Glossary

You might find our glossary useful when exploring the world of digital marketing, website design, and search engine optimisation. For your convenience, these terms are in alphabetical order.

Algorithm – The basis on which search engines rank websites on the internet.  Google’s algorithm, for example, changes many times throughout the year as they aim to provide their users with the most relevant, authoritative results.

Animation – A form of video, made from cartoon-like characters and visuals rather than real life.

App – Short for application, an app is an extension of a website, more user-defined for mobile devices.

Backlinks – Links on external third party websites which link to your website.

Basket – A piece of functionality in a website which enables users to select products and put into a shopping basket with a view to making an online purchase.

Bespoke Website – A website which requires unique coding to provide specified functionality or appearance.

Bing – One of the major global search engines.

Black Hat SEO – Tactics used by some SEO companies to get their clients websites to the top of search engine rankings in a very short space of time.

Blog – Short for ‘web log’, this is a regularly updated section of a website containing information such as company news, photos, competitions, industry news, product launches and so on.

Blogger – A Google-owned blogging platform

Brochure Website - A simple website which is an entry-level website for a company to an industry.

Cart – A form of shopping basket, with the Americanism of cart now prevalent in the UK.

CMS – This stands for ‘content management system’ which is the back end admin interface for a website where content can be added in the form of images, text, blogs etc.

Competitor Analysis – The activity of analysing your competitors' products or services to gain a competitive advantage.

Content – Text that appears on your website.  Well written content is excellent for helping search engine optimisation.

Conversion – In the digital world, conversion refers to the process of successfully converting website visits to orders for example.  A good website conversion rate is in the region of 2%.

Customised Website – The same as a bespoke website, where coding of a website is unique due to the nature of the functionality required.

Development – In the world of websites, development refers to the ongoing process of making amendments and modifications to a website’s code to improve either functionality, appearance of performance.

Desktop PC – A machine with a box unit and monitor, common in the workplace.

Design – The process of creating a website template to suit a company’s profile, image, and reputation.

Digital Marketing – This encompasses everything to do with website design and creation, search engine optimisation, content writing, social media management and many other aspects.

Domain – This is the website address.

E-commerce Website – A website platform which enables users to make online transactions to purchase or rent a company’s products or services.

Engagement – In the digital marketing sense, this means capturing the attention of a user.

Ethical SEO – Ethical search engine optimisation is based on sound, logical processes, and refers to the techniques used.

Facebook – The world’s largest social media platform which companies should take advantage of for their digital marketing via social media management, enabling the targeting of millions of potential customers.

Functionality – The term given to describe how a website works in terms of what it can achieve and what it is capable of doing.  The more functionality required, the more coding is required.

Geographic Results – The results on SERPs (search engine results pages)that search engines are showing more and more, aiming to provide users with targeted results based on their geographic location.

Hosting – A website sits on a server so that it is accessible on the internet.  This is called hosting a website.

Google – The world’s largest search engine platform, with around 85% of all search in the UK, and around 65% in the USA.

Google+ - Google’s social media platform.

Instagram – An ever-growing social media platform which is based on the sharing of images.

Keyword – Identifying keywords which a website owner wants their website to be found for is the essential starting point of successful search engine optimization.

Keyword Density – This refers to the number of times a particular keyword appears in a paragraph of text.  Too much and it is classed as keyword stuffing, too little and it counts for little.

Keyword Stuffing – This refers to where particular keywords appear too many times in a paragraph of text, indicating possible spamming, which is not advised.

Likes – On the Facebook platform, users press the LIKE button to indicate their preferences.

LinkedIn – A social media platform, ideal for professionals, and professional company LinkedIn pages.

Links – These are how websites, blogs, and social media platforms link to each other on the internet, hence the worldwide ‘web’.

Mobile Friendly – The term used to describe that is easily viewed on a mobile phone or tablet.  In order to do this, the website would need to be responsive.  With more and more people viewing websites on the move, this is of ever-increasing importance.

Organic – The phrase used to describe the free or ‘natural’ listings that a search engine displays in results.  These websites are often seen as being the most authoritative for that industry.

Pinterest – A social media platform where users ‘pin’ images from different websites across the internet.

Position – Another name for ranking or listing on SERPs (search engine results pages).

Posts – A snippet of information, blog article or feature that a user places onto a website or social media platform for people to read, view, comment, and share.

PPC – Pay per click advertising is another way of getting a website visible on the major search engines.  An example of PPC is Google Adwords where every time a user clicks on your online advert, your company gets charged.  These ads are normally displayed at the top of the page and down the side of the SERPs page.

Ranking – Another name for position or listing on a search engine results page.

Responsive – This is the term given to a website which is able to detect on what device it is being used and change accordingly in terms of its appearance.  It can recognise if it is being viewed on a desktop PC, mobile phone or tablet.

Retweets – This is the act of a user in the Twitter social media platform sharing a specific tweet with their followers.  Large amounts of retweets mean that a tweet can go viral across the internet in a very short space of time, free of charge.

Reviews – Often used on consumer-based websites, reviews are written by customers about products and services which can then be read by potential customers.

ROI – Stands for ‘return on investment’, a common phrase used by business owners to gauge whether they are spending budgets effectively.

Search Engine – An online platform where users can go to search the world wide web and find websites that relate to the keywords that they type in.

SEO – Stands for ‘search engine optimisation’, or in the USA, ‘search engine optimization’.  This is the process of aiming to get websites to the top of search engine rankings through ethical methods such as relevant link building, content writing, and many others.

SERPS – This stands for ‘search engine results pages’.  In other words, the listings of pages of websites that appear when a user carries out a search in a search engine.

Servers – Where websites and email exchanges sit and are hosted, to be accessed by users.  These can either be in-house or external servers.

Shares – A commonly used process on social media accounts for users to share content such as text, images, videos and animations with their friends and followers.

Social Media – This is the collective name given to online platforms where users go to connect with their friends.

Social Proofing – The process of submitting posts to social media platforms.

Storyboard – The initial design and concept stage of a video or animation, to determine the message and image that wants to be portrayed.

Tablet – A mobile device which is smaller than a PC but usually larger than a mobile phone.

Template Websites – Off the shelf websites that can be customised and dressed up for specific companies.

Traffic – The term given to the number of users that a website receives for any given time period.

Twitter – The world’s second most subscribed social media channel where users tweet and have fans.

URL – This is an acronym for ‘uniform resource locator’ which put simply means a website address.

Users – The name given to people who visit your website online.

Vimeo – An online platform for sharing video content.

Visibility – The general extent to which a website can be seen on the internet.  The higher the visibility, the more traffic is likely to be generated by the website.

Visitors – Another name for users on a website.

Website – An online portal for companies and individuals where products and services can be displayed through images and text.  A good website needs to be user-friendly, easily navigable, aesthetically pleasing and functional.

Yahoo – One of the three major search engines in the world, more popular in the USA than it is in the UK.

YouTube – The Google-owned video sharing platform online.