GOOGLE ANALYTICS TERMS BOUNCE RATE The average percentage of people who visited your website and only viewed one page. In Google Analytics, you are able to see a site-wide bounce rate and bounce rates for individual pages. CAMPAIGNS A type of traffic source. The percentage of visits that come through a specific campaign (such as an email marketing campaign or an AdWords campaign). CONVERSION FUNNEL The path a visitor takes on a website to complete a goal. Funnels may include multiple steps or multiple actions taken by the visitor. CONVERSION RATE The percentage of visits that resulted in a goal completion. Completed goals/visits = conversion rate DIRECT TRAFFIC The percentage of visits that come from someone manually typing in your URL or clicking on a bookmarked page. ENTRANCES The number of visits to a specific page when that was the first page seen in the session. (So, the number of people who entered the site through this page.) This number is helpful for seeing which landing pages get the most traffic. EXIT RATE The average percentage of people who left your website through a specific page. Pay attention to pages with high exit rates; it may be a good indicator of where people are dropping off the conversion funnel. GOAL An action defined by the Google Analytic user that they would like a website visitor to take. Actions are typically a form submission, a specified time on page, a certain number of pages viewed by a visitor, etc.
KEYWORDS Search queries people enter into a search engine to find your site. (NOT PROVIDED) This appears in the Search Traffic Keywords report if a visitor was signed in to Google.com when they performed the search that brought them to your website. PAGES/VISIT The average number of pages a visitor views during one visit. Multiple views of the same page are counted. PAGEVIEWS The total number of pages viewed. Multiple views of the same page are counted REFERRALS A list of websites that people used to visit your site. (See Referral Traffic) REFERRAL TRAFFIC The percentage of visits that come from other websites (not search engines) to your website. This may be from a link on a website pointing to your website. Example: Someone reads a blog post on best dog leashes and clicks a link that goes to your dog leash website. RETURNING VISITOR A visitor with Google Analytics cookies on their browser from a previous visit. SEARCH TRAFFIC The percentage of visits that come from a search engine; this includes organic and paid search. Example: Someone enters the query dog leashes into the Google search bar and then clicks your website. TRAFFIC SOURCE How visitors found their way to your website. Four types in Google Analytics: search, referral, direct, campaigns. UNIQUE PAGEVIEWS This aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.
UNIQUE VISITORS The number of individuals who have visited your site for the first time within a given time period. This is typically determined by a cookie on the visitor s browser. One unique visitor may have several visits. VISITS The number of times people visit your website. This includes multiple visits by the same person. SEO TERMS: ALT TEXT ATTRIBUTE Descriptive text within an image tag. This is the only part of the image that can be crawled by search engines. <img src= picture.png alt= description of picture > ANCHOR TEXT The clickable text in a hyperlink, it is typically blue and underlined. SEO best practice: Don t over optimize with keywords; make sure your text makes sense. BLACK HAT SEO Deceptive practices for increasing visibility within search engines, such as keyword stuffing. BRANDED KEYWORDS A keyword that is specific to your brand. Examples: accrinet charlotte nc or charlotte chamber membership CALL TO ACTION A banner, a button or text that encourages a visitor to click and enter a conversion funnel. CLICK THROUGH RATE (CTR) Percentage of times an ad or webpage listing appears in search engine results AND is clicked. Clicks/Impressions = CTR
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS) Software that allows websites to be created, edited, and published, typically without required knowledge of HTML. CONTENT MARKETING Attracting website visitors and potential new customers by creating relevant, interesting, valuable information. COST PER CLICK (CPC) Paying for paid search ads only when the ad is clicked, not when it is shown. COST PER IMPRESSION (CPM) Paying for paid search ads when they are shown. This is typically paid per 1000 impressions. This method of payment is more conducive to promoting a brand or event. CRAWLING When search engine spiders gather information from webpages. (This information is then indexed.) DATA CENTERS Physical locations where search engines store indexed webpage data. DUPLICATE CONTENT Describes content that is found on multiple webpages, whether within the same site or various domains. DYNAMIC URL URL that results from a database-driven web site or a page that runs a script. URL consisting of symbols. Opposite of static URLs. SEO best practice: Search engines do not like dynamic URLs; try to replace them with a static or human-readable URL. H1 HEADING This is the largest heading text on the webpage. SEO best practice: Each web page should only have one H1; don t over optimize with keywords; heading should be relevant to the rest of the content on the page. <h1>header goes here</h1>
