by Elliot Jones
Working in an agency, it’s easy to forget that not everyone on the planet lives, eats and sleeps digital marketing. Some terms that we use on a daily basis, never crop up in normal conversation, but yet we expect every client to automatically know what they mean. Well this article’s here to help you out. I’ve put together a glossary of the 8 most commonly misunderstood terms, which when used, usually evoke the question, “…ummmmm, what does that mean again?”
Cookie
- It is likely that over the past few weeks, you’ve heard a lot about the new EU Cookie Legislation that is due to come into force on 26th May. A cookie, sometimes referred to as a HTML cookie, or browser cookie, is a small piece of code downloaded by your web browser containing information about your site visit. Depending on the exact function of the cookie, websites use these cookies to tailor your experience to you. For example, when you log into your ebay or amazon account, cookies are used to remember which items you viewed on your last visit. Cookies are also used by Google Analytics to track user activity on site. As of the 26th May, users must be made aware of any cookie that isn’t 100% necessary for site usability.
Bounce Rate
- The Google definition of ‘Bounce Rate’ is “the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page”. Often bounce rate is an indication of how relative the content on a page is to the keyword or ad that drove the user there. If a user clicked on an organic listing with the title “Buy Fish For £1 in London”, but the landing page contained content about ‘Buying Cars’ it is likely that the user will ‘bounce’, and leave the site, to continue searching.
CTR
- CTR stands for click-through-rate and is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times that your ad is shown (impressions). Your ads and keywords each have their own CTRs, unique to your ad group’s performance.
Press Release
- A press release (within the SEO world) is a piece of written content, aimed at online news distributors. The content must be deemed to be ‘newsworthy’, regarding a company update or change. Overly sales focussed ‘press releases’ are deemed as advertorial, and will not be accepted by news distributors
Negative Keywords
- A negative keyword is a keyword added to a Paid Search campaign, which can be added at Account, Campaign or Ad Group level, which, if present in a search query will prevent your ad from being shown. This allows for improved search query targeting for your ads. For example, if you are running a campaign for a car sales site, you might include the negative keyword “wash” so that your ads aren’t shown for people searching ‘car wash’. This improves ad relevancy, which in turn helps to improve quality score, CTR and ultimately conversions.
Quality Score
- Quality Score is a dynamic metric that measures how relevant your ad, keyword and webpage are to the search term. Quality Scores help ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and the better its ad position.
Internal Linking
- Internal linking is the process of adding links within your own site to improve user navigation and also aid search engines in deciphering page relevancy for specific keywords. Other than links within the ‘navigation’ of the site, usually located in a bar placed horizontally under the header, or vertically in the left hand sidebar, internal links within content add even more weight when it comes to search engine crawlers deciphering page relevancy. For example, if you keep a blog within a domain.com/blog subdirectory, internal links can be added within blog posts, linking back to key pages on the site.
Match Type
- You can specify your keywords’ match type as either broad, broad match modifier, phrase, exact or negative. Broad shows for all searches including your keyword, Broad Match Modifier is a method of further targeting broad keywords, Phrase shows for all searches that specifically contain that phrase, Exact is self- explanatory and Negatives enable you to ensure your ad does not appear against certain irrelevant searches.
