Business Strategy & Development, Digital Marketing

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Posted On: By Postali

Jargon. Marketing-ese. Whatever you call it, it can be confusing to understand what all the experts are saying you need for your law firm’s marketing. Well, here’s your cheat sheet. We’ll help you sort through the PPC, SEOs, and KPIs to help you grow your practice.

A/B Testing. When you run 2 or more versions of something to see which version performs or converts the best. You can test almost anything that can affect behavior such as:

  • Headlines
  • Body copy
  • Calls-to-Action
  • Images

Above the Fold. Borrowed from newspaper terminology, this is the part of the website that is visible without scrolling.

B2B. Short for Business to Business. A business that markets its products or services to other businesses.

B2C. Short for Business to Consumer. A business that markets its products or services to consumers.

Backlinks. Also known as inbound links, these are links on other web pages that direct clients and search engines to your web page. From an SEO perspective, backlinks show a site’s popularity. Every time a site links to your pages, it’s saying that it finds them worthy of sharing.

Blog. Short for Web Log. A collection of articles around a topic that includes stories, videos, and downloadable content. Blogs provide website traffic, thought leadership, and the opportunity for link building. There is also the opportunity to provide content for other blogs as a guest.

Branding. The client experience made up of images and ideas such as name, logo, slogan, and personality. Your firm’s brand helps separate you from the competition, make you memorable, and remain consistent in your messaging.

Competitive Analysis. An examination of how well a firm is doing compared to its competitors.

Content Audit. The process of evaluating content elements and information assets on a website. This process helps you see what’s working (and do more of it) and what’s not (and do less of it) so your content strategy meets your goals.

Content Marketing. The creation and sharing of material that does not explicitly promote a brand. Informative blogs, white papers, and marketing jargon glossaries are all examples. See what we did there?

Conversion Rate. The percentage of the desired number of outcomes relative to the total activity level. Let’s break out the math. Imagine you have a contact form on your website (if you don’t, let’s talk) and 100 people view this form. If 20 people fill it out, your form’s conversion rate is 20%. Easy, right?

Cost Per Client Acquisition. The cost of convincing a potential customer to buy your service. For example, if your firm spends $100 on marketing in a year and acquired 100 customers in the same year, the cost per customer acquisition would be $1.

CTA. Short for Call to Action. Content intended to induce a viewer, reader, or listener to perform a specific act such as clicking on a link, downloading a free resource, or signing up for a newsletter.

CTR. Short for Click-through Rate. The number of times someone clicks on an ad, link, or other CTA, expressed as a percentage of total views. Clicks ÷ Impressions × 100 = CTR

CRM. Short for Customer Relationship Management. The process of identifying potential future clients, cultivating leads, and maintaining relationships with current clients. CRM is also used to describe the software systems used to manage this process.

Direct Mail. The use of mail as an advertising media vehicle. Direct mail is timely, targeted, and easily integrated with other marketing tactics.

Display URL. The web page URL that one sees in a PPC text ad. It may be a simplified path for the longer actual URL. This gives people an idea of where they’ll arrive after they click an ad.

DoFollow link. A link that does not include the NoFollow tag (see definition below) is considered DoFollow. Search engines acknowledge these links as a point in the page’s favor in search results.

Domain Authority. A score developed by marketing analytics company, Moz, to calculate how well a website will rank in search engine result pages. This score ranges from 1 to 100 with higher scores corresponding with better result rankings.

Engagement. No, not the kind with a sparkly ring. This type of engagement refers to inviting customers to interact with a brand through social media, blog comments, events, etc.

Evergreen. Interesting and relevant content that does not become dated. This allows evergreen content to be shared and repurposed over time.

External Link. External Links are links that take visitors to another site. If you link out to another website (such as Facebook), this is an external link.

Geo-Targeting. Customizing content based on a visitor’s location such as country, state, city, IP address, or other criteria.