H2 & H3 HEADINGS These are sub-headings on the webpage, used to break up large sections of content into smaller sections. IMPRESSIONS The number of times an ad or web page is displayed either in paid search results or organic results. INBOUND LINKS Links from a webpage to your website. Also known as backlinks. SEO best practice: search engines tend to rank pages with more inbound links higher than those without; however, make sure your inbound links are from quality sites. Do not try to earn links in a deceptive way. INDEXING The categorizing and depositing of information into relevant data centers, so that search engines can quickly retrieve relevant data pertaining to a search query. KEYWORD DENSITY Percentage of times a keyword is used compared to the total content on a web page. SEO best practice: Aim for 2-3%. KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION The process of determining which keywords will most effectively drive relevant traffic to your website. Based on a combination of traffic potential, the ability to rank for the keyword (is it a broad, non-specific term or is it more specific to your niche market), and relevancy to your webpage. KEYWORD STUFFING Practice of over-filling content and webpages with keywords. This is a bad SEO practice. LANDING PAGE A web page that visitors are sent to after clicking a link, ad, or call to action. LONG-TAIL KEYWORD Keywords that target a niche audience. More like keyphrases. They get less search volume and have less competition. For example: web design for nonprofits is a long-tail keyword compared to web design.
META DESCRIPTION A text summary of your webpage that appears under the Page Title in SERPs. Search engines do not read the meta description, but people do. An enticing meta description helps increase your click through rate. NO FOLLOW TAG A tag applied to hyperlinked text to show search engines not to let the link influence the PageRank. rel= nofollow ORGANIC SEARCH RESULTS Listings on SERPs that appear because of their relevance to the search query. (As opposed to paid search results.) PAGE TITLE See Title Tag. PAGERANK Google s search engine algorithm that assigns a numerical value to a webpage based on the quality and quantity of inbound links. PAID SEARCH A pay-per-click (PPC) program that allows advertisers to bid for ad placement within SERPs. Ads typically target keywords and phrases. The ads appear on the SERPs when the keyword or phrase is entered as a search query. (As opposed to an organic search approach.) REL=AUTHOR TAG Tag needed to link your content to your Google Plus profile and claim authorship. See our Google Authorship How-to to claim authorship for yourself. RESPONSIVE DESIGN Designing your website in such a way that the entire site is viewable on any device desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Responsive design eliminates the need for a separate mobile site. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) The practice of making your website more visible within search engine result pages (SERPs). SEM has two components: paid search and search engine optimization.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) The process of optimizing (improving and promoting) digital content (your website, YouTube profile, tweets, etc.) in order to improve performance (increase the number of clickthroughs your content receives) within search results (organic search results). SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS PAGE (SERP) The listing of results from a search engine generated by a search query. SPIDERS Name for the web crawler software. Spiders crawl websites, and then the crawled information is indexed. STATIC/HUMAN-READABLE URL A URL that does not change or have variable strings. SEO best practice: Static URLs rank better than dynamic URLs. Use static URLs whenever possible. THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Creating content to show expertise in a specific field. A thought leader s input and ideas are often sought and encouraged. TITLE TAG Defines the title of the webpage or other HTML document, also called Page Title or, in Accrisoft Freedom, Window Title. It appears in the web browser s title bar and as the first line of a website s listing in SERPs. SEO best practices: Each page should have a unique page title. Title tags should be kept within 30 to 65 characters. <title>title Goes Here</title> WINDOW TITLE See Title Tag.