Power of Digital

Your DIGITAL MARKETING Survival Guide

Index INTRO.................................................... X CONTENT............................................... 6 DESIGN............................................... 12 SEARCH.............................................. 18 MEDIA................................................ 28 CRM................................................... 34 SOCIAL................................................ 42 MOBILE.............................................. 50 PARTING THOUGHTS............................ 60

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Intro The digital age has changed everything about the way companies market themselves. Adaptation for some has been a painful necessary evil to the way we do business today. The truth is that you don’t have to love digital marketing, nor do you have to do it full-time. You do however owe it to yourself and your business to have the foundational understanding of the steps you should be taking to move forward.

This survival guide was completed to help compile information into an easy and digestible format that will clearly define the next steps you will need to take.

How to use the survival guide: read through each section independently of one another. At the back of each section you will find several questions that should be answered by you and your team. These questions do not represent everything for that section, instead they provide the start of a deeper discussion. In addition, we provided a notes section so you can jot down additional questions or notes that you may want to ask.

Once you have completed a section and answered the questions your next step will be to fix anything that you deem necessary. Power of Digital’s goal is to provide you the resources to get things done.

Wishing you continued success!

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01 CONTENT Your Content Survival Guide

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CONTENT

plan, for example:

What are the wants, needs, interests, questions, concerns and pain points of your target customer? What expertise do you have that is of use to them? What kind of content could you distribute that would inform, entertain and engage them in a meaningful way?

Type of Content

So how do you create content that engages?

1. Audience: Do you really know who your target customer is? Have you clearly defined that persona? If someone asked you right now who is your ideal customer and what are their interest can you answer that? If you can’t then you need to do this first! Check below an example of persona.

2. Planning: Determine what objectives your organization needs to achieve, then what role content will play in meeting them. How will the content you create match between your target customer’s interest, concerns and information needs and your expertise? Create a content

Frequency

Blog Post

3x a week

Email Campaign

1x a month

Twitter Post

Daily

Facebook Post

Daily

Video

Once a quarter

Any other type of content

Assign a frequency

3. Content Development: Great content begins with a clear sense of what you need to say. What tone do you want the content to have? How do you want it to represent your expertise and the values of your organization? Your content

Max Johnson Age: 29 Occupation: Software Developer Status: Single Location: Chicago, IL

“Everyone has different priorities.

What is important to me is finding things I care about”

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Tier: Expert Archetype: The Frequent Traveler

Particular, Adventurous, Tech-Savvy

BIO

Max is a software developer based in Chicago, who travels very often for business, and enjoys traveling for leisure as well. During his leisure travels, he is not a big fan of typical tourist attractions and the expenses they incur. He tries to seek out things that are different and local, based on what his preferences are. When he travels for business he wants everything to go smoothly, with no surprises or hiccups. Although he is good with the difficulties that may come with travel, (ie. using Google Maps, directions, etc.), he would like assistance in planning logistics, such as hotels and car rental.

CONTENT

must be optimized for your target customers, for search engines and for your business objectives.

into how people respond to your content. This will enable you to improve on what you’re doing.

4. Implementation: You have defined your target customer; you know what they are interested in and developed a tone for your content. You started to define what types of content need to be created and started creating it. Now determine how will you distribute your content. Do you need tools to help you schedule your social postings so they are more manageable? Do you know how you will publish those new website pages or blog post?

It’s very important to ensure that you have a strategy to implement the content you’ve developed so you reduce the risk of becoming overwhelmed.

Your content should not be haphazardly created.

You must create content that your clearly defined audience would like to engage with.

5. Monitor Results: The beauty of digital marketing is that you can monitor your results almost instantly after publishing a new piece.

Pay attention to what impact your content has on your website traffic and search engine rankings. Are people sharing your social post?

Are they leaving comments to your blog post?

By tracking the performance of your content you will be able to identify important insights

Tip Here are a few content tools that can help: www.contently.com www.scripted.com www.crowdcontent.com

EXAMPLE OF PERSONA MOTIVATIONS

Excitement - curiosity - exploring - comfort - ease - value

GOALS

»» Avoid typical tourist attractions »» To gain local insight and guidance on new places »» For travel to be comfortable, without surprises

FRUSTRATIONS

»» Generic tourist guidebooks that point to obvious places »» Not having personalized advice »» Guides cluttered with advertising

PERSONALITY

TECHNOLOGY

Extrovert

Introvert

IT and Internet

Sensing

Intuition

Software

Thinking

Feeling

Judging

Perceiving

Mobile App Social Network

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Your CONTENT Checklist Do you have a content marketing mission statement?

Do you know what the content requirements are for each of your delivery channels?

Are you posting new content a minimum of once a month?

Do you know what type of content engages your target customer?

Have you developed your tone i.e. serious, educational, fun loving, inspirational, other?

Do you have a content planning document?

Are you monitoring the results of your content? i.e. how often it’s shared, is it ranking in the search engines, are people commenting?

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Notes

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02 DESIGN Your Design Survival Guide

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DESIGN

“Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.”

- Neville Brody

It’s very important to remember that although we are all creative beings, we cannot always be the individuals to bring that creative into life. Design is a very important aspect of communicating your brand to your target audience.

We all have been to a website or received an email that made us wonder who created that? What reaction would you rather receive, the one that feels like WOW or “Is this spam?”.

4. Always make sure you have a call to action.

A call to action clearly tells your customer or prospect what they should do next. For example: Learn More, Experience The Trip, Call for an Estimate.

5. Don’t skip the design step! Many of us are time constrained and find that having the text is enough. Research shows that facebook posts with images get 39% more interaction vs. text alone 6. Leverage technology: I strongly believe that there’s no substitute for a great graphic designer, however at times we don’t have a choice so we must leverage technology to make it happen.

As entrepreneurs we sometimes have to take the lead in every aspect of our business and this includes design. We may not have a degree in design, however we understand that it needs to get done.

So how do you create design that WOWs?

1. Know your audience. You will continue to see this listed throughout the workbook because it’s such an important aspect of why we do what we do. Knowing your audience will allow you to create images that inspire them to take the next steps.

2. Clearly define what you are designing.

The guidelines and requirements for a website design will be different from the guidelines and requirement for a print design.

3. Ensure that your design incorporates your brand tone, color and logo. This will help individuals already recall your messaging as they see it in various formats.

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a. Canva: Canva lets users create social images, blog covers, banner ads, and a whole host of other visuals completely free of charge. There are options to pay for added features and assets.

b. Piktochart: Infographics and reports are made a whole lot easier with Piktochart.

It’s essentially a drag and drop infographic creator. If you have an eye for design, you can start with a blank canvas.

DESIGN

c. Pexels: Overused images of people in headsets staring at computer screens or suited men around a boardroom table are incredibly inauthentic. But we need stock photos of some kind from time to time. We don’t always have the budget to spend big bucks on photos to accompany every blog post, particularly if we’re posting several times a day. This is where Pexels comes in.

Here, you can find genuinely great looking stock photos to use completely freely (without attribution). No catches.

d. Flaticon: Essentially the Pexels of icons, Flaticon is home to 2,500 free icons and has the functionality to allow users to create their own as well. These are incredibly handy for infographics, presentations, and reports.

e. Venngage: Venngage is one of the more advanced infographic creators available online. It offers users the ability to customize one of many existing templates.

You can access limited templates in the free account or many more with one of the low cost premium accounts.

Tip Need a pro? Leverage your local colleges for qualified paid interns

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Your DESIGN Checklist Have you defined what your designing? i.e. website, landing page, email, social post Have you clearly articulate the purpose of your website, landing page, email ++?

Do you know what your brand colors are?

Do you know what font style you want to use?

Do you have a logo?

Are you applying user behavior into the design workflow?

Do you have a call to action?

Are you applying your defined tone i.e. serious, educational, fun loving, inspirational, other?

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Notes

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03 SEARCH Your Search Survival Guide

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PAID SEARCH

We all know how to search for something on Google, and many of us even remember other search engines such as Yahoo and AOL. Today Google has 75% of the total search market share.

There are other search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo and Baidu. This also doesn’t take into consideration niche search engines such as http:// www.baseball-reference.com/.

When we think about search we usually think of the two types of search results: Paid and Organic.

3. Targeted Ads: We have the ability to show ads on specific days, specific time of day, specific regions and even down to a city/state. With the ability to focus our ads we can maximize our reach to our ideal target customer.

Top Reasons to use paid search:

4. Testing: One of the most overlooked advantages of paid search marketing is the ability to test online marketing campaigns through the vast amount of features and data that the available platforms provide.

1. Immediate Traffic: Ranking organically takes time and some of us are looking for instant gratification to make sure we are visible to prospective customers. The fastest way to make that happen is with paid search.

2. First Page Exposure in the Top 3 Search Engines: People rarely look beyond the first page results, and in many cases people rarely look below the fold. With the proper budget you can have your ads positioned within the first top 3 results on the search results for everyone to see immediately.

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5. Relevance: Search results are all about relevance, or at least they should be. When someone does a search, they should only get the most relevant results for what they searched for. Google, having the most advanced algorithms to detect relevancy, do a fantastic job of delivering relevant results to users. Google’s sponsored ads, like the organic results, are weighted very heavily on relevancy – from the key phrase to the ad text to the landing page.

This creates the best user experience for the end user and also allows advertisers to target and receive very refined, qualified traffic.

PAID SEARCH

Organic Search

Paid Search

Example of paid vs. organic results:

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ORGANIC SEARCH

Top Reasons to use organic search:

Website visits Time on site

1. Organic search is based on a number of different factors, however this is a coveted space in the search results because the click through rates are higher, the engagement is higher and the cost per acquisition is lower than paid search.

2. Trust & Authority: When your business shows up in the organic search down the middle of the page you are perceived as having a higher degree of authority, authenticity and credibility than your competitors. Right or wrong this is proven to be the truth.

