In your research to figure out how to get more people on your website (and purchasing your products), you’ve seen quite a few words that you don’t know. The world of content marketing is huge, and there’s plenty of jargon to go around. To help out the people who don’t know what some of these terms are, we’ve put together a list of content strategy terms you should know and their definitions. Hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of content marketing once you figure out what these words mean!
1. Accessibility – How easily anyone should be able to navigate, understand, and use your website. Accessibility is typically used to describe how a website can be manipulated to accommodate people with visual and auditory impairments.
2. Algorithm – A complex system (typically used by AI) that completes a specific purpose based on the set of rules it is given. Usually refers to the Google algorithm, where it finds, ranks, and returns the most relevant pages on the internet to a user for a specific search query.
3. Alt text – Written copy describing the appearance or function of an image on a page. Alt text is included in HTML code.
4. Analytics – The practice of analyzing and studying a variety of metrics to track and measure website performance, return of investment (ROI), and determine areas of improvement.
5. Anchor Text – Clickable text that indicates a link on a webpage. The word or phrase appears as a different color to let the user know it is a link.
6. Audience – The group of people you are targeting to read, listen, view, and engage with your content. This is a content strategy term that can have several names, so you may also hear it referred to as target audience.
7. Backlinks – When one website links to another website with anchor text. Backlinking is a content strategy to help make your site more reputable and rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), as well as provide relevant information to the user.
8. Blog – A page on a website where informational, educational, and useful content is posted to show that businesses are experts in their field and connect with their intended audience. Blogs also serve to improve a website’s search engine optimization.
9. Bounce Rate – This content strategy term is a metric that details the number of users who visit a page on a website and take no action before leaving. You want this number to be as low as possible, because you want users to stay on your site as long as possible.
10. Brand Awareness – How memorable a brand is based on logos, color schemes, tone of voice, etc. If you want your brand to be easily recognizable by customers, learn more about brand guidelines.
11. Buyer Personas – A fictional character that represents a business’s ideal customer. It includes a profile of the customers’ wants, needs, behaviors, and demographics.
12. Content Audit – The process of analyzing, cataloging, and critiquing an entire content library. The point of content audits is to recognize where your content is thriving and use it in other avenues, as well as gauge what isn’t working well and fill in the gaps.
13. Content Management System (CMS) – Software that allows users to create, manage, and edit content on a website without needing extensive technical knowledge.
14. Content Marketing – Of all the content strategy terms to know, content marketing is at the top of the list. Content marketing is a type of marketing that uses various types of materials (videos, blogs, social media posts, etc.) to garner interest in a brand’s products and services, as well as raise brand awareness.
15. Content Marketing Strategy – A carefully crafted plan to distribute marketing materials across various platforms to market to a business’s target audience.
16. Content Strategy – The overall plan, creation, delivery, and management of a brand’s content. This is an overall strategy, not just for marketing purposes.
17. Conversion – A metric that shows the number of website visitors that have completed a desired action. The action referred to could be making a purchase, subscribing to a service, clicking on an advertisement, or signing up for an email campaign.
18. CTAs (Calls to Action) – A statement, button, or other medium that encourages an audience to take a desired action.
19. CTR (Click Through Rate) – A metric that details the number of users who click on a link after engaging with content. It could be a link in an email, on a social media post, etc.
20. Engagement – Typically used in reference to social media. How many likes, shares, comments, etc. a social post receives.
21. Evergreen Content – Content that stays relevant all the time and does not need to be updated frequently.
22. External Links – Links used on a website that lead to another website.
23. Heading – A title, subtitle, or other phrase that is typically at the beginning of a text section or paragraph. Headings are used as a formatting tool to make sections of text easier to read, but also indicate a piece of content’s purpose to search engine bots.
24. Hyperlink – A clickable phrase or image that navigates to another place on a page or a completely different page on a website.
25. Infographic – A visual representation of information or data. Most of the time, this content strategy term refers to a drawn graphic, but sometimes it does use actual photographs.
26. Internal Links – A word or phrase with a link that takes you to another page on the same website.
27. Key Performance Indicator (KPI) – A metric used to measure a company’s growth or success over time. Some of the most common KPIs are traffic, unique visitors, and engagement rate.
28. Keyword – A specific word or phrase users type into a search engine to find content on that topic. Keywords are an essential part of SEO strategy
29. Keyword Stuffing – The overuse of keywords on a website page.
30. Meta Title and Description – The title of a web page and the description of the page that show up in blue on search engine result pages (SERPs).
31. Page Title – Another name for a meta title, or the title of a page that shows up on search engine result pages.
32. Readability – How easy or difficult the copy on a web page is to read.
33. Repurposing Content – This may be a content strategy term you’ve seen but aren’t sure what it means. Repurposing content is the idea of taking content that performs well for you and using the core information in a new way instead of coming up with new content.
34. Scannability – How easy a web page is to scan and understand without fully reading it in its entirety.
35. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – The act of using paid ads in SERPs to increase website traffic. Learn more about SEM and why it would be beneficial for your business.
36. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The practice of increasing website traffic through organic search results. SEO strategy includes using best practices to get your website and specific pages to rank in SERPs.
37. Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) – The page of results that appear after a user submits a search query in a search engine. These pages include organic results, as well as paid ads.
38. Target Audience – A specific group of people that content is designed for.
39. URL – You’ve probably seen this content strategy term before, but URL stands for uniform resource locator. URLs are used to identify and navigate to pages on a website.
40. User Experience (UE, UX) – The entire aspect of a user’s interaction with a company, website, services, products, etc.
With all of these content strategy terms, you’ll be better equipped to talk about your own content strategy! And hopefully you have a better understanding of content marketing overall. Do you want to implement a strategy of your own but aren’t sure where to start? You don’t have to do it alone. Learn more about our content marketing services now.
