Digital Marketing Glossary: 50 Terms Every Small Business Should Know

Plain-English definitions, no jargon · Updated July 2026

Digital marketing is full of acronyms and jargon that can make simple ideas sound complicated. Here are the 50 terms you will actually run into, explained in plain English. Bookmark this and refer back whenever a term trips you up.

The basics

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): making your website show up in Google's unpaid results.
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing): paid advertising on search engines, like Google Ads.
• PPC (Pay-Per-Click): ads where you pay each time someone clicks.
• CPC (Cost Per Click): what you pay for one click on an ad.
• CPM (Cost Per Mille): the cost per 1,000 times an ad is shown.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): the percentage of people who click after seeing something.
• Conversion: when a visitor does what you want, buys, enquires, signs up.
• Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors who convert.
• Bounce rate: the percentage who leave without doing anything.
• Impressions: how many times your content or ad was shown.

Search and content

• Keyword: a word or phrase people type into search.
• SERP: the search engine results page.
• Backlink: a link to your site from another site, a trust signal.
• Organic traffic: visitors from unpaid search results.
• Meta description: the short summary under your page's title in search.
• Alt text: a text description of an image, for accessibility and SEO.
• Schema: code that labels your content so search engines understand it.
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation): optimising to be cited by AI answer engines.
• Local SEO: optimising to be found in a specific area.
• Long-tail keyword: a longer, specific phrase with less competition.

Ads and social

• Retargeting: showing ads to people who already visited you.
• Impression share: the share of possible ad views you captured.
• Quality Score: Google's rating of your ad and page relevance.
• Engagement: likes, comments, shares, and clicks on social content.
• Reach: how many unique people saw your content.
• Organic (social): unpaid posts, versus paid ads.
• A/B test: comparing two versions to see which performs better.
• Lookalike audience: new people similar to your existing customers.
• Boosted post: a social post you pay to show to more people.
• Call-to-action (CTA): the prompt telling people what to do next.

Email and funnel

• Open rate: the percentage who open your email.
• Click rate: the percentage who click a link in your email.
• List segmentation: splitting your list to send more relevant messages.
• Automation: emails that send automatically based on triggers.
• Nurture sequence: a series of emails that build toward a sale.
• Lead: a potential customer who has shown interest.
• Lead magnet: a freebie offered in exchange for contact details.
• Funnel: the journey from stranger to customer.
• Deliverability: whether your emails reach the inbox.
• Opt-in: when someone actively agrees to hear from you.

Measurement and strategy

• ROI (Return on Investment): what you get back versus what you spent.
• ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): revenue earned per dollar of ad spend.
• Cost per lead: what it costs to get one enquiry.
• CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): what it costs to win one customer.
• LTV (Lifetime Value): total value a customer brings over time.
• KPI (Key Performance Indicator): a metric you track to measure success.
• Attribution: working out which channel gets credit for a sale.
• Analytics: the data showing how people use your site.
• UTM: tags on a link that track where traffic came from.
• Landing page: a focused page built to convert one type of visitor.

Standards behind these terms

Many of these definitions connect to real standards, structured data terms come from Schema.org, and Google's own Search documentation defines many SEO concepts. When you want to go deeper on any term, going to the source beats a second-hand explanation.

Frequently asked questions