3. The challenges of Search Engine Optimization is the amount of time it takes to rank and how keeping that rank position isn’t the easiest thing to do. Below is a graph that provides insight into all of the items that goes ranking with Search Engine Optimization.

Pages per session Bounce rate Referring domains Content length Website security (HTTPS) Keyword in body Keyword density Keyword in title Keyword in meta Video on a page Not important

Key takeaways: 1. The number of website visits is the most important page-ranking factor. Websites with higher authority consequently gain more traffic, and as a result, have a better chance of getting into the top positions.

2. User behaviour signals such as time on site, pages per session and bounce rate indicate the authority of a website and influence its rankings as well.

3. A website’s number of referring domains can indicate its authority, which together with the previously mentioned factors influences a website’s rankings.

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ORGANIC SEARCH

45%

is the difference in content length between TOP-3 and 20th position

10,000 is the difference in the number of referring domains between the 1st and 10th positions

65%

of domains ranking for high volume keywords are HTTPs

Very important

49%

is the bounce rate for the domains ranking within TOP-3

4. Google states that website security, which is indicated by HTTPS implementation, is important, but has little influence as a ranking factor. The results we received prove this statement. Though it is important for various reasons having an HTTPS version of your website doesn’t drastically change its ranking position.

5. The influence of the on-page Search Engine Optimization factors proved to be less significant that the content on the site, so their status as major ranking factors can be dismissed.

3-3.5

pages are visited per one session when user lands on the website from search

18%

of domains ranking for high volume keywords don’t have the keyword in the body

SOURCE SEMrush research

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Your PAID SEARCH Checklist Do you have Google analytics set-up?

Do you have Google Webmaster set-up?

Do you have a list of target keywords?

Do you have a list of negative keywords?

Have you created your ads?

Are you driving traffic to your website or a dedicated landing page?

Do you have a target cost per click?

Are you monitoring your bids?

Are you monitoring your click through rates?

Are you monitoring your quality score?

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Your ORGANIC SEARCH Checklist Do you have a list of keywords you would like to rank for?

Do you have Google analytics set-up?

Do you have Google Webmaster set-up?

Do your website pages have title tags, meta descriptions and H1 tags?

Did you incorporate your target keyword into your website content?

Are you blogging? If yes, are you incorporating your target keywords into the blog post?

Do you have social? If yes, are you incorporating your target keywords into the social post Do you have a backlink strategy?

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Notes

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04 MEDIA Your Media Survival Guide

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MEDIA

Media buying isn’t a step many of us would like to take because it can be expensive. However the reality is that in order to extend our reach we must do something. You have to decide what that something is. Are you looking to reach more people on facebook by boosting your post? Are you willing to be present on Google when someone does a search? Would you prefer to do a mailer? (yes those still work). You can also choose to do them all.

Where can media be purchased? Choose from some of the below options, each having their own pros and cons to buying media on their platform.

TELEVISION

DIGITAL

SOCIAL

PROGRAMMATIC

PRINT/00H

RADIO/AUDIO

Each of these channels offers the opportunity (at a cost) to reach the audience you are targeting and engage them to become advocates, followers, consumers and more.

When purchasing media we called campaigns, be sure to define the goals and objectives. Campaigns are intended to be short term, with a specific call to action. Each campaign should have clearly defined goals and objectives. For example: Goal: To increase our social media followers, Objective: Reach 25,000 individuals between the age of 32-45 with a household income of $50K+.

For the example above the call to action could be for individuals to follow us on facebook, twitter or a specific social channel, which in turn will help to grow our follower count.

To get started it’s important to remember that media buying requires planning. Do not just jump and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on facebook just because that’s what everyone is talking about right now.

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Which channel should I choose? Before making a decision on a channel you should ensure that you have identified your target audience. Once you’ve completed that step then it’s important to know where that target audience spends most of their time. Is it watching TV? Streaming from HULU, Searching on Google, Instagram etc. Every media channel has a demographic profile that allows you the opportunity to ensure you spend your money in the right places.

What if I have a very small budget? Define small. It is recommended that depending on the goals and objectives you determine what the amount would be needed to reach your goal. If the amount needed is $2,500 and you only have $500 then that will negatively impact the outcome of your campaign. With budgets $500+ you can find a channel that will allow you to successfully build brand awareness and increase engagement within your social channels and paid search. With less than $500 it would be recommended that you identify organic ways to reach your goals and use those dollars for email marketing and discount promotions (if possible).

MEDIA

Customer and Campaign Lifecycle, what is that? Every customer starts and ends their relationship with a brand at different points in their lives and for different reasons. For example, You have a leaky roof, now you need a roof replacement you look for a roofer, you interview potential companies you choose the company, you negotiate price, you get your roof done and then that customer is gone. But are they really? If there was a way to engage that customer throughout the year when a friend mentions they have a leaky roof what do you think will happen?

A campaign works in a similar way, you have a goal you are trying to reach, you identify the channel, you set the budget, complete the creative, launch the campaign, run the campaign until the budget is exhausted and then stop. In order to determine next steps; you must realize that every campaign requires performance analysis and every lifecycle starts and ends at different points. Within the graph below you will the customer’s phase vs. the campaign phase. You should have something at every point.

Tip Media Planning and Buying leverages economies of scale, at times it will be more beneficial to work with someone who can get you discounted rates vs. launching your own campaign.

NEWSLETTER

SOCIAL ADS PPC

REVIEWS WEBSITE

BLOG ONLINE ADS

RADIO TV PRINT

BLOGS

MEDIA

WORD OF MOUTH

PR

SOCIAL NETWORKS COMMUNITY FORUM

PROMOTIONS

STORE DIRECT MAIL EMAIL

ECOMMERCE

FAQ KNOWLEDGE BASE

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Your MEDIA Checklist Have you completed a campaign in the past? If yes, do you know how it performed?

Do you know who your target audience is?

Have you identified where your audience spends their time?

Have you determined where in the lifecycle you would like to focus your campaign? i.e. building awareness or driving purchase? Have you determined how much budget will be needed to complete the campaign? If yes, is it too much?

If the budget to complete the campaign is too much have you determined alternative options to reach your target audience?

Have you started to create the creative assets needed to launch your campaign? i.e. banners, email creative, direct mail creative?

Do your assets have a call to action? i.e. Buy Now, Call Now Have you determined how the campaign performance will be tracked? i.e. Google Analytics, dedicated 800 number 34

Notes

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05 CRM Your CRM Survival Guide

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CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System: is a term that refers to practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth. CRM systems are designed to compile information on customers across different channels -- or points of contact between the customer and the company -- which could include the company’s website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials and social media. CRM systems can also give customer-facing staff detailed information on customers’ personal information, purchase history, buying preferences and concerns.

3. CRMs allow you to streamline employee training. As a small business owner you do it all.

However at some point you will bring in staff to help you. Instead of giving your customer access to your email and notes giving them access to the CRM streamlines the onboarding and training process. They are exposed to every customer’s history ensuring a shorter learning curve and higher customer service.

Reasons your business should use a CRM:

Choosing a CRM for your business is an important process. Following the below steps will get you started, but make sure you dedicate enough time to the research process to find the best CRM tool for your organization.

1. CRM organizations your data: How many times have you gone crazy looking for that phone number your wrote down on a sticky note or a business card for that possible great lead and never found it? One of the most basic functions included in almost any CRM system is the ability to input and manage data about your customers and leads. CRMs keep historical discussion so you always know when was the last time you spoke with your customer.

2. CRMs can automate your processes. Many CRM systems will allow you to schedule triggered communication emails at certain points of the customer’s lifecycle. These triggered emails ensure that you are always staying on top of engaging your customers and keeping your customer aware of what is happening within your organization.

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4. Turning leads into customers. Leads that go into a CRM can receive triggered emails. You can receive reminders that a lead needs to be contacted or to schedule that next coffee date.

The sales cycle for many service businesses take a bit longer than any of us expect, managing leads and turning them into customer’s is a great way to continue to grow your business

• Goals – It is important that you understand what problem you are trying to solve. Put the following goals in order of importance to your business to determine which CRM tool will be the most effective: »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »»

SOURCE searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/CRM

Track Leads and Lead Activity Track Customer Base Track Opportunities and Closing Rates Offer Connectivity Between Teams Manage Relationships Generate Customized Reporting Organize Business Operations Increase Profitability Increase Productivity

CRM

• Implementation – This component is key.

Any time that you are changing or introducing new software there is going to be a period of implementation. In some cases you may need an outside consultant or a staff person who is heading up the deployment. In either case, there is going to be a period of training and testing where the system bugs will be worked out and best practices will be established. So even if there are no external implementation costs, there are still costs associated with educating your team on the system and uploading your data into the new platform.

Implementation can incur substantial costs and will take time away from your teams’ current obligations, so do not underestimate this step.

• User Adoption – No matter which system that you choose, there will be members of your team who resist the change. In some cases, your sales force may feel threatened, as they believe that by giving up their customers’ contact information they are putting their positions at risk. The key here is to put your salespeople at ease and acknowledge that they are not at risk for losing or sharing their customers with others since they own the personal relationship with the client. Involving your sales team in your CRM selection process to get their buy in and keeping them involved all the way through the process helps salespeople feel less threatened by a new system. The more ownership your employees have in the selection of a new tool, the more likely they are to adopt it and help their colleagues adopt it as well.

• Mobility – Mobility is key in today’s world. Your team will most likely be mobile and will use a plethora of devices, from phones to tablets to laptops to access your new CRM system. Look for a tool that can be accessed using a variety of web-enabled devices. Remember that most sales people are early adopters of technology so you will want a platform that will be updated regularly and remain current with new technology.

• Customization – CRM tools are created with a multitude of business processes in mind.

