Online Business Lingo For Beginners – What You Need To Know

There are a number of online businesses increasing by the minute. So, I decided to create this online business lingo for beginners dictionary to help you can started easily. As digital business continues to grow, this list will expand. Understanding digital marketing and online business jargon can open up endless opportunities for profit and success. 

Have you have always wanted to become a digital nomad? Have you been working on the pivot to online business since the start of COVID10 and the craziness of 2020. My clients appreciate having a working knowledge of a few digital business terms. Here are a few to help you when starting out. Once you have understood what’s behind them, it is easy to connect the dots!

Here is an alphabetical dictionary for getting you acquainted with online business lingo for beginners.

Bounce Rate 

Interesting and relevant content that keeps your readers and visitors on your webpage is the goal. The content you share motivates your visitors to browse the pages. It is calculated by a unit of measure called The Bounce Rate. Indeed, the bounce rate refers to the number of visitors who don’t visit another page and leave the website. Improving the content, accessibility, and navigation of the website can help reduce the bounce rate.

Clickthrough Rate 

Online marketing can be about campaigns and strategies, but the effort does not end once the campaign has gone live. Metrics such as the Clickthrough rate (CTR) can be used to gain an understanding of how successful the strategy devised has been. To calculate the CTR, you need to divide the number of users who click on a link by the total visitor’s number. 

Cookie

Cookies are small fields which are stored in the computer by the browser. These files help websites recognize past and returning users, ultimately improving their UX. Cookies can help you enjoy a personalized experience in a website or store and will cause you to see ads you are interested in – based on previous searches and interest. 

Email Service Provider (ESP)

Email Service Providers – also known as ESP – are those professional agencies that take care of sending out an email marketing campaign to the subscribers of a newsletter. Building email lists and catching up with them can be challenging if this task is not automated – and errors would be common! Instead, this service makes sure you are guaranteed high-quality, personalized emails for each one of your subscribers.

Engagement

A relatively modern, engagement is an umbrella term that refers to the many different ways that visitors and followers can interact with content. While it is measured in many ways, engagement is mostly shown by followers in the form of shares, clicks, and likes. 

External/Inbound Links and Link Building

External links are the hyperlinks stuck to an anchor text which lead the reader to a page on a different website. Oppositely, internal or inbound links are the ones that will lead the reader onto another page within the same website. Usually, these links have the job of keeping a reader interested and browsing for longer on the same site. Moreover, adding relevant sources to the articles can increase the level of authority of the page and website. 

Link building is the practice of creating content that is relevant, interesting, comprehensive, and authoritative enough for other sites and pages to link back to it. 

Keyword and Long Tail Keyword

Keywords and long-tail keywords are phrases that match the queries of a user. When used properly within the content, these keywords can help it appear first when a query is entered. In turn, this means better visibility and traffic for that given site or page. 

Landing Page 

Landing pages are those pages on a website designed to be the first point of contact when visitors access your site. If designed to convert visitors into sales, these pages include a call to action or at least leads to ensure interest is turned into purchases.

Time for a Break!

Let me take a second to check in with your here. Are you digesting this information or has it caused your eyes to roll back in your head? UGH – so much to learn so little time, right? I've been in online business for 15 years and I started that by learning it all on the DIY path. I'm here to tell you that you don't need to know everything! Laser focus so n the most important online business lingo that is specific to your own business. Then, you know what happens… you get to spend more time on what they love doing.

Okay, so go grab some water, take a quick stretch, have a dance break you need. Then.come back to the online business lingo for beginners.

On-Page/Off-Page Optimization 

On-page SEO is the practice that includes all the measures and strategies that could help a page rank higher on search engines. This includes the use of targeted keywords and easy-to-read page formatting. 

Off-Page optimization refers to the strategies that can help a website rank higher through promotion and authority. Link building and guest posting often fall under this category.

Opt-In

Opt-in or opt-out boxes can be extremely useful tools for digital marketers or online businesses. These are an easy-answered form of consent given by the user. Sometimes, they can refer to products or services. However, opt-in options are also commonly used to ask the user about the data treatment they prefer. 

Plugin

Plugins are software components. Their main role is to make the program more customizable and add a specific feature to existing computer programs. You are likely to encounter plugins when creating a WordPress website. 

Premium Theme 

Premium Themes commonly refer to WordPress pre-built themes you can use to get your website started. Unlike the free ones downloadable from WordPress, Premium themes have unique features and regular updates that make them preferable for certain types of websites or blogs. Check out Divi Theme (by Elegant Themes) for a clear example of what you can count on when purchasing a Premium Theme.

Search Engine

Search Engines are services that users can access and use to search and find content. The search engine indexes pages, posts, articles, and pieces of research. When prompted by a query or keyword, relevant content will show up as the first results on the search engine page. Some of the most well-known Search Engines are Bing, Yahoo, and Google.

SEM

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is a branch of online marketing in which advertisers place bids on phrases or words that users are more likely to use as queries on search engines. These bidder’s web pages are then shown alongside the ten results on the search engine result page (SERP).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the discipline practiced to help a website gain increased visibility and appear on the Search Engine result page. This increase in visibility in search engines like Yahoo and Google can lead to increased traffic to the website and, therefore, more users, readers, followers, or customers. 

Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

With the number of online businesses increasing by the minute, it has never been so important to create a value proposition that is appealing for your target market and unique from any other business. Your business’ vision and mission, when communicated well through your brand and website, can be the most important channel for you to attract and maintain customers. 

WordPress

WordPress is a content-management system which has become the most popular tool to create a website or tool. The fact that this platform is open-source and free to download makes it a particularly attractive choice. Today, over 455 million websites are built through WordPress, a third of the total number of active websites out there!

Bottom Line

You have a basic start here to get the ball rolling. People throw around lots of terms when speaking about this discipline which sometimes intimidate beginners. I recommend you take the online business process step by step. As a result you to eventually grow into a seasoned online business owner. Bookmark this page for easy access and stay tuned for part 2. There are more definitions for you to become acquainted with coming in future posts about Online Business Lingo for beginners.