Glossary – Our Frequently Asked Question page that explains online marketing & digital marketing terms
Digital marketing experts usually just throw around technical terms, so it makes sense here to explain some of these terms in more detail in our glossary. Online marketing explanations and terms explained in a simple and understandable way. That’s the idea behind this FAQ section.
A cookie is a cookie :) But in online marketing jargon it means a small (text) file that can be stored in the browser of an internet user when he has visited a certain website. Cookies are used to “mark” users and recognize them on their next visit. Google Anayltics (website analysis tool), for example, uses cookies, but also almost every webshop and now almost every website to collect user data on the use of the users of the visited website and to be able to optimize it in the end. In each browser, the user can set exactly whether and how long he wants to store cookies. The default setting is usually “I take all cookies” :).
What is a Conversion?
A conversion is the process when a user performs a certain action or completes a process that was previously defined as a goal. To make this cryptic formulation a little clearer. A conversion in online marketing can be the process when a website visitor starts the demo version of an offered service. Thereby he is “converted” from a site visitor to a demo user. Another conversion could be that the demo user upgrades to the purchase version of the service. A conversion can also be the purchase of an article of clothing in the online store. And there are many other possible conversions that can be defined in online marketing.
Website analytics or Web analytics is the analysis of user behavior on a website. Using tools such as Google Analytics, you can measure a lot of information about the users who are browsing the website. To make this measurement possible, cookies are often necessary. Website analytics makes it possible to set specific goals for your site, such as “I want to have 500 (new) users per month on my website” and measure the achievement of this goal.
What is Retargeting?
Retargeting means to address a user who has visited one’s own website once again with advertising in various advertising networks. By marking the website visitor with cookies, other websites in advertising networks recognize the user again and show the user specific ads/advertising material. The classic example of this is: I visit an online store for sneakers and just look around. Afterwards, I visit the website of a blog or a daily newspaper and, lo and behold, I get the shoes I was looking at in the webstore 5 minutes ago as a display ad.
I have often heard that the term was coined by Google. But in the end remarketing = retargeting. So the replay of advertising to a user who has previously visited a particular website.
GA is simply the abbreviation for Google Analytics that you sometimes read in forums and discussions. Google Analytics is the world’s most widely used website analysis system from Google. Through a cookie-based user tracking data from the website visitors are collected and presented in various display options. Google Analytics or any other website visitor analysis tool is the basis for online marketing analysis.
SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising and SEM means basically the same and is the abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. Basically, it means the ads that appear above the organic search results in the search engines (AdWords text ads). SEA and SEM are therefore the placement of paid advertising in search engines such as Google, Bing, …
SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. This is an attempt to achieve a better (higher) position in the search engine results page (SERP) for certain search terms through various measures.
SERP is the abbreviation for Search Engine Result Page. If one speaks of SERPs then the displayed pages after a search in a search engine are meant. With SEO measures you also try to achieve the best possible position (ideally position 1) in the SERPs :)
In online marketing, CTA stands for call to action. That is, a call to the reader/user to perform a certain action. Usually, this call is formulated quite actively, such as: “Call now!”, “Subscribe to the newsletter now!”, … Of course, it does not hurt to highlight the CTA in a color that is clearly visible to the user.
In search engine related online marketing jargon, a snippet is the display of a single search result in Google and the other search engines. The SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) thus consist of the display of several snippets. A snippet usually consists of the (clickable) title, the associated URL of the search result and a short description. Google usually takes the information for the display of the snippet in the search result from the meta tags of the web page = title tag, meta description. BUT the word snippet is also used a lot in terms of code. A snippet is a snippet (i.e. small part) of code. Often you hear “can you put in the Google Analytics code snippet please”.
The title tag (or the title tag) is actually an HTML element with which you can describe the title of a web page. If you don’t have so many tabs open in your browser :) you always see the title of the respective web page displayed in the tab. With a mouse-over you get the complete title displayed again. The title tag has a special meaning for SEO, because this is displayed as the first element in a snippet (looks above) for every single search result. The title of a website, and each subpage should therefore be well chosen. On the one hand, you want to make clear to the user at a glance what the website is about, and on the other hand, it should also contain the most important keyword of the website. The length of the page title also plays a role in the display of the search results, so you should try to give a web page title with a length of about 30-65 characters.
The meta description or page description is also an HTML element which should now describe the content of the page. Here you can formulate a few short sentences that describe what content the user will find on the page. Search engines like Google also use this information to display their search results for the individual web pages. Here it is necessary (currently) to keep a length of about 150 characters for the meta description. (but this length varied a bit over the years)
GTM stands for Google Tag Manager in the online marketing world. This is a tag management tool with the help of which it is possible to easily integrate various code elements (snippets) on a website. The most common application at the moment is the use of the GTM to easily integrate for example Google Analytics or the Facebook Pixel on a website. By adding the GTM to a web page, it is possible to add other tags afterwards without changing the code of the web page. In short, you do not need the webmaster every time again for changes to the tags, but also the marketing people can then make them easily via the Google Tag Manager.