Everyone’s processes are different. That is not a bad thing. This is what differentiates you from your competitors. It is important that your CRM is flexible enough to handle your processes.

Likewise, you want a CRM that will grow with your business and will be able to adapt to your changing processes without having to be replaced.

• Compatibility – While compatibility with multiple systems is becoming less of an issue as more and more applications are connected through application programming interfaces (APIs), you still want to check to ensure that the CRM system you choose can interface with other applications you already have in place. If you need help connecting all of your systems through APIs, look for a third-party platform that can integrate your systems to streamline your data organization.

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CRM

• Product Demo – Make sure that you get to access a product demonstration and most importantly that you use the demo. Try to break the demo. This is your chance to really test the system and see its strengths and weaknesses for your business’s needs. Too many times people will request a product demo only to give it a brief glance before assuming it will work. Taking a little extra time at this point will save you time in the long run. That’s a promise.

• Reporting – While all the functionality of the CRM is nice it is the product’s reporting capabilities that can really help you surpass your competition. The ability to customize reports based on your unique data will showcase your wins losses and opportunities for improvement.

You may think your processes are effective, but your data may show you otherwise. Ensuring your sales team is not afraid to input correct customer data becomes very powerful in determining the proper products, services, pricing and delivery requirements for your business.

Which CRM should I choose? There are a lot of options available to choose from. Clearly outlining the above will help you to narrow down your choices to find the solution that would fit the best.

Here are some options to get your started:

Apptivo Comprehensive CRM which provides an easy way to manage your contacts, schedules, notes, communications, tasks and more.

Batchbook Build up a customised contacts database, extend it with the details you need, track calls, emails, your customer’s tweets

Bitrix24 Vast suite of powerful business tools: collaboration, instant messaging, telephony, project management, document handling, scheduling, employee management, and more

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CRM

Capsule CRM While some of the competition tries to win you over with the length of their feature list, Capsule CRM is different because it concentrates on the basics: contact management, collaboration, sales pipeline, scheduling and tasks.

HubSpot HubSpot CRM stands out immediately for its pricing model. There are no unusably limited ‘free’ plans, no vast matrix of other accounts to browse – instead the core CRM is entirely free, and you only pay if you need to add extra sales or marketing modules.

Tip Insightly Insightly is a powerful CRM with a strong focus on project management. As well as managing sales pipelines, you’re able to set milestones, set and assign tasks, attach files and notes, define a schedule, produce reports, and more.

When selecting a CRM ensure you can export all of your data if you should ever need too!

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Your CRM Checklist Do you currently have a CRM? If yes, why do you want to change?

If you’ve never had a CRM why do you need one now?

How are you currently managing your customer’s, prospects and leads?

Do you have someone who can help you review possible solutions?

Do you have someone who can help you add content into the system?

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Notes

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06 SOCIAL Your Social Survival Guide

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SOCIAL

Using social media personally and professionally has become a way of life for many people. Social channels have provided individuals the opportunity to connect with their friends and family and the ability for businesses to reach their prospective customers.

When dealing with social media the biggest problem many businesses encounter is the ability to keep up with the content required to make the channel engaging. Do not underestimate the time it takes to create content that has the voice and branding you would like to portray to your existing and prospective customers.

Each social channel has there own rules of engagement. The content you can distribute on Facebook will be very different from what you will be able to do on Twitter. You need to take into consideration that when measuring your channels you need clearly defined key performance indicators (KPIs).

Many businesses create KPIs based on what they are trying to accomplish. If you’re looking to grow your audience you are going to want to track how many people like or follow your page. If you are looking for engagement, you want to track how many times your post has either been shared, or commented on.

Here are 5 social media tips to consider when working with you social media strategy:

1. Create a plan for each social media channel: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So many businesses make the mistake of blindly jumping into social media marketing without a strategy or plan. If you can’t answer questions such as “why are you on social media?” or “what social media platform features your target audience?” then it’s time to hit the reset button.

• Start putting together a plan in writing that you and your team can refer to when you need it.

• Your social media plan should consist of mini-plans for each social media channel you expect to be active on.

• You’ll have a plan for your Twitter, Facebook and so forth.

• If you’re just getting started, keep your number of active social networking sites to three or less.

For most businesses, particularly small businesses, trying to tackle five different social media accounts often results in doing a mediocre job with little to no results.

2. Post Consistently and Respectfully: Sending out one Tweet per day just isn’t going to cut it. Certain platforms like Instagram and Snapchat don’t necessarily move as fast as Twitter or Facebook. This means you don’t have to publish as often. But you should still develop a routine posting schedule and be consistent.

This ties back in with your social media

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SOCIAL

marketing plan. You should outline: • How often you plan to publish on each social media channel • What type of content you plan to publish • Social media outreach publishing schedule (reaching out to influencers via social media) Remember your followers are likely following hundreds or even thousands of other people. If you’re not publishing new content as often as the other accounts out there, it’s easy to get lost and forgotten.

3. Remember to Pay-to-Play: Facebook and other social media networks continue to significantly reduce the amount of organic visibility on your posts, which has more businesses resorting to paid social media advertising to get their message out there.

Whether it’s boosting a post or promoting a Tweet, social media advertising on these platforms continues to grow. If you want to accelerate your social media marketing efforts and have a budget for it, exploring paid advertising might be worth a try. The costs are generally lower than other platforms such as Google AdWords or even media buying, which makes social media advertising appealing for small businesses and startups.

get dozens of Retweets and their Instagram posts have hundreds of likes while yours are completely abandoned? When this happens, you should start to analyze what they’re doing that you aren’t. Look at: • • • • • •

The content they post Who they follow Who’s following them How often they post What time of the day they post What kind of headlines they use in their posts • Their most popular posts This will give you an idea of what’s working for your competitors and why they might be seeing more social media success. Once you start to get a feel for your competitor’s strategies, you’ll want to incorporate some of what they do into your own plan. At the same time you don’t want to completely copy a competitor.

5. Give people a reason to follow you: Why should people follow your company? This is the question you need to ask yourself. Think of it from the perspective of a consumer. They have thousands of choices of people to follow, so you have to stand out somehow. Create a type of value proposition specifically for your social media channels. For example: • You share behind the scenes content on Instagram • You share discount codes exclusively with your Twitter followers • You curate the best content in your industry on LinkedIn

4. Watch Your Competitors: Is one of your competitors absolutely killing it on social media? Does it seem like all of their Tweets

• You offer real-time customer service and support on Twitter • You host live webinars on Periscope

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SOCIAL

As you work on developing your social strategy, here are 7 free tools you can use to manage your social channels:

Buffer Buffer tracks your follower activity and determines the perfect moment to schedule tweets to maximize your exposure. With the Chrome extension, you can schedule content easily while browsing.

Likeable Hub Likeable Hub is a comprehensive social solution for SMBs that could even replace your marketing agency or consultant by aiding in content creation, social listening, social media advertising, lead generation, strategy, and support, and more.

With features like multiplatform scheduling, analytics, and a browser extension for posting, Buffer has become a top name in the social media space.

Individual use is free, and business plans include Small Business ($50 per month), Medium Business ($100 per month), and Large Business/Agency ($250 per month).

Hootsuite Hootsuite is a trusted giant in the social tools space known for its social listening tools and RSS feed capabilities for multiple social networks--allowing you to connect with more than 35 popular social media apps.

Noteworthy features include a multichannel social media listening tool, a scheduling tool, RSS feeds, analytics, and reporting.

Hootsuite is free for personal use but also offers Pro (from $9.99 per month) and Enterprise (custom pricing) plans.

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TweetDeck TweetDeck is great for all Twitter-savvy businesses. It has some of the most advanced and helpful Twitter functionalities--such as custom timelines, Twitter lists and searches, and team accounts--that will shave hours off social media management while helping you do more.

Most important, it’s free for all Twitter users.

SOCIAL

Friends+me SocialOomph

Friends+Me

Organize and analyze your Twitter accounts in one easy place using SocialOomph. It allows you to track your keywords, mentions, and retweets across multiple accounts and schedule tweet drafts.

Friends+Me is the definitive social media management tool for Google+. It’s a team-oriented platform that allows you and your co-workers to collaborate on your account and create content.

The slew of free features includes dld.bz URL shortening, direct message inbox and old tweet purging, and keyword tracking.

Its Google Chrome plug-in facilitates easy content sharing across your Google+ accounts, as well as other connected social media accounts.

SocialOomph is free to use, but you can also upgrade to Professional ($17.97 for two weeks) to access additional features for Facebook and Twitter.

Friends+Me is free to use and also offers Just+Me ($9 per month), Business+ ($29 per month), and Agency+ ($59 per month) plans.

MavSocial MavSocial, whose name is a hybrid of maven and social, aims to be a trusted expert in managing your business’s social media content. Its businessoriented visuals and management allow you to consolidate your social activity in one place.

Unlike other platforms, MavSocial gives you the option to post in multiple languages, even on the other side of the Great Firewall of China.

Plus, the starter kit is free, with the option to upgrade to an expanded platform for enterprises.

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Your SOCIAL Checklist Do you know your target persona?

Have you registered your business name for all social channels?

Do you know the frequency recommendation for content distribution on each channel?

Have you created a content calendar?

Do you know your channel KPIs? Are you using a social media management tool?

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07 MOBILE Your Mobile Survival Guide

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MOBILE

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel, digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching a target audience on their smartphones, tablets, and/or other mobile devices, via websites, email, SMS and MMS, social media, and apps.

Mobile is disrupting the way people engage with brands. Everything that can be done on a desktop computer is now avaialable on a mobile device.

From opening an email to visiting your website to reading your content, it’s all accessible through a small mobile screen. Consider:

HOW TO CREATE A MOBILE MARKETING STRATEGY As with any marketing effort, every brand and organization will develop a unique mobile strategy based on the industry and target audience.

