Content and Copywriting Glossary
We have all been there. We have been looking for an expert copywriter to help us to produce relevant, quality content for our website, but have been faced with lots of business and marketing related jargon, and while we can have a bit of a guess at what some of them mean, we aren’t quite sure.
If you are finding yourself in this situation, fear no more, as we have put together a super handy list of some of the content and copywriting terms that you may come across.
An A To Z Of Content And Copywriting Terms
Above the fold: This is the part of the page that you can see without having to scroll down
Affiliate marketing: This is the process of earning a commission by promoting other company’s
products. You find something that you like, promote it to others, and take a small chunk of the profit for each sale that you make.
Alt Tag: Tags that are associated with an image. The tag appears when you hover your mouse over it. The tag should be relevant and descriptive.
Analytics: This involves looking for trends and patterns in data that may inform your business strategies. Popular analytics tools include Google Analytics, Facebook and Instagram Insights and Google Webmaster Tools.
Anchor Text: This is the part of the text that can be clicked on to send a reader to a backlink. The clickable words themselves are the anchor text.
Article: A piece of writing that appears on a website and centres around a set topic. These can vary in length but are rarely any shorter than 500 words. Research suggests that Google prefers longer pieces of 2,000 words plus.
B2B: This is business to business marketing. As the name suggests, it is where a business’s target audience is another business. Mailchimp and Adobe are two examples of B2B.
B2C: This is business to consumer marketing. This is where a business sells to the end-user or a consumer. Coca Cola, for example, is a B2C business.
Backlinks: Backlinks are when a website links to a page on an external website. Backlinks play an important role in most search engine algorithms
Bio: Information about you. This is a short piece that contains relevant information about you and your skills. The information should prompt your reader to take action and go ahead and hire you for their project.
Black Hat SEO: Something to be avoided! This refers to techniques that can see you jump in search engine rankings but only by using unethical practices. Google can usually spot this so although there may be a short term boost, long term your site will suffer in the rankings.
Blog: A blog is a form of published content on the internet. They are an ideal way of communicating your expertise with website visitors.
Brand Voice: This allows your marketing to consistent. Your brand voice is created by considering who your target audience is and then adapting your tone and style accordingly.
Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors entering and leaving your site, rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site.
Buyer Persona: Detailed information that tells you all about your ideal customer. You will find information about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, fears, and pain points. Having this information allows you to create content that will resonate perfectly with your target market.
Clickbait: A headline that isn’t quite true! The words play on something that the creator know is popular and will entice people to click. When the link is clicked, the content has little, if any, relation to the headline.
Click-through rate (CTR): The number of times that a website visitor clicks on a link based on the number of times it has been seen. If 50 people saw the link and five people clicked on it, the CTR would be 10 per cent. This is particularly used when talking about email marketing.
Content: Refers to the material that you choose to share with your audience. Amongst other things, content can come in the form of written blog posts, infographics, videos, or images.
Content writing: Content marketing is a method of creating and sharing free content in order to attract website visitors and convert them into paying customers. Content should always be valuable and relevant.
Copywriting: Copywriting is the process of writing compelling marketing and promotional materials that inspires people to take some form of action, such as making a purchase, clicking on a link, donating to a cause, or getting in touch for further information.
Cornerstone content: Cornerstone content is a post or page that defines your brand and supports your website. It is the content that users will read and instantly recognise as the main themes that your business represents. Ideally, your website should have around 3-5 key pieces that link to other posts on your site, creating a funnel with the cornerstone content at the top.
Dead Link: Your articles will contain hyperlinks that link to other pages and sites on the web. A dead link is a link that no longer works. This usually happens when the content has been removed. Any dead links on your site should be removed.
Digital commerce: This is the buying and selling of goods and services using the Internet, mobile networks, and commerce infrastructure
Direct marketing: These are marketing efforts aimed at a specific demographic through sales, mailing or sending catalogues—to elicit a response from the customer.
Ebook: A book that takes a digital form. This can be accessed by downloading a file and it is common to appear as a PDF.
Engagement: The ability to attract the attention of the audience and to persuade the audience to take part in some kind of task. It may be to share content on social media or to leave a comment.
Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease: A way of evaluating your writing and assessing how easy it is to read. This looks at the length and structure of your sentences and also considers the complexity of the words that you use. The higher score, the easier the content is to read.
Format: How your content is structured and how it is delivered. The format could be in the form of bullet points, numbered lists, how-to articles, etc.
Ghost Blogger: Someone who writes blogs but is not recognised as the author. A ghost blogger will produce content for other businesses and it is these businesses that take on ownership of the work and the credit for it.
Guest Blogger: A guest blogger is someone who creates a blog post for someone else’s website. The guest blogger will be acknowledged and often has the chance to feature their bio. This allows people to increase exposure to their own site.
Hashtag: A label created for a social media site such as Twitter or Instagram that allows users to search for content within a particular topic.
Headline: Your main title. This is what a reader will see first. You should take time to form your headline to ensure that it grabs attention and that it is also relevant to your keywords.
Impression: In digital advertising, when an ad is fetched from the source and seen, it is counted as an impression, whether it is clicked on or not.
Infographic: An infographic is a collection of eye-catching imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.
Jargon: Words that are known and understood in certain industries. If these words are used in articles aimed at those without specialist knowledge, they are likely to be meaningless and make the content difficult to follow and understand.
Keyword: A keyword is a term used in online marketing to describe a word or group of words used by an Internet user to perform a search in a search engine or search bar. Keywords are very important in an SEO strategy and should be the core of any copy written for the web (presented in content, titles and SEO elements)
Keyword Density: This makes reference to the number of times that a keyword appears in content. You should ensure that your keyword appears more in longer articles.
Keyword Research: A process that allows you to identify the keywords that are relevant to your industry. Carrying out this research allows you to know which words to target in your articles. There are numerous tools that can be used to find your ideal keywords.
Keyword stuffing: Overusing keywords to try and achieve visibility in the search engines. When it comes to keyword density there needs to be a balance. The words should appear enough times to show Google that your article is relevant, but not so many times that you are stuffing.
Landing page: A landing page is a standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a user lands after they click on a link in an email or an ad.
Link building: This is the process of getting other websites to link back to yours to show search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative.
Market research: Market research is the process of determining the viability of a new service or product through research conducted directly with the potential demographic.
Mobile marketing: These are the advertising or promotional messages that appear on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Multimedia: Using a variety of text, graphics, audio, video, and animation in one place
Native Ads: Advertisements that show up on your website or blog. These ads should have some relevance to your content and are a great way of generating some revenue. The best known, although not necessarily the best paying, ad provider is Google Adsense.
Plagiarism: Looking at other people’s content and then claiming it as your own. This could see someone lifting a straight copy or it could be that they make the odd tweak in the hope that no one will notice where the content originally came from. Tools such as Copyscape can be used to identify plagiarism.
Pay Per Click: Referred to as PPC, these are a form of ad that you can use to drive people to your site. You will be charged each time that someone clicks on your ad. The amount that you are charged will depend on how completive your keywords are. Google PPC sees a bidding system where you can bid on relevant words.
Return on Investment: Referred to as ROI, this can be used to show how successful an action has been. When looking at online advertising, you are able to look at how much you have spent on ads and compare this to the financial results that have been achieved. It is usually expressed as a percentage.
Search engine optimization: Also known as SEO, this is the process of getting traffic from organic search results generated by search engines such as Google or Bing.
Search engine results page (SERP): This is the page generated by a search engine in response to a keyword enquiry. This usually consists of a linked headline, a description of the content, emboldened keywords, and the URL of the website.
Target market: These are the people who make up the group that the marketer wants to focus on. A product or service can have more than one target market. Separating an audience into smaller, more concise target markets is known as segmentation.
Top of the funnel: This is the point where a potential customer makes their first interaction with a company
Unique page views: This is a metric that tells you how many people have viewed pages on your website.
Unique selling proposition: Your USP is the thing that makes you and your business special – it is what makes you stand out from your competition.
Viral: Something that everyone aims for with their content. When it goes viral it means that it is hugely popular and shared many times.
White space: Blank space left on a web page. This helps to break up text and is easier on the eye.