Inbound Marketing. Marketing that focuses on providing valuable content to the right audience at the right time to build a relationship built on trust.

Attract –> Convert –> Close –> Delight

Keyword. A word (or phrase) used in a performing a search. A website that is SEO optimized speaks the same language and uses the same keywords as the audience it’s trying to attract.

KPI. Short for Key Performance Indicator. KPIs are metrics used to quantify the objectives of your marketing goals.

Examples: Conversion Rate, Cost per Customer Acquisition, Clickthrough Rate, Sales Revenue, Lead to Customer Ratio, etc.

Landing Page. A page in a website linked from an advertisement or search result with the goal of converting a visitor to a lead.

Lead. Someone who is interested in your firm’s services.

Link Building. A tactic in search engine optimization that refers to getting high-quality external pages to link to a page on your website.

Linkrot. When web pages at a URL are no longer reachable at that URL due to movement or deletion of the pages.

Long Tail Keywords. Keyword phrases with at least three, sometimes four or five, words in them.

Marketing. The creation, communication, delivery, and exchange of offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Meta tags. Snippets of HTML code used to describe content of a webpage.

Mobile Friendly. Also referred to as responsive web design, a mobile friendly version of your website is easily readable and doesn’t need excessive pinching or zooming. Google has expanded its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal in its results.

Negative Keyword. Keywords that prevent ads from displaying. For example, if you add “free” as a negative keyword, searches for “free legal advice in Columbus” won’t trigger your ad.

NoFollow link. A NoFollow backlink tells search engines not to count the link as a point in the page’s favor in search results.

On-page optimization. Measures taken within the website to improve its position in the search rankings such as:

  • Unique title tags
  • URL structure
  • Unique and relevant content

Organic Listings. Search results that were not paid for. They appear because of their relevance to the search terms as determined by ever-evolving algorithms.

PageRank. PageRank is a well-known algorithm once used by Google for placing importance on pages and web sites. Today, it is just one of hundreds of factors that determines a page’s rankings.

Permalink. A URL that remains unchanged resulting a hyperlink that is less susceptible to linkrot. Permalinks are often rendered simply so they are easy for people to type and remember.

PPC. Short for Pay Per Click. Online model where advertisers only pay when their ads are clicked. Advertisers usually bid on keywords that are relevant to their target market with rates being high for popular keywords. Common PPC Networks include: Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook Ads

PR. Short for Public Relations. Managing the relationship between an organization and the public. This differs from advertising in that it aims to make use of publicity and other nonpaid forms of promotion.

Quality Score. According to Google, “Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.”

Reputation Management. The public relations practice of monitoring online reviews, rankings, and awards.

ROMI. Short for return on marketing investment. One metric to measure the effectiveness of a marketing initiative. One formula for figuring out ROMI:

Gross Profit – Marketing Investment ÷ Marketing Investment

Schema. A network of associated meanings that represents a person’s general knowledge about some concept.

Search Engine Spam. Excessive manipulation with the goal of influencing search engine rankings. Major search engines are ever-improving processes to weed out search engine spam.

SEM. Short for Search Engine Marketing. The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in search engine results. SEM includes search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, etc.

SEO. Short for Search Engine Optimization. On the technical side, SEO ensures that a web site is indexed properly by the major search engines. On the marketing side, it refers to the process of targeting specific keywords where the site should “win” in searches.

SERP. Short for Search Engine Results Page. This is the page that searchers see with the results from their query. It usually includes PPC keyword ads, organic results, images, videos, and other related sites.

Site Crawler. An internet bot that browses the web looking for new sites and updated information on old ones.

Social Media Marketing. The use of social networks to promote a product or service e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. This includes unpaid and paid promotions.

Tracking URL. A special URL used to track an ad, special link placement, or campaign. This is often a series of characters after the main URL that identifies the source or campaign.

Example – www.postali.com/legal-marketing-glossary?utm_source=Lawyernomics%202017%20App

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