Mobile technology is all about customization and personalization, which means mobile marketing is, too.

STEP 1 Create Mobile Buyer Personas

• 80% of internet users own a smartphone.

• Mobile platforms, such as smartphones and tablets, host up to 60% of digital media time for users in the U.S. • Google anticipates search queries on mobile devices to surpass desktop searches by the end of 2015.

Effective mobile advertising means understanding your mobile audience, designing content with mobile platforms in mind, and making strategic use of SMS/MMS marketing and mobile apps.

Understanding your audience is the first step to any marketing strategy, and buyer personas are a valuable tool to aid in that understanding. Buyer personas are simply fictional representations of your various types of customers. Create a profile that describes each one’s background, job description, main sources of information, goals, challenges, preferred type of content, objections, and/or role in the purchase process. It is easier to determine a channel and voice for your marketing messages when you have a clear picture of your target audience.

Make a specific point to detail your target audience’s mobile habits as well. How much of their web usage happens on mobile devices? Are they comfortable completing a purchase on a smartphone? A simple way to start is to research big data reports on mobile usage. Some interesting observations include: • 65% of all email is first opened on a mobile device.

• 48% of users start their mobile internet sessions on a search engine.

• 56% of B2B buyers frequently use smartphones to access vendors’ content.

• 95% of adults primarily use their smartphones to access content/ information.

To better understand your specific target market,

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monitor Google Analytics for your site’s mobile traffic numbers. You can survey clients and prospects about their mobile web usage.

A/B testing—which compares two versions of the same campaign on a certain channel—can also be informative for developing any aspect of buyer personas. When all other factors are the same, do your email campaign landing pages get more views when you send a related email on weekends or on weekdays? In the mornings or in the evenings?

Which title or email subject gets more clickthroughs?

Both the general and specific data will help develop audience personas that include mobile usage.

STEP 2 Set Goals The key to defining any effective strategy is to first decide what success looks like. Get the key stakeholders together to map your mobile marketing strategy. Identify goals by asking your team some of these questions: • What are we currently doing for mobile? This will define your starting point, and make sure everyone is on the same page as you begin.

• If you are already doing mobile marketing, how are those initiatives performing? This conversation will identify what is already working, what is not, and what’s not even being measured.

• What are your main objectives for including mobile marketing in your overall strategy?

Discuss why you’re considering mobile now, what conversations have led up to this point, and what you expect from mobile marketing.

• Who are your key audiences for mobile marketing? Talk about your customer personas in light of mobile usage updates.

How similar or different is each persona’s mobile usage?

• How are you engaging your mobile audience cross-channel? This discussion will help analyze how the channels you’re currently using can be included in your mobile marketing strategy.

STEP 3 Establish KPIs Just like your other marketing efforts, mobile marketing needs to be tested and optimized.

Determine which realistic measurable KPIs define your mobile campaign’s success. For example: • Engagement—Provide mobile-friendly content for potential customers who are searching for information about your industry or product. Make sure your website is mobile-responsive to improve mobile Search Engine Optimization.

• Acquisition—Make sure lead nurturing emails are mobile-friendly with clear calls-toaction. Buttons in emails should be near the top of the message and be big enough to easily tap in order to facilitate click-throughs.

Then make it as easy as possible for someone to fill out a form on your mobileoptimized landing page.

• Customer Service—In a connected social marketplace customer service is very much a marketing opportunity. Allow your customers to easily reach you through any platform they want, including simple clickto-call buttons for smartphone users.

In order to identify the right key performance indicators (KPIs) for your mobile marketing campaign, ask yourself: • Do I want to increase conversions from email messages?

• Am I trying to improve traffic to sales pages?

• How important is it that I generate more qualified prospects?

• Does our brand need to improve sales by

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converting more traffic on certain pages?

STEP 4 Monitor Mobile Metrics Google Analytics can help monitor mobile usage of your site: • Mobile behavior data reveals how well your mobile content engages your audience.

• Mobile conversion data will indicate whether or not some of your key landing pages still need to be optimized for mobile browsing.

Adding the Device Category field to the Site Content dashboard will display the quantity and quality of much mobile traffic to each individual page on your site.

The table on the Site Content dashboard includes metrics like pageviews and bounce rate. Add the Device Category by clicking the “Secondary dimension” menu above the first column and selecting “Device Category” from the “Users” submenu. The table will then display the mostviewed pages on your site, per device, so you can see how mobile actually affects your web traffic.

That information can hint at which search queries may be leading mobile traffic to your site, what content your mobile audience is most interested in, and which pages to optimize for mobile browsing first.

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MOBILE-FRIENDLY WEBSITE A mobile-friendly website is no longer an option— it’s a must. The rise in mobile traffic coupled with Google’s mobile-friendliness ranking factor means a brand’s site must adapt to mobile devices in order to stay competitive.

For search engines, “mobile-friendliness” means that: • Content fits on the screen without side-toside scrolling or zooming.

• Content loads quickly.

• Site returns no mobile-specific errors.

Google has even provided a free mobilefriendliness tool to help marketers determine how to best improve their sites.

The most important reason to maintain a mobilefriendly site is to create a consistent and engaging user experience. Mobile UX has a dramatic effect on every stage of the buying cycle: • 64% of mobile web users abandon pages if they don’t load within 10 seconds.

• 35% of executives could not make an intended purchase because the website they visited wasn’t mobile-friendly.

• 90% of the C-suite uses mobile devices to research business purchases.

Your mobile user experience is as easy and seamless as possible should be a primary marketing goal.

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ADDING MOBILE APPS TO THE MIX

In-App Notifications

Mobile apps can support many business goals including extending your product, driving engagement and even supporting e-commerce. To maximize an app’s impact on your marketing you will want to be involved in the entire process from app development through implementation.

In-app communications direct your user’s attention to specific actions, messages, and features within the app, and are opportunities for you to engage your users. These messages give you the chance to be more personal and creative than with SMS or push notifications because the user is already in your app and you aren’t limited by space constraints or message volume issues.

Just like any other marketing channel it’s important to consider how the app can be used for acquisition.

You may offer extra features or more mobile content in exchange for a user’s contact information, similar to how you would gate content on your website for the same purpose. You will also want to make sure the app encourages user engagement in order to build relationships and loyalty and—of course—drive conversions.

Here are three ways you can take advantage of inapp notifications:

Those conversations are driven by two types of messages: push notifications and in-app notifications. Both communicate directly to your audience so both should be considered strategic marketing channels.

Both push and in-app notifications can be powerful ways to reach your audience, particularly because they’ve already taken the time to engage with your brand by downloading your app.

Push Notifications Push notifications are messages or alerts delivered by your app to the user. These messages appear on the home screen of a user’s mobile device regardless of whether the user is engaged with the app or even has it open. For a push notification to work the user needs to have already downloaded your app and agreed to allow push notifications.

Luckily, 70% of mobile users allow push notifications.

Examples of push notifications include: • • • •

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Reminders Promotional messages Calls-to-action for specific events or goals Messages that are highly personalized based on user profiles

• Introduce new app features to your users.

• Send messages to promote engagement with specific content pieces.

• Drive conversions by delivering targeted call to actions (CTAs) at specific levels of engagement.

MOBILE

Here are some tools you can use to build a mobile app, no coding skills required:

appypie.com bubble.is The goal of Bubble is to make programming obsolete with its visual programming tool that allows you to build web and mobile applications without any code. The intuitive drag and drop builder allows you to easily add page elements like: text, videos, maps, icons, images, buttons, and more. Everything is customizable, down to font colors, icons, and the visibility of various elements based on what’s going on in the app you design.

Appy Pie platform enables brands to cost-effectively build and manage apps across operating systems and devices. Appy Pie can be utilized to build highly custom apps that can run on iOS and Android devices, in native code, as well as a progressive web app for much less than working with a dev shop.

Appy Pie’s App Builder is highly customizable and feature-rich, unlike other template solutions.

gocanvas.com GoCanvas is a mobile platform that makes it simple for business to automate how work is done, replacing outdated process and expensive paperwork. The GoCanvas App works on smartphones and tablets, helping companies easily collect information across their organization, share it instantly with others and gain real-time insight on their business operations. GoCanvas can be easily customized by any type of business to empower their workforce, unleashing the value in data across the organization to help them connect better with colleagues and engage more effectively with customers.

Tip Reach out to engineering departments are local university to hire an intern to work on your mobile app development.

SOURCE Marketo.com

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Your MOBILE Checklist Do you know your target persona?

Is your website currently mobile friendly?

Do you know what % of visitors are coming in from a mobile device?

Have you tried to look at your own website on your mobile devices?

Do you have a mobile strategy?

Have you ever thought about developing a mobile app?

What would be the purpose of your app?

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Parting Thought

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts.

It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better” - Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon

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Glossary 301 Redirect A method of redirecting a visitor from one web page to another web page. This type of redirect is to be used for permanent redirects (example: you own websiteA.com and websiteB.com but you only want one website. You would 301 redirect all of the traffic from websiteB.com to websiteA.com so that all visitors end up on websiteA.com) 302 Redirect A method of redirecting a visitor from one page to another web page, used for temporary situations only. For permanent redirects, instead use a 301.

404 Error The error message that appears when a visitor tries to go to a web page that does not exist.

A

Ad Extensions Additional pieces of information that can be added to Google Adwords ads, including reviews, address, pricing, callouts, app downloads, sitelinks, and click-tocall. Ad extensions help advertisers create richer, more informative ads that take up more on-page real estate, which generally lead to higher Click Through Rates.

Ad Manager Account An advertising account on Facebook that allows you to run ads on the Facebook Ad Network.

Ad Network A grouping of websites or digital properties (like apps) where ads can appear. For example, Google has 2 ad networks: the search network (text ads that appear in

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search results) and the display network (image ads that appear on millions of websites that have partnered with Google).

