Digital Marketing Glossary
Demystifying the jargon. Clear, concise definitions for the terms that drive your business growth.
AI Terms
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
An open standard that enables AI models to securely connect with local and remote data sources, replacing fragmented API integrations.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
A technique that enhances large language models by retrieving relevant data from authoritative external sources before generating a response.
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
A machine learning training method where human feedback is used to optimize the model's policy, making it safer and more helpful.
Vector Embeddings
Numerical representations of text, images, or audio that capture their semantic meaning, allowing computers to understand relationships between concepts.
Context Window
The limit on the amount of text (measured in tokens) that an AI model can consider at one time when generating a response.
Zero-Shot Learning
The ability of an AI model to perform a task it has not explicitly been trained to do, relying on its general understanding.
Generative AI
A type of artificial intelligence that can create new content, including text, images, audio, and video, in response to user prompts.
Large Language Model (LLM)
A deep learning algorithm that can recognize, summarize, translate, predict, and generate text and other content based on knowledge gained from massive datasets.
Is GenAI Good for SEO?
The debate and strategy around using AI-generated content for search engine rankings.
Prompt Engineering
The practice of designing and refining inputs (prompts) to guide Generative AI models to produce optimal outputs.
Predictive Analytics
The use of data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data.
AI Agent
An autonomous system that perceives its environment and takes actions to achieve specific goals without constant human intervention.
Multimodal AI
Artificial intelligence that can process and understand multiple types of data inputs simultaneously, such as text, images, audio, and video.
Fine-Tuning
The process of taking a pre-trained AI model and training it further on a smaller, specific dataset to improve performance for a niche task.
AI Hallucination
A phenomenon where an AI model generates incorrect, nonsensical, or unreal information but presents it confidently as fact.
Tokenization
The process of breaking down text into smaller units (tokens) that an AI model can process.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
A theoretical type of AI that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide variety of tasks at a level equal to or exceeding human capability.
Analytics Terms
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The total cost of winning a customer to purchase a product or service.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who land on one page of your website and leave without interacting with any other pages.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV/LTV)
The total revenue a business expects to earn from a single customer account throughout their relationship.
Churn Rate
The percentage of subscribers who discontinue their subscriptions within a given time period.
MQL vs SQL
Marketing Qualified Lead vs. Sales Qualified Lead. A classification system to determine where a prospect is in the buying journey.
Content Terms
Lead Magnet
A free item or service given away for the purpose of gathering contact details.
Evergreen Content
Search-optimized content that is continually relevant and stays 'fresh' for readers over a long period of time.
Sales Funnel
The journey potential customers go through on the way to purchase. Often divided into TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Any form of specific content (images, videos, text, and audio) that has been posted by users on online platforms.
General Terms
KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
A quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, etc., in meeting objectives for performance.
A/B Testing
A randomized experimentation process where two or more versions of a variable (web page, page element, etc.) are shown to see which one performs better.
PPC Terms
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
A marketing metric that measures the amount of revenue earned for every dollar spent on advertising.
Lookalike Audience (LAL)
A target audience usually created by Facebook (Meta) Ads that shares similar characteristics to your existing customers.
Attribution Model
A rule or set of rules that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths.
Programmatic Advertising
The automated buying and selling of online advertising space using technology and algorithms.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
The actual price you pay for each click in your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it.
Quality Score
Google's rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads.
Remarketing
A form of online advertising that enables sites to show targeted ads to users who have already visited their site.
SEO Terms
Programmatic SEO
A method of addressing large volumes of search queries by automatically generating landing pages at scale.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google's framework for assessing content quality.
Schema Markup
Code (structured data) that you put on your website to help search engines return more informative results for users.
Keyword Cannibalization
A problem that occurs when multiple pages on your website target the same keyword, confusing search engines.
Long-Tail Keywords
Specific, multi-word search phrases that have lower search volume but higher conversion intent.
Canonical Tag
An HTML element that tells search engines which version of a URL is the 'master' copy to prevent duplicate content issues.
Domain Authority (DA)
A search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Backlink
A link created when one website links to another. Backlinks are also called 'inbound links' or 'incoming links.'
SERP
Search Engine Results Page. The page you see after entering a query into Google, Bing, or other search engines.
Robots.txt
A text file that tells search engine crawlers which pages on your site they can or cannot request.
Web Dev Terms
Server-Side Rendering (SSR)
A technique where web pages are rendered on the server instead of the browser, delivering a fully populated HTML page to the user.
Headless CMS
A content management system on the back end only, which makes content accessible via an API for display on any device.
Progressive Web App (PWA)
A website that looks and behaves like a mobile app but is built using common web technologies.
API
Application Programming Interface. A set of definitions and protocols for building and integrating application software.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action.
Core Web Vitals
A set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage's overall user experience.
Responsive Design
An approach to web design that makes web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes.
Above the Fold
The portion of a webpage that is visible without scrolling.
CI/CD
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. A method to frequently deliver apps to customers by introducing automation into the stages of app development.
Microservices
An architectural style that structures an application as a collection of services that are highly maintainable and loosely coupled.
Technical Debt
The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
Jamstack
An architecture designed to make the web faster, more secure, and easier to scale. It stands for Javascript, APIs, and Markup.
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