by John Eberhard
I am writing this article because I’ve observed that there are some confusions out there on some terms used in website marketing, and this can lead to wrong actions being taken, or a lack of confront of the entire subject.
Digital Marketing: Digital marketing is the overall term for any marketing that uses the internet or digital devices to reach customers. This includes everything from search engines, websites, and social media, to mobile apps, email, and even smart TV ads. In 2026, nearly all marketing will have a digital component. So when people say “marketing” these days, they often mean “digital marketing.”
SEO: Stands for search engine optimization. This is the process of getting your website to rank well on search engines, so you get traffic to your website. This includes a number of actions, such as doing research to find keywords related to your topic, that have a high number of searches each month, but relatively low competition. Then writing metatags (see below) for the site. It also includes link building (see below), doing an SEO audit several times a year and correcting any technical issues found, and adding new content to a website regularly, such as blog posts.
Metatags: These are hidden pieces of code that you cannot see on a website, but search engines see it. And it is what shows up on a search engine when your web page shows up on a search. These do not have as much SEO value as they once did, but the meta title still affects rankings. The meta description should be written to clearly communicate to the viewer what your page is about.
Link Building: Link building is the action of creating links on other websites linking back to yours. Google states that the number of links to your site from other sites is one of its primary criteria for deciding the ranking of a site. So link building is a vital activity if you want your site to rank well on search engines and thus get increased traffic. The subject of link building has changed a lot over the years. Now, link quality is more important than link quantity.
Domain Authority: This is a numerical ranking from 1 to 100 assigned to a website by a company called Moz to estimate how likely a website is to rank in search engine results compared to others.
Guest Posts: A guest post is a specific type of link building where you request to have a piece of content that you wrote, usually a blog article, appear on someone else’s website. Ideally you want to get a guest post on a website with a high domain authority, and that has decent traffic. Usually money changes hands.
Keyword Intent: Today keyword intent matters a lot. This is basically separating out the purpose or intent of the person’s search based on the keyword they used. The main types of keyword intent are 1) Transactional, meaning they are thinking of buying something now or soon, 2) Commercial Investigation, meaning they are doing research on what they want to buy, 3) Informational, meaning they are seeking information about some topic, and 4) Navigational, meaning they are looking for a specific website or login or whatever. So assuming you are selling something, you want to be aware of these categories and concentrate your efforts on Transactional or Commercial Investigation keywords.
Pay Per Click Advertising: Pay per click, called PPC for short, is the putting up of paid ads on Google and Bing and Facebook. On Google and Bing, your ad appears when a visitor types in keywords that you select. You get charged money when the visitor clicks on your ad and thus arrives at a pre-selected landing page on your site. PPC is extremely effective at driving new traffic to your website. It is not best for low ticket items, say under $500. But for lead generation for high ticket items, it works very well. In most cases, due to the amount of competition from other advertisers, I recommend working with a consultant to set up and manage an account.
Call to Action (CTA): This is where you tell the person to respond to you, usually by filling out an online form or calling a phone number.
Landing Page: This is a special page that is prepared for people to land on when they click on a specific ad or email. It is exactly about what they clicked on, and always has a prominent call to action. I always recommend that landing pages have no navigation buttons on them, as statistically that always gets better conversions.
Conversions: A conversion is when someone responds to you, expressing interest in your product or service. Or they could be requesting an item you are offering for free such as an ebook. A conversion is typically the main thing you are going for in any digital marketing.
Blogs and Blogging: A blog is a feature on a website that is used when you have regularly updated or new information being put up on the website. When you put up new content, the older content moves down the blog page. So the visitor scrolls down the page to see older and older content. Blogs are given higher importance by search engines, mainly because of the regularly updated content.
CMS: Stands for Content Management System. A CMS is a system allowing a website owner to easily update or make changes to his website via an online interface, eliminating the need of using a web design program like Dreamweaver. Popular CMSes are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Years back I started using WordPress and now I do all my websites in WordPress.
Online PR: This term refers to writing press releases that prominently contain the keywords that you are targeting and for which you want your site to rank well. There are a number of online PR sites where you can post a press release, and these all rank very well with search engines. So posting to the online PR sites creates high quality links coming back to your site and is a form of link building. However, not all PR sites have “do-follow” links. Some have “no-follow” links, which means search engines give the link no value. So it’s important to post to PR sites that have do-follow links.
Social Media Marketing: This is the activity of using social media websites like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn and others, to market a product or service. Social media marketing is very effective and does work. I have closed a large amount of business through social media. The key is to build up a large number of friends or followers, then communicate regularly with the type of communications that are considered appropriate for the social media sites.
Email Marketing: 20 years ago you could make serious hay by renting email lists and sending out HTML emails to them. I myself did this and made millions for a software company. There are two distinctly different types of email marketing. One is to a rented or purchased list, and the other is to an “in-house” of your clients and prospects. Overuse basically killed emailing to rented or purchased lists. But sending out regular content to an in-house is a vital action for nearly any type of business today.
AI Marketing: There are a number of tools out there using AI to assist in marketing, from writing sales text, to helping with SEO, to assisting in producing videos. Some would say that the marketer’s role has evolved from “doing everything manually” to “guiding and auditing the machines.” But a word of caution. Authenticity and personality are still vital in selling anything, and you don’t always get that with AI. So use with caution.
Best of luck in your Internet marketing efforts.