Adwords (Google Adwords) A Google owned program that is used by advertisers to place ads on Google search results pages, on Youtube, and on Google ad network sites. Adwords is the primary platform for PPC advertising.

Alt Text (or Alternative Text) An attribute added to HTML code for images, used to provide vision impaired website visitors with information about the contents of a picture. Best practice dictates that all images on a website should have alt text, and that the text should be descriptive of the image.

Analytics (or Google Analytics) A Google platform that allows webmasters to collect statistics and data about website visitors.

Google Analytics (sometimes abbreviated as GA) allows webmasters to see where web traffic comes from and how visitors behave once on the site.

Anchor Text The clickable words in a hyperlink. In SEO, anchor text is a ranking signal to Google, as it provides context about the destination site. For example, if many websites link to one particular website using the anchor text “free stock photos�, Google uses that information to understand the destination site is likely a resource with free stock photos. Theoretically, that could help the stock photos website rank in Google for keywords related to stock photography.

Adsense (Google Adsense) A Google platform that allows websites to earn money by publishing Google network ads on their website.

Algorithm A process or set of rules that computers follow to perform a task. In digital marketing, algorithm usually refers the the sets of processes Google uses to order and rank websites in search results. The SEO industry gives various Google algorithms their own nicknames like Penguin (which analyzes the quality of links pointing to a website) and Panda (which assesses the quality of the content on a website). The main ranking algorithm is SEO is referred to as “The core algorithm”.

Algorithm Update A change made to a Google algorithm. Updates typically affect the rankings of websites. Google makes hundreds of adjustments to their algorithms throughout the year, as well as several major updates each year.

Alexa (Amazon Alexa) Amazon’s home assistant device that uses voice commands to do various things like: play music, answer questions, give weather updates, and more. Voice search is becoming more interesting to the SEO industry as more people use devices like Alexa in place of computers for searches.

Automation Using computer programs to perform tasks that are repetitive, that would normally be completed by a human. Email programs can use automation to send email messages to people based on certain triggers (new customers, did or did not open the last email, etc). Marketers also use automation to nurture leads by sending relevant content to previous visitors of a website, in an attempt to get the visitor back to convert into a sale.

Average Position A metric in Google Adwords that helps advertisers understand where, on average, their ads are showing in Google search results pages. There are usually 4 available ad slots at the top of a search result page (where 1 is the first ad, 2 is the second ad, etc), so for the best results advertisers typically want an average position between 1-4. Average position 5+ indicates that your ads are showing at the bottom of the search results page.

B

Backlink Also known more plainly as a “link”, this is when one website hyperlinks to another website using html href code. Backlinks are used by Google in their SEO ranking factors, with the basic idea being that if “website A” has incoming backlinks from other strong websites (websites B, C, and D), the links are votes of trust for website A, and website A gains some authority from B, C, and D through the links.

Banner Ad A popular type of digital image ad that can be placed across various websites. The largest and most popular image ad network is run by Google, and allows ads in the following common sizes: 250 x 250 – Square 200 x 200 – Small Square 468 x 60 – Banner 728 x 90 – Leaderboard 300 x 250 – Inline Rectangle 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle 120 x 600 – Skyscraper 160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper 300 x 600 – Half-Page Ad 970 x 90 – Large Leaderboard Bing A web search engine that provides search services for web, video, image and map search products. Bing is owned and operated by Microsoft, and is powers Yahoo!

Search. Bing now controls approximately 20% of the search share.

Bing Ads A platform that provides pay-per-click advertising on both the Bing and Yahoo! search engines. The service allows businesses to create ads, and subsequently serve the ads to consumers who search for keyword that the businesses bid on. This platform also offers targeting options such as location, demographic, and device targeting.

Black Hat Slang for an unethical digital marketer or SEO 65

who uses spammy tactics to rank websites, like article spinning, mass directory link building, or negative SEO. Blog Short for “web log”, a blog is a web page or a website that is regularly updated with new written content. Blogs are an important section of a website in digital marketing, as they offer fresh new content on a regular basis which can help attract new visitors, engage existing visitors, and give authority signals to Google.

Bot An automated program that visits websites, sometimes also referred to as a “crawler” or a “spider”.

A spam bot visits websites for nefarious reasons, often showing in Google Analytics as junk traffic. However, Google uses a bot to crawl websites so that they can be ranked and added to Google search.

Bounce Rate The percentage of visitors to a website that leave immediately without clicking or interacting with any portion of the page. For example, if 100 people visit a website, and 50 of them immediately leave, the website has a bounce rate of 50%. Websites aim to have as low of a bounce rate as possible, and averages tend to be anywhere between 40-60%.

Bread Crumbs Navigation links at the top of a webpage that better help the user understand where on the website they are.

These links often appear near the web page’s title and look something like this: Home > Services > Specific Service Business Manager A Facebook platform that allows marketers to manage multiple pages and ad accounts in one central location.

C

Campaign A series of advertising messages that share a theme, and market a product or service. In the context of 66

digital marketing, campaigns can be run through search and display network advertising platforms (i.e. Google, Bing), social media, email, or other online platforms.

Canonical (rel=canonical) A piece of code that is added into the html head of a webpage to indicate to Google whether a piece of content is original or duplicated from somewhere else.

Original content should canonical to itself, and content taken from other places should point the canonical to the original source URL. Canonicals can also be used to avoid duplicate content issues within a website.

Click-Through-Rate A metric showing how often people click on an ad after they see it. It can be calculated by dividing the number of clicks on the ad divided by the number of impressions (how many times it was seen). This ratio can be useful when determining whether an ad’s messaging matches what the consumer is searching for, and if it resonates with them.

Code The languages used to build a website. The most commonly used languages in web design are HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP. Contact Form A section on a website with fillable fields for visitors to contact the website owner, most commonly used to collect name, phone number, and email address of potential customers.

Content Any form of media online that can be read, watched, or interacted with. Content commonly refers specifically to written material, but can also include images and videos.

Conversion The completion of a predefined goal. This is often used to track the number of site visitors that have been “converted” into paying customers, though sales are not always chosen as the metric. Other common goals are newsletter subscriptions and downloads of content from the website.

Conversion Rate

The rate at which visitors to a website complete the predefined goal. It is calculated by dividing the number of goal achievements by the total number of visitors. For example, if 100 people visit a website and 10 of them complete the conversion goal (like filling out a contact form) then the conversion rate is 10%.

more profitable. Conversion rate optimization combines psychology with marketing and web design in order to influence the behavior of the web page visitor. CRO uses a type of testing called “A/B split testing” to determine which version of a page (version A or version B) is more successful.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) A metric in paid advertising platforms that measures how much money is spent in order to acquire a new lead or customer. It can be calculated by dividing the total spend by the number of conversions, for a given period of time. For example, if in a month a PPC account spends $1000 dollars and gets 10 conversions (leads), then the cost per acquisition is $100.

CSS Stands for “Cascading Style Sheets”. CSS a document of code that tells the website’s HTML how it should be appear on screen. CSS is a time saving document for web designers as they can style batchedsections of HTML code, rather than styling individual lines of code one-at-a-time.

CPC (Cost Per Click) The amount of money spent for a click on an ad in a Pay-Per-Click campaign. In the Adwords platform, each keyword will have an estimated click cost, but the prices change in real time as advertisers bid against each other for each keyword. Average CPCs can range from less than $1 dollar for longtail or low-competition keywords, to upwards of $100 per click for competitive terms, primarily in legal, insurance, and water damage restoration industries.

CPM Stands for “Cost Per Thousand” (M is the roman numeral for 1,000). This is the amount an advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions of their ad. For example, if a publisher charges $10 CPM, and your ad shows 2000 times, you will pay $20 for the campaign ($10 x 1000 impressions) x 2. Measuring ad success with CPM is most common in awareness campaigns, where impressions are more important than conversions or clicks.

Crawler An automated piece of software that scans websites. The name reflects how the software “crawls” through the code, which is why they are sometimes also referred to as “spiders”. Crawlers are used by Google to find new content and to evaluate the quality of webpages for their index.

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) a branch of digital marketing that aims to improve the conversion rate of web pages, thus making the pages

CTA (Call to Action) An element on a web page used to push visitors towards a specific action or conversion. A CTA can be a clickable button with text, an image, or text, and typically uses an imperative verb phrase like: “call today” or “buy now”.

CTR (Click Through Rate) The ratio of how many times an advertisement was clicked on, versus how many times it was shown.

It is calculated by dividing the ad’s clicks by the ad’s impressions. For example, if an ad is shown to 100 people, and 10 of them click the ad, then it has a click through rate of 10% (10 clicks / 100 impressions = 10%)

D

Dashboard A web page that contains and displays aggregate data about the performance of a website or digital marketing campaign. A dashboard pulls information from various data sources and displays the info in an easy-toread format.

Digital Marketing A catchall term for online work that includes specialized marketing practices like SEO, PPC, CRO, web design, blogging, content, and any other form of advertising on a internet-connected device with a screen.

Traditionally, television was not considered digital 67

marketing, however the shift from cable television to internet streaming means that digital advertising can now be served to online TV viewers.

Directory A website that categorically lists websites with similar themes. Some directories like chambers of commerce (a list of businesses in one geographic area) can be helpful for SEO, however widespread abuse of spam directories led Google to discount links from directories whose sole purpose was selling links.

Display Ads Ads on a display network which include many different formats such as: images, flash, video, and audio.

Also commonly known as banner ads, these are the advertisements that are seen around the web on news sites, blogs, and social media.

Display Network A network of websites and apps that show display ads on their web pages. Google’s display network spans over 2 million websites that reach over 90% of people on the internet. Businesses can target consumers on the display network based on keywords/topics, placement on specific webpages, and through remarketing.

