convert, right? Well, a CTA will assist you in doing that, as it is an element on a webpage or ad used to push users toward a specific action.
- Click-through Rate (CTR): A metric showing how often people click on an ad after he/she sees it. This metric is useful when determining if an ad’s core messaging matches what messages resonate and what he/she is searching for.
- Conversion Rate: A rate in which users to a website complete your desired goal. This metric will help you ensure that you’re hitting the right target audiences with the right message.
- CPM: Just when you think digital marketing is a language of its own, a numerical language is added. CPM is “Cost Per Thousand,” as “M” is the roman numeral for 1,000. CPM is the amount an advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions of their ad.
- Display Ads: These ads are on a display network that include several different formats, like audio, static images/graphics, video and social media.
- Domain Authority: A metric developed by Moz that is used to give a score to a website’s SEO ranking ability.
- External Link: A hyperlink from one domain that points to an external domain.
- Facebook Ads Manager: This is the one-stop shop to create your ads, manage them and track how each ad performed. Because you want to be efficient, Facebook Ads Manager allows you to manage Facebook, Instagram and its Audience Network.
- Keywords: If you want to be seen on the internet, you’ll need to know keywords. These are words or a phrase as it relates to your content. If customers or clients are looking for your products/offerings, ensure you have those keywords within your site.
- Keyword density: A percentage that is calculated by taking the number of keywords that appear on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page.
- Keyword Stuffing: You don’t want to hear this phrase, believe us. Keyword stuffing is when a site uses a keyword too often with the intent to sway the search engines. Google will punish you for this activity.
- Long Tail Keywords: Longer, more specific search queries that are often less targeted than shorter broad queries.
- Lookalike Audience: This audience is created by targeting fans of your Facebook page or an email list. Used as a targeting option within Facebook, the social network identifies common characteristics between the fans of the Facebook page or email list.
- Meta Tags: Statements within the HEAD section of an HTML page which furnishes information about the page. Meta information may be in the SERPs but is not visible on the page.
- Algorithm: Essentially, an algorithm is a specific set of rules defined in order to solve problems in an automated way.
- PageRank (PR): A value between 0 and 1 assigned by the Google algorithm, which quantifies link popularity and trust among other (proprietary) factors.
- SERP: While this sounds like some sort of odd drink or dance move, it simply stands for Search Engine Results Page.
Now that you’re armed with the language, you can run impactful digital marketing. Need more help? Contact Firespring at hello@firespring.com to start a conversation with one of our digital experts. We got you.
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