10+ Key Digital Marketing Terms You Better Know in 2022

Here are the most important Digital Marketing terms you need to know moving forward. Take advantage of this article by paying attention to tips and notes from us.

CTR

You may be already familiar with that one. CTR or Click-Through Rate refers to the percentage of people who click on a link compared to the number of times that link is shown. Simply, CTR shows how often people who see your ad end up clicking it.

For example, if an ad is shown 100 times and 20 people click that ad, then the CTR is 20% (20 clicks/100 impressions). If 200 people see the link, but only 12 people click it, then the CTR is 6%. 

CPA

The essential metric in marketing. CPA or Cost Per Acquisition refers to the cost of acquiring a new customer (or conversion) from an ad. To calculate your advertising campaign’s cost per acquisition, take your advertising spend and divide it by the number of new customers acquired. 

Note from us: a conversion is when a visitor takes the desired action on a web page. For example, they purchase, call your business, download an ebook, or sign up for a newsletter. 

CPC

The cost-per-click model is also known as pay-per-click (PPC). Cost Per Click is similar to CPA. Instead of the advertising cost of getting a new customer (or conversion), CPC shows how much you pay for each click on your ads. In other words, when you run ads campaign on search engines, Google Display Network for AdWords, social media platforms and other publishers, they bill you based on cost per click (CPC). 

Note from us: A click costs an average of $2, but there are wide variations among industries.

CPM

Imagine you’re working with a local company that wants to use paid advertising to increase awareness of their products or services. CPM or Cost Per Mille (Thousand) is the most effective pricing model for accomplishing that goal. It will show you the cost for every 1,000 impressions for an ad. “Impressions” means the number of times an ad is served to a site page visitor. For example, if an ad is served to page visitors 1,000 times, the number of impressions is 1,000.

Keywords in Digital Marketing

Another term you need to know about is “keyword.” A keyword is a word or phrase people use when searching for information on search engines. When searching, you may type long queries like “Digital marketing certification Canada” or just the word “marketing”. Keywords that have three words and less are called short-tail keywords. Queries with more than three words are called long-tail keywords.

For example, if your business sells mobile phone cases. A relevant keyword to target could be “buy phone accessories” or “iPhone cases”. You might also look at a more long-tail keyword like “protective blue iPhone cases”. It’s going to be highly relevant, less competitive, and easier to rank for. Let’s take a look at an example. 

Note from us: It’s important to avoid keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is when you use too many keywords in your web page’s content to rank higher on search engines. Search engines may penalize you if you stuff keywords. In your SEO efforts, it’s more important to focus on providing valuable and helpful information rather than meeting a specific keyword count.

SEO

A common technique businesses use to target keywords is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is when a company optimizes its website according to different target keywords to increase its position on search engines. SEO efforts focus on improving website visibility on organic or natural listings. A higher search engine rank results in more organic or unpaid traffic.

Traffic

The amount of traffic generated from a search engine such as Google, or Bing is called organic traffic. This type of traffic is sometimes referred to as “free traffic.”

Paid traffic is the complete opposite of organic traffic. It’s the amount of traffic generated from advertising networks. You can generate paid traffic from advertising campaigns on search engines (programs like Google Ads or Microsoft’s Bing Ads), social media, and other ad platforms. 

SEM

SEM or Search Engine Marketing refers to strategies to get a higher position on search engines. Instead of SEO, SEM uses paid advertising to ensure that your business’s products or services are visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

One thing that you’re probably going to find for your search query is some paid listings. Paid listings are very different from the traditional organic or natural listings that you focus on for your SEO efforts. These paid listings are advertisements and programs like Google Ads or Microsoft’s Bing Ads. When a user types in a certain keyword, SEM enables your business to appear as a result for that search query. 

SERP

SERP or Search Engine Results Page is the list of results you see when searching for a term on a search engine. A typical search engine results page will have ten organic results that link out to different web pages. If your website is in the fifth position of the 1st page of search results, then your SERP ranking is #5. 

Domain Authority

Search engines such as Google usually determine the authority of a website on search results using a metric called Domain Authority or DA. Metric was first developed by Moz that predicts how likely a domain is to appear in the SERPs compared to its competitors. Domain Authority is a scale from 1-100, 1 being the lowest rank and 100 being the highest. The higher the domain authority, the more search engines trust you and rank your website higher in search results.

Landing page 

“A caveman should be able to glance at it and immediately grunt back what you offer” — Donald Miller, CEO of marketing company StoryBrand. 

A landing page’s purpose is to provide the most relevant experience for its intended traffic source. It acts as the first touchpoint for relevant customer experiences. A landing page leads visitors towards a single, specific action. This can be joining your mailing list, downloading an ebook, enrolling in a free plan, or signing up to attend a workshop.