Digital marketing has a language all its own. Here are a few key digital marketing terms that you must know as a business owner or digital marketer. We will continue to add to this list and preserve as a resource.
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to what’s behind-the-scenes of your website with metadata tags, as well as what’s upfront with keywords and user-friendly copy. When it all works well together, your website shows up higher in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. But it’s not a once-and-done project. Monthly management is imperative for success because search engines frequently update the factors affecting search results. Lately, there has been a dramitc shift towards the importance of local SEO. Learn about local SEO services here.
SEM
Search engine marketing, also known as SEM or Paid Search, refers to any type of advertisements placed at the top of search results and identified as an ad under the website link. What these copy-only ads lack in visual appeal, they make up for by being extremely well targeted to prospects searching for your keywords. SEM encompasses many other terms including paid search ads, paid search advertising, pay-per-click (PPC), cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) campaigns. The majority of SEM is managed through Google Ads, since the search engine amasses a colossal 2 trillion searches per year.
PPC
Pay-per-click ads are one of the most popular types of SEM and work well to increase brand awareness, site visitors and conversions. In these campaigns, advertisers only pay when a customer clicks through to the website. Specific landing pages are often created for these campaigns to funnel prospects directly to the desired action. For example, if our agency wanted to generate more leads for our web development team, we could develop a landing page with basic information about our services and a contact form. Then, we would run a PPC ad linked to the page, only getting charged when people clicked through the ad to the landing page.
Re-targeting
Re-targeting campaigns are ads delivered after someone has visited your website. By placing a specific piece of coding behind-the-scenes, visitors to your website get an anonymous cookie attached to their browser. Your business is then able to re-engage visitors by finding the cookie and serving them ads as they browse the web and social media. While re-targeting is currently undergoing some big changes, it still remains a big player in digital marketing.
Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design (RWD) is a web development method that creates changes to the appearance of a website using CSS3 or HTML 5, based on the screen width of a particular device. In responsive design, page elements can re-order, change size, disappear, or completely restructure. True responsive design however, is NOT creating a separate website for mobile devices, rather using the existing website to adapt to screen width.
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