Digital Marketing Glossary
Definitions:
LINK TO ADVANCED DIGITAL MARKETING TERMS, ACRONYMS AND DEFINITIONS
Natural or Organic Search Results
Page Advisor
Advisor GlossaryUnsponsored results usually appearing in the middle of a search engine results page and flanked by Pay Per Click (PPC) sponsored results above and on the right hand side of organic search results. To rank well in organic search results you need organic search engine optimisation experts, time and money. Only 15% of visitors to Google click paid ads.
SERP is the Acronym for Search Engine Results Page.
Google Terms
GMB is the Acronym for Google My Business, a much under utilised, good free marketing tool by Google.
Google uses the acronym CPC Cost Per Click. Think PPC pay per click. Adwords is Googles brand name for PPC marketing.
CTR Click Through Rate
CDN: Content Delivery Network. A CDN reduces web content transmission time to all of your site’s visitors, no matter where in the world they are. Your website is potentially located across the globe from its visitors. Your content is cached on servers all around the world. When a visitor requests content from your site, a copy is served from the visitor’s nearest server location. By transmitting content from the closest server, instead of from the main site server CDNs speeds up your site. Page load speed is an important search engine ranking signal.
SEO Search Engine Optimisation, not to be confused with SEM, Search Engine Marketing in which you pay per click to search engines.
Report Data:
A search term, or search query, is the word or phrase someone enters into a search engine
Search phrases are the words you or someone added to your website.
Exact match phrase is as it sounds, an exact match including word order and spaces between words. When using Google for SERPs to show exactly what you're searching for, surround your phrase at both ends with apostrophies. You'll get less results but you'll find exactly what you're looking for.
Broad match phrases
trigger SERPs or ads to show whenever someone searches for that phrase,
similar phrases, singular or plural forms, misspellings, synonyms, stemmings
(such as floor and flooring), related searches and other relevant
variations.
General Page Properties:
The Has same color text and background field will say yes if the Page Advisor found any text on a page that matches a background color. This would create invisible text. This practise was once used by many webmasters to load a page with keywords. Most search engines consider this practise spam, and can cause your site to be banned by some search engines.
The Includes META Refresh Tag field will say yes if the page has a meta tag refresh on it. This is a tag that causes the page to either reload every so many seconds, or automatically take the browser to another page. Many webmasters have used this to create an optimized doorway page that sends visitors to another page immediately. Like the color issues above, this is considered spamming by many engines and can result in your website being banned by some search engines.
The Has Frames field will say yes if the page is a frames page. Many search engines cannot read frames pages, and will not index your site as a result.
The Has Hidden Input Tags field will say yes if there are any hidden input tags on your page. Some search engines will index these but generally most won't.
The Uses Java/VB script field will say yes if javascript or VB Script was found on the page. While we don't believe that search engines will penalize your site for this, it often can hurt your ranking.
Page Title:
The title of your web page is the text that exists between the HTML tags <TITLE> and </TITLE>. This is what is seen on the title bar of a web browser when someone is on your page. The TITLE is extremely important for search engine ranking for several reasons:
- Most search engines put very high value on words in the title when it comes to how highly your page ranks. Therefore, having keywords that are important to you in the title of your page will play a heavy role in boosting your rankings on many engines. Furthermore, in many cases, the closer your keyword is to the beginning of the title, and the percentage of the entire title occupied by the keyword may play a role in boosting your position.
- Most search engines will also use your title when listing your site. Therefore, if you have a meaningful title for your page, when people see your listing on a search engine, they will be more likely to understand what your website is about.
Tips: Make your title meaningful. Give the reader a reason to visit your page. When it comes to search engine listings, most people will choose to (or not to) click through to your site based on what they see in the title. It is the first thing they see, and first impressions are lasting. Also avoid using all uppercase words as that will make your title difficult to read.
META Keywords:
META Keywords are another way to help define what your web page is about. Not all search engines read them when they index your site, but they can play an important role in boosting your page's position.
It is important not to go overboard by using the same keyword over and over, as such practises have been known to hurt website ranking performance more than they help.
You can use the AddWeb Page Builder feature to help automatically generate META keywords for your pages.
Tips: You may consider using a few variations of the same word instead of repeating it. An example of this would be to use fish, fisherman, fishing, fly fishing. Also don't limit your keywords to single words.
You can use phrases as well. Most people search with phrases, not single words, and you stand a better chance at getting high ranking on more focused phrases.
META Description:
The META Description is a vital element to any web page seeking listings on search engines.
You can use the AddWeb Page Builder feature to help automatically generate META Descriptions for your pages.
It is important primarily for the following reasons:
- The META Description is often used by search engines to describe your website in their listings. Usually, a search engine listing will have a Title and a description of the site listed. The Title is generally pulled from the Page Title, and the description is often taken from the META description if it exists. If there is no META Description, some search engines will try to guess what your site is about by reading text on the page. This will often lead to garbage in the listing, and can motivate web surfers to click through to a different site.
