There seems to be a lot of chatter about “clicks,” “impressions,” “conversions,” & “CTR” lately. To anyone working in the digital marketing field, those terms seem normal and commonplace, it’s easy to forget though that not everyone knows what they mean. Here are some basic definitions of frequently used digital marketing terms.
Impressions – The raw number of times that your content is seen. Think of these as the total views on a YouTube video. While higher numbers mean you are being seen by many people, you don’t always want the most impressions because you could be showing up in front of the wrong audience.
Share of Voice – How often you show up when terms related to your business are searched. Let’s use a baseball analogy (GO CUBS). Share of voice is how many at-bats you get. The greater number of times you show up, the greater chance there is of someone choosing you. Which leads us to…
Clicks – This one is simple. Clicks relate to how many people actually click on your advertisement. This is one of the basic stats that we use to measure a more meaningful measure of how well you are doing online called…
Click Through Rate (CTR) – Click through rate is measured by the number of clicks you generate divided by the number of impressions you receive. CTR is a great measure of how relevant and interesting your ads are to the people you are showing up in front of. The goal should be to have as high a CTR as possible as that means that you are showing up in front of the right audience with advertisements that are relevant to what they want to see or buy. It isn’t enough to just get people to your site though, what happens if they bounce?
Bounce – This is measured by the number of people that visit your website without taking any actions (ex. filling out a form) or without visiting another page other than the one they land on.
Landing Pages – This is the page that people are directed to when they click on your advertisement. If someone is looking for a baseball bat and your ad says that you sell them, what should the person see when they click on your ad? Baseball bats! If they are directed to your home page and it’s all about baseball attire, gloves, helmets, and bats, they are likely to bounce and find someone else to buy from. Make sure that your ads point to the right page on your website.
Google Quality Score – The Google Quality Score relates to a lot of different things and the algorithm they use isn’t entirely known, but this is important because it can determine how much you pay for your advertising. The score is on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best) and takes into account the speed at which your website loads, the wording of your ad, and what page you send people to when they do click, as well as a few other things. The important thing about this though is that Google rewards people with higher scores with lower costs of advertising. This is why it’s so important to make sure you really own your online presence.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – This generally relates to paying for advertising whenever someone clicks on your ads. The biggest example here is Google Search Advertising.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – This is a form of pay-per-click advertising and uses the example above of Google Search. It is the same term used for people using Bing, Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search Engine Optimization is used to optimize the natural traffic to your website without specifically paying for the top spots on Google’s search engine. This means that you are not paying for advertising, you are paying to keep the back end of your site relevant so that when people search for your services, you show up naturally and do not pay for every click. This can be a good option for people that have the time or know someone who can update their site daily. If you don’t update daily Google will determine that you are losing relevance.
Those are our top 10 terms you must know, but if you’re interested in learning more read our recent post, 50 Digital Marketing Terms Every Business Owner Should Know.