At Accelity Marketing, we’ve written terminology-themed blog posts that cover some of the core concepts of marketing. Some include our email marketing analytics glossary, terms to measure content marketing success, B2B inbound marketing terms and SEO terms.

We thought it was time to create a blog that could serve as an A-Z glossary to help you hone your marketing skills. See the terms we included below.

A/B Testing

This is the process of comparing two variations of a single variable to determine which performs best in order to improve your marketing efforts. This is often done in email marketing (varying subject line or copy), calls-to-action (varying colors, placement or verbiage) and landing pages (varying content). Want more information on A/B testing? Learn more here.

Bounce Rate

There are two different types of bounce rate. One is website bounce rate, or the percentage of people who land on a page of your website and then leave without clicking on anything, or navigating to any other pages. This usually leads to low conversion rates because no one stays on your site long enough to read your content or convert on a landing page.

The other is email bounce rate. This is the rate at which an email was unable to be delivered to a recipient’s inbox. A high bounce rate generally means your lists are out-of-date or purchased, or they include many invalid email addresses.  

Call-to-Action

A call-to-action (CTA) is a button or a link that you place on your website to convert visitors to leads. Some examples of CTA text includes verbiage like “Subscribe Now” or “Download the Whitepaper Today.” CTAs are very important for marketers because they entice a website visitor to eventually become a lead. With that being said, it is important to convey a valuable offer on a call-to-action to increase your conversion rates. Check out some irresistible call-to-actions here.

Dynamic Content

This is the way you display different messaging based on the information you gather about your visitor. It creates a customized experience for your visitor based on their interests or past behaviors.

Engagement Rate

This is a social media metric used to describe the amount of interaction—likes, shares, comments—a piece of content receives. This metric is used to determine if your messages are resonating with your social followers. See what other social media best practices you can use to engage with followers online.

Forms

Forms help your page visitors give you information about themselves in exchange for your content. This is also how visitors can convert into leads. Be sure to only ask for the information you need on forms; asking too many questions can hinder visitors from downloading your content.

Google+

Google+ (or “Google Plus”) is a social network that allows you to join and create circles in which you can mix and match family members, friends, colleagues and industry members. While you can use it like other social networks—to publish and share content, and generate leads—it also provides tremendous SEO value.

Hashtag

Hashtags are a way for you and your readers to interact with each other on social media by tying public conversations on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram together into a single stream. Users find these topics by searching for a hashtag or clicking on one.

Inbound Link

An inbound link is a link coming from another site (blog post, website, etc.) to your own website. Websites that receive many inbound links are more likely to rank higher in search engines. They also increase referral traffic from other websites.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a programming language that lets web developers design interactive sites. Most of the dynamic behavior you’ll see on a web page is due to JavaScript. It can be used in creating pop-ups, check forms, interactive games and special effects.

Keyword

Sometimes referred to as “keyword phrases,” keywords are the topics that help optimize web pages in search results by engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the practice of developing a series of communications (emails, social posts, blogs, etc.) that seek to qualify a lead, keep it engaged and gradually push it down the sales funnel.

Meta Description

A meta description is a short snippet, a tag in HTML, that summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show the meta description in search results when the searched for phrase is in the description. Optimizing a meta description is a very important aspect of on-page SEO.

Newsletter

An email newsletter can help your business connect with customers—and increase sales—as long as you make sure they are effective. Use them as a way to fill in your contacts on anything new with your product or service, or even about your business or employees.

Organic Search

Organic search results are unpaid, natural listings on search engine results pages (SERPs) that are surfaced and ranked based on their relevance to a user’s query. Although it takes time and effort to optimize your web pages for organic search, once you rank high in SERPs, you’ll typically see lucrative long term returns on your investment.

Persona

Also know as a “buyer persona,” is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on research and data. Personas can help marketers define their target audience and help your sales reps qualify their leads. Learn more about why B2B SaaS startups should use buyer personas.

Qualified Lead

This is a contact that opted in to receive communication from your company, became educated about your product or service and is interested in learning more. Marketing and sales often have two different versions of qualified leads (MQLs and SQLs), so make sure you have conversations with your sales team to set expectations for the types of leads you plan to hand over.

Responsive Design

Developing a website that adapts accordingly to how someone is viewing it. Instead of building a separate, distinct website for each device (cell phone, tablet, desktop, etc.), the site recognizes the device that the visitor is using and automatically generates a page that is responsive to the device on which the content is being viewed.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is the practice of enhancing where a webpage appears in search results by adjusting a webpage’s on-page SEO elements and influencing off-page SEO factors. Learn more about SEO here.

Target Market

A target market is a group of customers a business decides to aim its marketing efforts, and ultimately its products/services, towards.

Unique Visitor

This refers to the number of distinct individuals that visit pages from a website at any given time, even if they visit more than once. You’ll often see more website visits than unique website visitors, as they come to your site more than once.

Viral Content

This term is used to describe a piece of content that is widely popular across the web through sharing. Oftentimes, folks don’t know a piece they create will be viral until it actually happens.

Word-of-mouth

The passing of information from one person to another. This term usually refers to oral communication, but today it also includes online communication.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file of code that lives on your web server and lists all of the relevant URLs that are in the structure of your website. It’s kind of like a “floor plan” for the site, which especially comes in handy whenever the site gets changed.

YouTube

YouTube is the largest video-sharing website on which users can upload, share and view videos. (Which I’m sure you know, but a ‘Y’ term was difficult to come up with!)

Zapier

Zapier is a web automation app. With Zapier you can build “Zaps” which can automate parts of your business or life. A Zap is a blueprint for a task you want to do over and over again.

There are many more terms that are used within the marketing world. Do you have a favorite term that I didn’t list above in this marketing glossary? Let me know in the comments below.