As a seasoned radio professional, you navigate the airwaves with ease, speaking the language of the industry fluently. Terms like “TSL,” “Cume,” and “PPM” roll off your tongue effortlessly. However, when you find yourself in conversations with your radio station’s webmaster, it’s like stepping into a foreign land. The digital world speaks a different language, filled with terms like “Autoresponder,” “Bounce Rate,” and “SEO.” But fear not, I’ve gathered essential digital lingo to bridge that communication gap and help you understand the web’s inner workings.

• Autoresponder – An email that is automatically sent out in response to an action taken by a website visitor. (This action is called a “trigger.”) For example, when somebody signs up for your station’s email list, an automatic Thank You for Signing Up email might be sent to them. Autoresponders do not need to be sent immediately; you could set up an autoresponder to be sent weeks or even months after the trigger action. You can also set up a series of autoresponders in an orchestrated “marketing automation” campaign.
• Bounce Rate – A “bounce” is when somebody comes to a page on your website and then leaves your site without visiting any other pages. The bounce rate is the percentage of your incoming visitors who bounce. You want visitors to explore multiple pages on your website, so the lower your bounce rate, the better. High bounce rates can hurt your ranking in search engine results. In particular, pay attention to your bounce rate across different types of devices (desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices). If you see that your bounce rate is much higher on one type of device, such as mobile devices, it may mean that your website design for that device is driving people away.
• Content Marketing – An online strategy to drive traffic, generate leads, and increase revenue. It works like this: Create a lot of compelling online content (blog articles, webinars, videos, etc.). Make those articles easy to share on social media and easy to find with search engines (see “Search Engine Optimization” below). Then, when people find your content, they will click through to your website where you can convert them (see “Goal Conversion” below).
• Direct Traffic – The people who come to your station’s website by typing the site’s URL directly into the address bar of their web browser. In other words, they do not come to your site by clicking on a link found elsewhere (social media, search engine results, ads, or other sites).
• Goal – When you use Google Analytics to track your website statistics, you can track goals, which are the actions that you want your website visitors to take. For example, you may want to set up email signups, ad clicks, and concert ticket sales as goals.
• Goal Conversion –  Each time a person completes a goal, it is called a “conversion.” You want to track the number of conversions for each goal over time. For example, you might say “Yesterday, we had ten email signup conversions and five ticket sale conversions.”
• Landing Page – The first page a person comes to when they come to your website. It’s important to remember that quite often, the first page people see on your website is not your homepage. For example, they may click on a link to a blogpost on your site that was shared over social media. It is important to know which of your pages are your most frequent landing pages. Often, websites will have designated landing pages that are used in advertising campaigns. These pages are specifically designed to drive conversion (see above).
• Mobile Site – Many websites have a separate site that is designed to look good on mobile devices. Other sites are “mobile-responsive,” which means the website layout changes to look better on a mobile device. In both cases, the site detects what type of web browser the visitor is using (a desktop browser or mobile browser) and responds accordingly. It is important to have a mobile or mobile-responsive site to decrease your bounce rate (see above).
• Organic Search Results – When people search for something in a search engine like Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, two types of results show up: Paid advertisements based on the terms that were entered and unpaid results. The unpaid results are called “organic.” You can increase your website’s ranking in these organic search results through “search engine optimization” (see below).
• Pay Per Click (PPC) – Online advertising programs, such as Google’s AdWords or Facebook ads, can be set so that you only pay when somebody clicks on the ad, not when they see the ad. These are called PPC campaigns. Ad campaigns where you pay when somebody sees an ad are called “Pay Per Impressions.”
• Referral Traffic – When somebody comes to your website by clicking on a link that they find on another website, such as a blog or news site. When people use this terms they usually do not include social networks, organic search engine results, or paid search engine results, because those are considered their own type of traffic. You want to keep track of which sites are referring the most traffic to your website.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing return two types of results: paid advertisements, and unpaid “organic” results (see above). Search Engine Optimization is the art of increasing your site’s rankings in the organic results. This is done through techniques like including keywords in the text and page titles or adding links to the pages. Because the algorithms search engines use are secret and can change, there are people who specialize in figuring out how to optimize a site to appear in search results. SEO is important because search engines can drive huge amounts of traffic to a website.

As the worlds of radio broadcasting and digital marketing continue to collide, understanding both sides of the coin can be a powerful asset. With these key terms at your disposal, you can now effortlessly converse with your station’s webmaster and make informed decisions that enhance your station’s online presence. So, go ahead, embrace the synergy between radio and the web, and speak with confidence.

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Seth Resler

Digital Dot Connector at Jacobs Media

Seth Resler is a 30+ year broadcasting and podcasting veteran who worked at Jacobs Media for eight years.He specialized in podcast and digital content consulting.

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