How To Speak Search Engine [Glossary]

Digital Marketing is a complex and complicated industry, take it from us. When it comes to speaking the lingo it can seem a little bit intimidating and daunting, to begin with. Some of these words are second nature to those who have been working in the industry for a few years, for those just becoming familiar with the industry. We have been privy to the industry slang and jargon for quite a few years now, so know the ones that you may find the most daunting and the ones that you definitely need to know! So use these words to learn how to speak search engine.
As a result, we have created one fantastic blog that includes all the essential terminology that you need to know to get the results from your digital marketing campaign. This blog explains both common and more technical terms that can be used throughout the industry to help you grow profit through your digital marketing.

1. Alt Tags – A description of an image in your site’s HTML. Search engines only read the ALT text of images and not the image itself. Creating an Alt-Tag for your image will also help the partially sighted when scanning your website they will be able to associate the text with the image to create the full picture.
2. Algorithm – Many search engines use algorithms, which is a set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, specifically by a computer.  Search Engine’s uses the formulae as a way to rank the web pages displayed as a result of a user’s search query.
3. Anchor Text – The actual text of a link to a web page, the text is normally dark blue and underlined, or purple if you have visited the link in the past. The anchor text helps to describe what you will see if you click through.
4. B2B/B2C – Business to business and business to customer refers to the client base in which a business has and the type of products and services sold. Most businesses that sell products will be directed at singular customers(B2C) while most services are aimed at other businesses (B2B).
5. Bounce Rate – The percentage of users that visit your site and then leave after viewing only one page without interacting.
6. Domain – The main web address of your site. It is important to renew ownership of your domain for several years. Search engine rankings favour websites with longer registrations because it shows commitment.
   
7. eCommerce – An eCommerce store is a website which sells products directly from the site, formally your storefront, now online.
8. GA – Google Analytics, a platform in which you can track the dimensions and metrics of your website, allowing you to see how your website is performing and the areas that need improving.
9. HTML – The code part of your website that search engines read. It is important to keep your HTML as clean as possible so that search engines read your site easily and often.
10. Keywords – A word that a user enters in a search. Each page should be optimised with the goal of drawing in visitors who have searched for specific keywords. A useful tool to work out which keywords to use is the “Google Keyword Planner.”
11. KPI – Key Performance Indicators are used to measure the features you deem important in your organisation, these can be whichever factors you choose depending on the type of organisation and what your overall goals are.
12. Landing Page – A page on your website which displays the information that you want your users to see, specifically used for marketing campaigns.
13. Metadata – Data that tells the search engine what your website is about. The meta title should include your keyword and be between 50 and 60-character length. The meta description should be a brief description no more than 160 characters. It is displayed on search engine results page below the page title as a sample of the content on the page.
14. PLA – Product listing ads are now appearing in search results which include product information including product image, name, and price. These can appear more striking than the standard ads in Search Engine Results Page’s, as can be seen in this Coco Chanel example. 
15. PPC – Pay per click is an advertising method in which advertisers put an ad in an online advertising venue and pays that venue each time a visitor clicks on the ad.
16. ROI – Return on investment is normally used for personal financial decisions whether it’s comparing to a company’s profitability or to the efficiency of different investments.  
17. RSS Feed – RSS stands for “really simple syndication”. It is a subscription-based way to get updates on new content from a web source.
18. SEO – Search engine optimisation is a combination of strategies and techniques designed to increase the number of visitors to a website, this is usually done by having a high-ranking placement in the search results page. These include Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.
19. SERP – Search Engine Ranking Page is the page that you are sent to after you run a query in a search engine. It normally has 10 results on it, but this may vary depending on the query and the search engine.
20. UX – User experience is the overall experience of a user using a particular system, for example, how easy they find the website to navigate and how they enjoy using it. The better the User Experience, the better your site with rank, convert and much more, a good UX is priceless.

Hopefully, these tools with help you out when you are next struggling in a meeting with your digital marketing agency, or when you find yourself at a networking event with some web developers. It is important to use the correct terminology, but if you are still unsure Google pretty much always has the answer.
If you have any other Digital Marketing terminology that sometimes leaves you tongue-tied then let us know and we will be happy to help.