In the digital marketing industry, we live and breathe acronyms. If you’ve ever been to a report meeting on website performance, you’ve probably heard your team of marketers say phrases like “changing the CTA increased our CTR and decreased our BR.” If you’ve ever felt a little dazed by the alphabet soup of acronyms, we’re here to help. Here’s a look at some of the most important digital marketing and SEO or SEM acronyms so that you can fully understand and act on your website’s performance.
1. SERP: Search Engine Results Page
A company’s SERP ranking makes the difference between success and failure. The SERP is the page users see right after typing a query into search engines like Google or Bing. Every company in the world wants that top ranking. Learning which of your competitors ranks where can help you develop an SEO strategy and improve your search engine results ranking.
2. CTR: Click Through Rate
To understand a click through rate, think of your company’s website, online ad, social media post or email like a visit to a brick-and-mortar store. The number of visitors who actually walk through the door, instead of standing out on the sidewalk, is like the CTR. It gauges whether people are further interacting with your brand or company after seeing an online ad, email or search result. To figure out the CTR, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and then multiple by 100. For example, if you had 100 impressions and 10 clicks you would have a 10% CTR.
3. SSL: Secure Socket Layer
Deploying an SSL certificate for your website will trigger “https” and a lock symbol to appear in the URL bar. This tells visitors and search engines that your website is secure. Security has many benefits, especially if you are selling products online. Having an SSL certificate not only lets users know your site is secure, but it can provide a search engine ranking boost because Google gives priority to SSL websites over non-secure sites. If your site does not have an SSL certificate, you can quickly buy and install one.
4. CMS: Content Management System
A content management system is a program used to edit and publish website content. Many B2B and B2C companies like the ease of being able to edit a webpage themselves instead of relying on a developer. A website built on a CMS can have SEO title tags, meta descriptions, or robots meta tags easily added to the backend — without requiring the skillsets or costs of a web programmer. Some popular CMSs in the marketplace are HubSpot, WordPress, Sitefinity and Kentico.
5. PPC: Pay-Per-Click
This term is used for a type of digital advertising that charges a company or account every time a user clicks on the ad. Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, and search engines, such as Google and Bing, offer pay-per-click advertising. It can be more cost effective than traditional print or television ads because you only pay when a user clicks on the ad.
6. CPC: Cost Per Click
A cost per click is a great way to gauge the success of pay-per-click campaigns. A max CPC is the dollar amount a company or advertiser is willing to spend every time a user clicks on an ad. An average CPC is the actual price a company is charged per click. This number will always be less than the max CPC. Setting up average CPC and max CPC can be complicated if you don’t have experience in digital advertising, but these metrics are vital to understanding the effectiveness of your paid media efforts.
7. BR: Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is a website analytics metric that pinpoints the percentage of visitors who visit a webpage, then leave the website without viewing any other pages. In many cases, this can be interpreted as a “first impressions fail,” meaning the visitor was not enticed enough by the landing page to stick around and click further through the website. On the flipside, it could mean that the web page thoroughly answered the visitor’s questions and they are one step closer to making a purchase.
8. CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization
Your conversion rate is the number of visitors who convert, meaning they take an action that you define. Conversion might be making a purchase, requesting an appointment, or downloading a guide. You improve this rate through conversion rate optimization. You might choose to add a “Buy Now” button on a landing page that drives users to a checkout page. Or you could reconsider the photos, description and price of a product to make it as appealing as possible.
9. ROAS: Return on Advertising Spend
This term refers to the fundamental way of tracking how much money your company earns in response to what it spent on advertising. Let’s say you spent $100 on an online ad and that ad generated $1,000 in sales. Your ROAS would be 10x your initial investment. It’s a basic principal, but any business or enterprise should employ it before spending any money on online ads.
10. CPM: Cost Per Mille (Thousand)
CPM is used to understand how much it costs for your ad to be seen or viewed by 1,000 users. In most cases, the acronym is used for display campaigns or videos when the goal is to drive awareness in the form of views and impressions and not necessarily clicks. The same term is used in print advertising.
11. Comparative Time Period Acronyms: MOM, YOY, Etc.
When reporting marketing results, it can be useful to compare marketing metrics from two timeframes, for example week-over-week, month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, or year-over-year. Each of these can be abbreviated accordingly (for example, YoY). An example of a month-over-month comparison is looking at the number of website users in March 2020 vs. February 2020. Year-over-year would compare the number of users in October 2020 to users in October 2019.
12. Google-Related Acronyms
Google continuously rolls out new products, many of which are designed to help businesses succeed online. Marketers tend to refer to them by acronyms. Here are a few examples:
GA: Google Analytics
Installing Google Analytics on a website provides valuable high-level information such as the number of website visits or page views during a certain time frame. GA also measures conversions, sales and other goals.
GTM: Google Tag Manager
This tool is a great resource for managing multiple website tags, which are snippets of code on a website or mobile app. Tags track metrics like conversions, remarketing, button clicks and more, and GTM makes it possible to simply track this data without getting deep into coding.
GMB: Google My Business
Google My Business is Google’s directory for businesses in a geographic area and can include a wealth of information that a user can see without ever visiting your website. It’s important to keep your listing up-to-date. People will often come across it by conducting searches that end with “near me,” as in “web development agencies near me.”
GSC: Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a website that allows SEOs and webmasters to monitor performance on Google Search, including organic clicks, impressions, and positions. Users can also submit an XML sitemap, check the indexing status of web pages, and uncover errors related to crawling, AMP, or rich results eligibility.
No Time to Get Schooled on Acronyms? Trust Our Digital Marketing Experts Instead
Every industry has its jargon, and the digital marketing world is no different. The team at Bayshore Solutions don’t just know the lingo, we know how to get the results those acronyms stand for. Let us worry about the CPC, CTR and CPM, so you can focus on ROI, or return on investment.
Contact Bayshore Solutions today to discuss how we can help grow your business through expert digital marketing.
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