DNS Stands for Domain Name System, it is a protocol that translates website URLs (which use alphabetic characters) into IP addresses (that use numeric characters). DNS exists because it is more useful for internet users to remember letters and words in website URLs, but the world wide web communicates in numbers with IP addresses. Without DNS, every website would just be a string of numbers rather than a traditional URL. Dofollow A phrase that denotes a hyperlink absent of a “nofollow” tag. By default, a hyperlink is a dofollow link until a “nofollow” piece of code is added to it. Dofollow links pass SEO equity to the destination URL, while “nofollow” links do not.

Duplicate Content Refers to instances where portions of text are found in 2 different places on the web. When the same content is found on multiple websites, it can cause ranking issues 68

for one or all of the websites, as Google does not want to show multiple websites in search results that have the exact same information. This type of duplicate content can occur because of can result from plagiarism, automated content scrapers, or lazy web design. Duplicate content can also be a problem within one website — if multiple versions of a page exists, Google may not understand which version to show in search results, and the pages are competing against each other. This can occur when new versions of pages are added without deleting or forwarding the old version, or through poor URL structures.

E

Ecommerce (or E-Commerce) Stands for Electronic Commerce, it is a classification for businesses that conduct business online. The most common form of e commerce business is an online retailer that sells products direct to the consumer.

Email Automation A marketing system that uses software to automatically send emails based on defined triggers.

Multiple automated emails in a sequence are used create user funnels and segment users based on behavior. For example, an automation funnel could be set to send email 1 when a person provides their email address, then either email 2a or 2b would be sent based on whether or not the person clicked on the first email.

Email List A collection of email addresses that can be used to send targeted email marketing campaigns.

Lists are typically segmented by user classification so a list of existing customers can receive one type of communication, while potential customers can receive more promotional communication.

Email Marketing The use of email with the goal of acquiring sales, customers, or any other type of conversion.

F

Featured Snippet A summarized piece of information that Google pulls from a website and places directly into search results, in order to show quick answers to common and simple queries. Featured snippets appear in a block at the top of search results with a link to the source. Featured Snippets cannot be created by webmasters; Google programmatically pulls the most relevant information from an authoritative site. Most featured snippets are shown for question queries like “what is _____” or “who invented _____”.

Facebook Advertising Facebook allows advertisers to reach its users through their ad network. A range of ad types can be created to reach various goals set by companies.

Facebook advertising is unique in that audiences are set up based on vast demographic information that Facebook has about their users, as compared to Google advertising that uses keywords.

Facebook Profile A personal Facebook account. Profiles are automatically created when a user signs up.

Facebook Business Page A public webpage on Facebook created to represent a company. Using a business page gives users access to Facebook Ads Manager. It also allows businesses to engage with users (i.e. page likes, message responses, post content).

Facebook Ads Manager Ads Manager is a tool for creating Facebook ads, managing when and where they’ll run, and tracking how well campaigns are performing on Facebook, Instagram or their Audience Network.

Form Fill When a visitor has filled out a contact form on a website, commonly used as a noun to refer to a conversion. “This month our marketing campaign generated 20 phone calls and 8 form fills.”

G

Google Company behind the search engine giant Google.com. Founded in 1998, Google now controls approximately 80% of the search market. Google has also expanded to include many software services, both directly related to search, and targeted towards consumers outside of the search marketing industry like Google Chrome (a web browser), Google Fiber (internet service), Gmail (email client), and Google Drive (a file storing platform). Google is owned by parent company Alphabet.

Google+ Google’s own social media platform. Google+ has been used to varying success by the company, and is still receiving updates that change functionality in a variety of ways. Google+ can also be used for business pages (Google My Business), which can feature information, company events, updates, and more.

Google Analytics A free software platform created by Google, which is used to analyze nearly every aspect of users accessing a website. Website traffic, conversions, user metrics, historical data comparisons, and effectiveness of each channel of marketing can all be managed using this tool.

Google Adwords Google’s online advertising service. This system allows advertisers to reach customers through their search and display networks. AdWords offers several cost models which vary by bidding strategy and company goals. Advertisers can bid on keywords which allows their ads to show in Google search results and on Google’s network of partner websites.

Google My Business The platform on which businesses can input information to appear in search results, map packs, location searches, and more. Name, address, phone number, website link, hours of operation, and reviews can all be managed through this platform. GMB is crucial to local SEO campaigns, as this is directly related to locationbased searches.

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Google Partner Agency An agency that is certified by Google for meeting certain requirements. To be a Google Partner, an agency must have an Adwords certified employee affiliated to the company profile, meet spend requirements, and Meet the performance requirement by delivering overall ad revenue and growth, and maintaining and growing the customer base.

Google Hummingbird The industry nickname for one of the first major overhauls to the main Google search algorithm. In contrast to algorithm updates like Panda or Penguin, Hummingbird was intended to completely update the way Google interpreted user search queries. Previous to this update, Google results were mostly provided based on specific keyword matching within the user query. Now, a search for “Cheapest way to build birdhouse without using wood” will show results directly related to that query. Previously, users might see results that included wood as a building material. (See also: Google Algorithm, Google Panda, Google Penguin) Google Home A device for consumers that connects to their home network and can perform many basic tasks through voice commands. Typical uses for Google Home include asking basic questions, making Google searches, scheduling appointments, playing music, or setting alarms.

Google Maps The location and navigation service provided by Google. Using maps.google.com, users can search for stores, restaurants, businesses, and landmarks anywhere in the world. Typically, users will find routes to nearby establishments including local businesses using Maps.

Google Panda A Google algorithm update focused on analyzing the quality of a website’s on-page content. Initially released February 2011, and updated periodically after this release, similar to Google Penguin. This update would determine if content on site pages was related to queries it was being displayed for, and alter the site’s rankings accordingly. Sites with low-quality content saw significant ranking drops due to this algorithm update.

The algorithm has now been assimilated to Google’s core search algorithm, and can assess content quality in real 70

time. (See also: Google Algorithm, Google Penguin) Google Penguin A Google algorithm update focused on analyzing the quality of links pointing to a site, or more accurately, the overall quality of a site’s backlink profile. First announced on April 2012 and updated periodically after this release, similar to Google Panda. This algorithm targeted so-called “black-hat SEO” tactics which manipulated search rankings by creating links to sites in an unnatural manner. Google analyzes all of the pages which link to a specific site and determine whether the links are a benefit to users, or if they simply serve to manipulate search rankings and adjust the site’s standing accordingly. Google estimates that Penguin affects 3.1% of all searches in English, a relatively large number for one algorithm. (See also: Backlink, Black Hat, Google Algorithm, Google Panda).

Google Pigeon A Google algorithm update focused on providing locally relevant results to searchers. For example, searching for “SOHO coffee shop” will return results primarily centered around that neighborhood. In addition, Google can determine your location when you enter a search, and show you local businesses nearby your area even without localized keywords. This algorithm greatly influenced the potential for local businesses to appear in search results. (See also: Google Algorithm) Google Algorithm A mathematical programmatic system that determines where websites will appear on Google search result pages for any given number of queries.

Sometimes also called the “Core” algorithm, though this is a less specific term. Google’s algorithm is constantly updated (approximately 500-600 times a year, or two times per day), which can have varying levels of impact on the rankings of websites across the world. Google’s actual algorithm is kept deliberately secret to prevent webmasters from manipulating the system for rankings, though Google does publically state their suggested “best practices” for appearing higher in search results.

Google Reviews Reviews left using the Google My Business platform. Reviews are on a 1-5 star scale, and include a brief message written by the reviewer. Reviews can show

up in the knowledge graph in Google searches, and have been shown to positively correlate with SEO rankings.

(See also: Google My Business) Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) Search Console is a free tool Google offers to webmasters. Within the tool are several areas that include data on how a site is performing in search. Search Console differs from Analytics – it does not measure traffic, it measures a site’s visibility on search pages, and indexability by Google crawler bots. Metrics Search Console measures are Click-Through Rate, Number of Indexed Pages, Number of Dead Links (AKA 404 pages), and more. (See also: Google Analytics, Click-through rate, Index, Crawler/Spider) GCLID Stands for Google Click IDentifier. This is a small string of numbers and letters that serves as a unique ID badge for visitors to a website. Typically, this is used to keep track of individual users as they click on a PPC ad, so that their interaction with the website (whether they converted, on which page, and using which method) can be tracked and attributed properly using Google Analytics. (See also: Google Analytics, PPC) Gravity Forms A WordPress plugin that adds a customizable contact form to a website. This plugin keeps track of all completed form submissions, and allows for all of the fields on a form to be customized. Gravity Forms is the standard contact form plugin used on sites built by Geek Powered Studios.

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HARO Stands for Help A Reporter Out. Three times a day Monday through Friday, HARO emails are sent out, listing different stories that reporters need sources for. Used as a marketing strategy to gain PR and link opportunities.

Hashtag A phrase beginning with the symbol “#” used in

social media as a way for tagging content for users to find.

Adding hashtags to a post allows users to find that post when searching for that topic. This can be used for finding users looking for broad topics on social media, as well as niche, detailed topics.

Header Can refer to either the top portion of a webpage that typically contains the logo and menu, or the section of HTML in a website’s code that contains important information about the site.

Header Code On a website, certain code is placed in the universal header section so that it can be accessible across all pages of the website. Typically in the header code, you’ll find things like Schema Markup, Analytics Code, Adwords Code, and other tools used for tracking data across a website. These are placed in the header code so that they can be rendered and start tracking information as the site loads.

Header Tags (h1, h2, h3, etc) Header tags are used in HTML for categorizing text headings on a web page. They are, in essence, the titles and major topics of a web page and help indicate to readers and search engines what the page is about.

Header tags use a cascading format where a page should have only one H1 (main title) but beneath can be multiple H2s (subtitles) and every H2 can have H3s beneath (sub-sub titles) and so on.

