Breaking into the world of digital marketing can be a daunting task – thousands of new marketers are entering the market every year, and it can be difficult to understand the core principles and terms without advanced digital marketing training.
But even if you don’t plan on making digital marketing your trade, you still have to know enough to make educated decisions about where to focus your efforts.
Luckily, even with the rapidly-changing face of digital marketing, there are still essential concepts and terms that have remained almost unchanged for years.
And while taking a digital marketing course can make your journey much easier, you might not need it to get started.
In this guide, we will help you understand the most important aspects and terms of digital marketing, so the next time you’re reading up on a particular subject, you have a much better understanding of what all those abbreviations mean.
SEO has been a buzz term in the online community for as long as digital marketing existed.
But what does it actually mean?
Well, to put it short, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of growing targeted traffic to your website through the means of organic search engine results for the desired keywords.
In other words, it’s the aim to make your website visible on Google and other search engine results.
Keywords, in essence, are the search term/s that the target prospect types into their search engine when looking for your services or products.
If you can determine what your audience is searching for on Google and other search engines, you can then optimize your strategy to make Google rank you high for those terms.
In order for Google to determine which websites are the worthiest of being ranked high for particular keywords, it must analyze the content on those websites to see if it’s relevant.
That’s what Google’s web crawlers are for.
They are basically bots that crawl all around the World Wide Web, trying to understand what websites and their pages are about. These are then indexed, and the information gathered is used to determine the website’s worth and relevance.
Links is another important digital marketing term. They're an integral part of any SEO strategy.
They can be used to help navigate your website easier, link to other websites, or to link back to your website from others.
All of these links are vital to your SEO efforts, as they help Google determine what content is valuable and relevant to different audiences.
SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, can be a very powerful tool if you want to see quick results online.
Basically, it utilizes paid advertisement options such as Google’s PPC (Pay-Per-Click) to make your website instantly visible among search results online or on relevant websites.
It has many similarities with SEO, but the main difference is that it’s paid. Therefore, while you don’t have to wait months to achieve results as is often the case with SEO, you will also have to pay for every single visitor to your website, so you better make sure that you are converting them to customers at a rate that’s still bringing you a profit.
An ad type with which you pay for every person that clicks on the ad and is directed to your website. You do not pay for those that only view your ad.
The percentage of people who decide to click on your ad after seeing it.
The percentage of users that performed the action (click, view, respond, buy) that you wanted them to do.
Email marketing is at the center of any comprehensive digital marketing strategy.
Having a list of people who have shown interest in what you offer or even bought from you in the past is an invaluable resource, as selling to an existing customer is much more likely than selling to a new one.
But what is email marketing?
Basically, it’s communicating with your audience via email. Once you acquire their email addresses and have their permission to send you content, you have the unique opportunity to guide them through any obstacles they might have, show off your best offers, educate them, or introduce them to new products.
The possibilities with email marketing are endless; in fact, it may be the most powerful digital marketing strategy that you could use.
From its very inception, the main purpose of the internet has always been to share information. And even today, with the ever-growing presence of social media, this has only become truer.
That’s why content marketing is becoming more important each year – with internet users being bombarded with advertisements and branded messages, there’s a huge demand for informative, objective, and trustworthy content that delivers valuable info on any given subject.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be used by brands that want to grow their relationship with their audience.
In fact, brands that are able to provide value without pushing for a sale can build trust and authority in the eyes of their target audience like never before.
Finding the right people to spread your message is also extremely important.
These are called influencers – people who have authority in your industry and are trusted by your audience.
If you can get your message across through authoritative figures in your field, it can instantly position you as the leading option.
But in the end, content marketing comes down to simply producing content that is valuable and more informative than that of your competition’s. Do that, and your business will be well underway to becoming a dominant force online.
It can be difficult to sort through the hundreds of terms and strategies that are invented by the digital marketing community every day.
However, if you gain an understanding of the very basics, such as SEO, paid ads, content marketing, and email marketing, you can start to see the big picture of the options that are available for you to grow your business.
And with the help of one of the numerous online digital marketing courses, you can fast-track your way to becoming an expert in the field in no time.