- Like other elements in the page, the META Description will be read by some search engines. Therefore, it helps them know more about your site. This can help boost your rankings. Beware, however, like with META Keywords, repeating the same text can cause your site to be penalized.
Tips: Consider your META Description like a short summary of your website. Imagine you only have a short paragraph in which to convince people to visit your site. Write a brief summary, explaining what they will find on your site, and why they should be sure to visit it.
Page Heading:
The Page Heading is text on a
web page included in a Heading Tag like <H1> </H1> (The
number changes, thereby changing the size of the heading). Many
pages don't use them, but some search engines consider text found
between these tags to be relevant in 'scoring' your page
.
You can use the AddWeb Page Builder feature to help automatically generate Page Headings for your pages.
Tips: Keep it short and simple, but make sure it conveys your point. A keyword/phrase that is meaningful in the heading can help you do better, but if it is not meaningful, it may confuse people reading it.
URL Hyperlinks:
The URL Hyperlinks section shows an analysis of the actual links to other web pages -- not the part of the link that is visible. Some search engines will add relevancy to a keyword if it is found in a url hyperlink.
URL Hyperlink Text:
The URL Hyperlink Text section differs from the URL Hyperlinks section in that it refers to the part of the url that is seen on the page. In other words, in the HTML code of your web page, there are two parts to a hyperlink: The link URL -- the page that the link actually goes to, and the link text -- the visible text that a users clicks on. Using your keywords in hyperlink text can greatly help add relevancy to your keywords with some search engines.
Tips: Like all other areas of your page, don't overdo it, as some engines may think you are spamming them.
Image ALT Tags:
An Image ALT tag is part of the code that produces an image in HTML. This is the text that is displayed in the browser while the image is loading or if the image link is broken. Some web editors like Front Page will simply put the name of the image in the alt tag. Placing descriptive information that includes keywords (and concepts) can help boost your rank on some search engines.
Comments:
Comments are hidden text inside of web pages. If you look at the source of some pages, you will see text that <!- looks like this -->. Those are hidden comments. You will notice that they cannot be seen on the actual page. Some engines read these comments, so having your keywords can potentially help on some engines. Note, however, that some engines may consider this to be spam, so be very careful how you use them.
Page Body:
The page body is the rest of your page that does not fall within any of the HTML tags. Above all else, you should concentrate on making this section of your pages clear. Use your keywords/phrases in this section (near the beginning is important), but don't just throw in nonsensical terms. Consider two things:
- Most search engines look for content. They are more intelligent than you probably imagine. Tell the story of your website in the body, but choose your wording carefully.
- Humans will see this page. Remember, if all goes well and you get good positioning, people that find you through the engines will see this page first. It is up to you to give them a reason to continue into your site instead of simply clicking their back button.
Times Keyword Found:
This shows how many times the keyword was found within an element of the page analyzed. It is a good indicator, when compared to top performing pages, of what the limits are in repeating your keyword.
Times Variant of Keyword Found:
This shows how many keyword variants were found within an element of the page analyzed. A keyword variant is seen as a word that contains your keyword in it. For example, fishing would be a keyword variant of fish. The key phrase 'fly fishing' would be a variant of 'fish'. If an analysis of a page turns up with only 1 keyword, and 1 variant, then that means the only keyword found on the page was a variant. For example, if 37 keywords were found, and 26 variants were found, then 26 of those 37 keywords were actually variants.
Total Number of Words:
This shows the total number of words in the element of the page analyzed. This can give you a feeling of what various search engines may consider too much or too little.
In the META keywords category, this will show both the number of individual words and the number of 'keywords' found in your META tag. For example, "Cyberspace Headquarters" is two individual words, but it is one 'keyword'.
Keyword Weight / Keyword Density:
This shows what percentage of the words in the element of the page being analyzed is occupied by your keyword or phrase. In other words, if you are looking at the keyword weight in a meta description that contains 10 words, and your keyword is found in 2 words, your keyword weight would be 20%.
Keyword Prominence:
This is based on how close to the beginning of the element being analyzed that your keyword or phrase is found. If your keyword is the first word, then it will have a prominence of 100. The further into the element it gets, the lower the value will be.
For example, if your keyword is Flyfishing, you would have a meta description prominence of 100 if the description reads 'flyfishing is the most exciting sport of all time'. If flyfishing was in the middle of that phrase, the prominence would be 50.
Number of immediate Keyword repeats:
This value shows how many times a keyword is immediately repeated in the element being analyzed. For example, 'fish, fish, fish' shows 2 immediate repeats of the word fish.
Your Content:
This value shows what we found in your page for the element being analyzed.
Number of Hyperlinks on Page:
This value shows how many hyperlinks are found on the page being analyzed.
Number of Hyperlinks with Keyword:
This value shows how many hyperlinks on the page being analyzed contained your keyword. If you have 10 hyperlinks on your page, each having your keyword listed twice, this value would be 10.
Number of times keyword found within hyperlinks:
ThThis value shows the total number of keywords found on the page being analyzed that are contained within hyperlinks. If you have 10 hyperlinks on your page, each having your keyword listed twice, this value would be 20.