-H1 is used only once on a webpage, and is used to display the most important title.

-H2 is used to display the major subtopics of a certain webpage -H3 is used to display the major subtopics underneath an H2 tag.

Heatmap A heatmap is a graphical representation of how users interact with your site. Heatmapping software is used to track where users click on a page, how they scroll, and what they hover over. Heatmaps are used to collect user behavior data to assist in designing and optimizing a website.

HTML Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is 71

a set of codes that are used to tell a web browser how to display a webpage. Each individual code is called an element, or a tag. HTML has a starting and ending element for most markups.

HTTP Stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the protocol used by the world wide web to define how data is formatted and transmitted, and what actions web browsers and web servers should take to respond to a command. When you enter a website into your web browser and press enter, this sends an HTTP command to a web server, which tells the server to fetch and send the data for that website to your browser.

HTTPS Stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. Is a secured version of HTTP, which is used to define how data is formatted and transmitted across the web. HTTPS has an advantage over HTTP in that the data sent when fetching a webpage is encrypted, adding a layer of security so that third parties can’t gather data about the webpage when the data is sent from the server to the browser.

Hreflang Tag A code in the html of a website that tells search engines like Google which spoken language a web page is using. These are especially useful for websites that have versions of pages in multiple languages, as they help Google understand which pages are related and which should be shown to specific audiences.

Hummingbird See “Google Hummingbird” Hyperlink A hyperlink is an HTML code that creates a link from one webpage to another web page, characterized often by a highlighted word or image that takes you to the destined location when you click on that highlighted item.

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Iframe An HTML document that is inside of another HTML document on a website. Iframes are used commonly to embed content from one source onto another web page.

Impression A term used in Pay per click advertising that represents how many times an ad was shown.

Impression Share Used in Pay per click advertising, this metric refers to the percentage of times viewers have seen an advertiser’s ad, in relation to the total possible amounts that ad could have been seen. If an ad campaign’s impression share is 70%, then the ads showed 7 out of 10 possible times.

Inbound Marketing Inbound marketing refers to the activities and strategies used for attracting potential users or customers to a website. “Inbound” is a more recent euphemism for what has traditionally been called “SEO”. Inbound marketing is crucial to having a good web presence, as it’s used as a way to attract prospective customers by educating and building trust about your services, product and/or brand. (See also: organic) Index When used as a nound, index refers to all of the web pages that Google has crawled and stored to be shown to Google searchers (eg: “The Google index has billions of websites”). When used as a verb, it refers to the act of Google copying a web page into their system (eg: “Google indexed my website today so it will start appearing in their search results”).

IP Address An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique number that identifies a device using the internet to communicate over a network. Each device has a unique IP address, and can be used to locate and differentiate that device from all other devices when using the internet.

You can find your public IP address by going to Google and searching “what is my ip address.”

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Java Java is a programming language that is used to create applications that can run on a digital device. Java can be used on it’s own, while Javascript can only be used in web browsers.

Javascript (JS) Javascript is a scripting language. Javascript is used on web browsers to provide interactive elements to web pages that are difficult or impossible to achieve with just HTML or CSS. John Leo Weber The COO at Geek Powered Studios, and the person responsible for writing this fancy digital marketing glossary! *easter egg

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Keyword A word or phrase indicative of the major theme in a piece of content. When you search for something in a search engine, you type in a keyword and the search engine gives you results based on that keyword. One major Goal of SEO is to have your website show in searches for as many keywords as possible.

Keyword Phrase A group of two or more words that are used to find information in a search engine. Sometimes, when searching for something, one single keyword does not provide the information you seek, where a keyword phrase allows you to string multiple words together to find better information.

Keyword Density Keyword density refers to the percentage of how often a keyword appears on a webpage in relation to the total words on that webpage.

Keyword Stuffing When a web page uses a keyword too often or superfluously, with the intent of manipulating search engines. This type of behavior is frowned upon and can lead to either algorithmic devaluation in search, or a manual penalty from Google.

L

Landing Page The destination webpage a user lands on after clicking on a link (either in an ad or anywhere else). Some landing pages are designed with the purpose of lead generation, and others are with the purpose of directing the flow of traffic throughout a site.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) A search engine indexing method that creates a relationship between words and phrases to form a better understanding of a text’s subject matter. Latent semantic indexing helps search engines serve up results to queries with higher precision.

Lead A potential customer in the sales funnel who has communicated with a business with intent to purchase through a call, email, or online form fill.

Link Also known as a hyperlink, a link is a string of hypertext transfer protocol structured text used to connect web pages on the internet. There are two main forms of links: internal links that point to pages on the same site, and external links that point to web pages on a different website.

Link profile The cumulative grouping of all links pointing to a particular website. A link profile can be used to determine a website’s power, trust, subject matter, and content. Link profiles are important at determining where a website ranks in google search results. If a website has a high number of links from websites that are not trusted, adult in nature, spammy or against guidelines, the link profile will have a negative effect on rankings. If a website has 73

a high number of links from websites that are strong providers of content or reputable sources of information it will have a positive effect on rankings.

Linkedin A social networking website oriented around connecting professionals to jobs, businesses and other professionals in their industry. Linkedin is also a strong platform for marketing, job posting, and sharing professional content.

Linkedin Advertising LinkedIn’s advertising platform. Through different ad formats, advertisers can bid on ad space and target unique audiences based on job title, years of experience, industry, and many other demographics.

Link Network A blackat link building strategy that uses a network of websites all interconnected with links in order to boost backlink profiles and rank certain sites higher in google search results. Some link networks can also be known as private blog networks (PBNs). Link networks and PBNs are against Google guidelines and are devalued or penalized when detected.

Lookalike Audience A targeting option offered by Facebook’s ad service.

This audience is created from a source audience (i.e. fans of your Facebook page, email list), and from this list Facebook will identify common characteristics between audience members. Facebook will then target users that exhibit similar interests or qualities.

Long Tail Keyword A keyword phrase that is longer in length and hyper-specifically matches a user search query. A long tail keyword get less searches per month but has a higher search intent, and typically less competition by companies looking to serve up content to that search query. For example, a regular keyword might be “austin web designer” but a long tail keyword would be “affordable austin web designer that makes WordPress sites”.

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Map Pack: The section of Google search results pages featuring three businesses listed in a local map section. The map pack shows up for queries with local intent, a general business type, or a “near me” search.

Medium (source/medium) Medium is the general category of traffic to a website tracked in google analytics. Some examples of common medium are: • organic • CPC • email • referral Meta Tags HTML snippets added to a webpage’s code that that add contextual information for web crawlers and search engines. Search engines use meta data to help decide what information from a webpage to display in their results. Example meta tags include the date the page was published, the page title, author, and image descriptions.

Meta Description One of the meta tags that gives a description of the page in 160 characters. The meta description is an important aspect of a webpage because it is what appears in Google searches and other search engine results.

Meta Keywords A specific meta tag that displays the specific keywords addresses in a page. After meta keyword markup was abused on some websites, listed keywords no longer apply to how a page is categorized by google and other search engines.

N

NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) An acronym for local citations. Consistency in name, address, and phone number citations is an important piece of a local SEO Campaign. To build local SEO

authority, a business’s name, address ,and phone number should be listed across local citation websites like Yelp, Google Business, Angie’s List, Yellowpages, Better Business Bureau, Foursquare, and more.

Nofollow An HTML link attribute that communicates to web crawlers and search engines that the link to the destination web page should NOT transfer SEO equity (ie it shouldn’t give SEO benefit to the recipient). According to Google’s guidelines, any link that is unnatural (like you paid for a press release, or you gave a journalist a perk for writing about your product) should have a nofollow tag.

O

site. It was launched to deter spammers from blackhat seo practices such as private blog and link networks.

Google Penguin was released in April 2012 and updated regularly until 2016 when it was then rolled into the Core Algorithm.

Pigeon A Google search engine algorithm intended to serve up locally targeted information for certain searches.

Google Pigeon was released in July 24, 2014 and helps users find local businesses from broad keyword searches.

PPC / Pay-Per-Click An online advertising model in which advertisers are charged for their ad once it is clicked. The PPC model is commonly associated with search engine and social media advertising like Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.

Organic A source of traffic to a website that comes through clicking on a non-paid search engine result. Organic traffic is a main measurement of an SEO campaign and grows as a site ranks better for keywords, or ranks for more keywords in search engines.

Position The placement in Google search results that a site is in for a specific query.

• Featured Snippet: When content within a web page is pulled into google search results to instantly give the information a user is looking for.

• First Page: when a site ranks on the first page of google search results.

• Map Pack: the first through third result on a google serp result page that serves up local businesses for a query.

Panda A search engine algorithm developed by Google to rate the quality and relevance of content on a webpage. Google panda was released in February 2011 and devalued sites in search results that had thin, non original, or poorly written content.

Penalty An infraction issued by Google, to a webmaster, for breaking Google’s guidelines. The penalty is issued

by Google through Search Console, and can result in a sites’ removal from search engine results. The issues that caused the penalty will need to be fixed before the penalty is lifted, and once the penalty is lifted it may still take some time to return to previous rank in Google search results. Penalty may also refer to an “algorithmic penalty” which is actually a misnomer; a website may be doing poorly in search results because of an issue that Google’s algorithm has found in the site. This however is not really a “penalty” but a ranking problem. For there to be a true penalty, there would have to be a manual action from Google, as denoted by the message sent to the webmaster in Search Console.

P

PBN (Private Blog Network) Also known as a link network, a private blog network is a collection of private websites all linking to each other. These networks are intended to manipulate search engines by adding large amounts of new links to a website’s link profile.

Penguin A search engine algorithm developed by Google to determine the quality of links pointing to a particular

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PDF A digital document format that provides a digital image of text or graphics. PDF’s are the preferred document type when uploading documents to the internet because of its ease of use and its ability to be imported or converted easily. PDFs can be read and indexed by Google just as a normal web page can.

Q

Quality Score – Google Adwords’ rating of the relevance and quality of keywords used in PPC campaigns. These scores are largely determined by relevance of ad copy, expected click-through rate, as well as the landing page quality and relevance. Quality score is a component in determining ad auctions, so having a high score can lead to higher ad rankings at lower costs.

Query The term given for what a user types and searches using search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Examples of queries include “austin electrician,” “how do i know if i have a raccoon in my attic,” “distance to nearest coffee shop,” and many more.

R

Rankings A general term for where a website appears in search engine results. A site’s “ranking” my increase or decrease over time for different search terms, or queries.

Ranking is specific to each keyword, so a website may have keywords that rank on the first page, and others that don’t.

Reciprocal Link Two websites linking to each other, typically for the express purpose of increasing both’s search engine ranking. These types of links are sometimes deemed manipulative by search engines, which can incur a penalty or devaluation against both sites.

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Redirect A way by which a web browser takes a user from one page to another without the user clicking or making any input. There are various types of redirects (the most common of which is the 301 redirect), which serve different purposes. Typically, this helps improve user experience across a website.

Referral A medium denoted in Google Analytics that represents a website visit that came from another website (as opposed to coming from a Google search, for example). When users click on a link to another, external webpage, they are said to have been “referred” there.

Rel Canonical In HTML, “rel” is an attribute associated with links.

“Canonical” can be applied to the “rel” attribute, which will link to the original or authoritative page from which content is being used or referenced. The “canonical” page is the original content, and any page referencing it is a duplicate or otherwise similar page. Used to prevent duplicate content issues and maintain search engine rankings.

Remarketing Also known as retargeting, a type of paid ad that allows advertisers to show ads to customers who have already visited their site. Once a user visits a site, a small piece of data called a “cookie” will be stored in the user’s browser. When the user then visits other sites, this cookie can allow remarketing ads to be shown. Remarketing allows advertisers to “follow” users around in attempts to get the user back to the original site.

Responsive Web Design A philosophy of creating a website that allows all of the content to show correctly regardless of screen size or device. Your website will “respond” to the size of the screen each user has, shrinking and reorganizing on smaller screens, and expanding to fill appropriately on large ones.

ROAS Stands for Return On Ad Spend. A PPC marketing metric that demonstrates the profit made as compared to the amount of money spent on the ads. Similar to ROI.

Robots.txt A text file stored on a website’s server that includes basic rules for indexing robots which “crawl” the site. This file allows you to specifically allow (or disallow) certain files and folders from being viewed by crawler bots, which can keep your indexed pages limited to only the pages you wish.

ROI Stands for Return On Investment. In order for a business to receive a positive ROI, they must earn more money using marketing channels than they are spending on the marketing itself.

RSS Stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a way for users to keep track of updates to multiple websites (news sites, blogs, and more) in one place, as opposed to having to manually check in on every single site individually.

An RSS Feed is a place where all updates are tracked together, in an easily viewable format.

S

Schema Markup Code that is added to the HTML of a website to give search engines more relevant information about a business, person, place, product, or thing. Also known as rich snippets or structured data.

Search Network A group of websites in which ads can appear.

Google’s Search Network, for example, is a group of Google & non-Google websites that partner with Google to show text ads.

Search Engine A program that searches an index of information and returns results to the user based on corresponding keywords. The most well known search engines are Google, Youtube, Bing, and Yahoo.

Search Operator A text modifier that can be used in Google searches to return more specific results. Search operators

essentially act as shortcuts to an advanced search.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) A nebulous term that can apply to either 1. Any digital marketing that involves the use of a search engine, or 2. Only paid digital marketing that involves a search engine, ie: PPC (pay-per-click). There is not an industry standard as to which definition is correct, however the latter is most commonly used.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The process of improving a website’s performance and positioning in organic search engine results through a variety of methodologies including content production or improvement, technical and code improvement, and link acquisition.

SERP Stands for Search Engine Results Page, the page featuring a list of search results that is returned to the searcher after they submit a keyword search.

Sessions A metric in Google Analytics that measures one user interacting with a website during a given period of time, which Google defaults to 30 minutes. A session is not dependent on how many pages are viewed, so if a person goes to a website and looks around at different pages for 20 minutes, it would count as 1 session.

Siri Apple’s voice search technology that allows for hands free search on iPhones and other Apple products.

Sitelink An ad extension in Google Adwords that appears below the main ad copy which links to a specific page on the website (i.e. Contact Us, About Us, etc.). Ads can have from 2-6 sitelinks.

Sitemap An XML file or page on a website that lists all of the pages and posts for search engines to see. This document helps search engines quickly understand all of the content that they should be aware of on a particular website.

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Slug Slang for the portion of a URL that comes after the .com. For example, the homepage might be http://www. domain.com, but for the Contact Us page, a slug would be added to the end of the URL to direct the browser to a page within the website i.e. http://www.domain.com/ contact-us.

Source A term in Google Analytics that helps webmasters classify where traffic is coming from (ie. the “source” of the web traffic). Source can be a search engine (for example, Google) or a domain (website-example.com) Spam A broad term that includes many different nefarious activities in digital marketing that are done either to help a website rank better or to harm a competitor website. Spam is often in seen the form of hundreds or thousands of low-quality backlinks that were built by a black hat SEO to manipulate rankings.

Spider An automated program that visits websites, sometimes also referred to as a “crawler” or a “bot”. A spam spider visits websites for nefarious reasons, often showing in Google Analytics as junk traffic. However, Google uses a bot to crawl websites so that they can be ranked and added to Google search.

Style Sheet Shortened term for Cascading Style Sheet (CSS).

CSS a document of code that tells the website’s HTML how it should be appear on screen. CSS is a time saving document for web designers as they can style batchedsections of HTML code, rather than styling individual lines of code one-at-a-time.

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Tag In WordPress, a tag is an identifying marker used to classify different posts based on keywords and topic.

Similar to WordPress categories, but tags are more granular and specific, whereas categories are broad and thematic.

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Title Tag An HTML element that is used to describe the specific topic of a web page. Title tags are displayed in the tabbed top bar of a web browser. In SEO, it is best practice to have descriptive title tags featuring your main keywords, rather than something basic like “home”.

Tracking Code A script, often placed in the header, footer, or thank you page of a website that passes information along to software tools for data gathering purposes. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Adwords utilize tracking codes so that they can track information about users who view a site.

Twitter A social media platform where users interact, or “tweet” by posting a message or replying to a message in 140 characters or less. Each keystroke on a keyboard is considered a character. Twitter is used to share information and links, and utilizes hashtags to categorize information. Tweets are typically public and can be seen by anyone. If you are followed by another user, that user will see your tweets in their feed. Similarly, you will the see the tweets of anyone you follow in your feed.

Twitter Advertising Allows marketers to promote a tweet on users feeds without that user having to follow your brand for it to appear on their feed. These advertisements can be used to grow brand awareness, gain more followers, extend social media reach, and/or reach out to prospective customers about a product or service.

U

Unique Visitors A metric used in web analytics to show how many different, unique people view a website over a period of time. Unique visitors are tracked by their IP addresses. If a visitor visits the same website multiple times, they will only be counted once in the unique visitors metric.

URL Stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is the

address of a web page. The URL refers to what specific web page a web browser is viewing.

UI Stands for User Interface. User interface is the area with which a user interacts with something through a digital device. Good UI should be fluid and easy for most people to understand.

UX Stands for User Experience. UX refers to how a user interacts with a website or app (where they click, which pages they visit). UX can be shaped by testing differences in page layouts, CTAs, colors, content, etc to improve conversion rates. Having a good UX is crucial to having a good business, as it drives repeating users and engagement.

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Visits An old term in Google Analytics which was recently changes to “sessions”.

Visitors A metric in Google Analytics that quantifies a user of a website over a particular period of time. Visitors are often broken down between “new visitors” who are browsing for the first time in the allotted time period, or “returning visitors” who have already browsed at least once in the given time frame.

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Web 2.0 The second major phase of development of the World Wide Web, marked by a shift from static web pages to dynamic content, as well as social media and user generated content.

Website A document of group of documents that are

accessible on the World Wide Web. Webinar An online seminar used to train, inform, or sell to an audience of viewers who signed up to view the presentation.

White Hat Term for ethical digital marketers who don’t participate in work that could be viewed as unethical or as spam.

Wireframe A cursory layout drawing of a webpage that acts as the first step in the design process.

X

XML Stands for eXtensible Markup Language. Similar to HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) in that it is primarily used to categorize various data for computers and humans to use more effectively. In basic terms, XML allows for customizable tags for marking up information that is otherwise difficult for computers to understand.

XML Sitemap A document in XML format that categorizes all relevant pages, posts, files, etc. of a website. This document is not intended for human use, though it can be viewed by humans. Instead, an XML sitemap is designed to help search engine crawler bots easily find all of the pages for a given website – very similar to a roadmap or atlas that one would use when driving a car long distances.

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Yelp A social review platform and search engine that allows users to leave reviews for businesses. Yelp also offers an advertising program which gives advertisers the 79

ability show their marketing assets to qualified Yelp users based on keyword searches.

YouTube – A video sharing website, bought by Google in 2006. YouTube is part of Google’s ad network.

Youtube is currently the 2nd most used search engine in the world.

YouTube advertising YouTube offers advertising in 6 different formats.

Display ads, overlay ads, skippable video, non-skippable video ads, bumper ads, and sponsored cards. These ads can all be created and run through the Google Adwords platform.

Yahoo! Search The third largest search engine in the US, owned by Yahoo. As of 2009, the engine has been powered by Bing.

Yahoo! Advertising Yahoo and Bing ads are both run through the Bing Ads platform. These search engines share advertising networks.

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