It’s easy for digital novices to be intimidated when people throw around terms like “SEO” and “PPC” and “URL,” if they speak another language in their daily work lives, like accounting or manufacturing. I recently broke one of my own rules by bandying phrases like these during an initial meeting with a new partner. After I was politely interrupted by a brave engineer, “Excuse me, but what is SEO?” I realized with regret that I had started at level three when I should have started at level one.

Here is a handy list of terms you will hear if you talk to companies regarding a new website or digital marketing, as I would personally explain this to an industrial engineer:

SEO” = Search Engine Optimization. The complex process of ensuring that your website is found when someone searches for you on Google.

PPC” = Pay Per Click advertising. Paying for website traffic by bidding on key words likely to be searched by potential customers, wherein a text ad appears when Google returns search results. When someone clicks on that text ad, your account is charged according to the budget parameters that you set.

SERP” = Search Engine Result Page. What you get when you Google a key word.

HTML” = Hypertext Markup Language. This is a programming language used to ensure that your site translates your website content into something readable and engaging. Front-end programming.

CMS” = Content Management System. This is a system that makes it easy for anyone with administrative rights to be able to add, delete and edit content without needing to know how to write code.

RSS” = Really Simply Syndication. This is using a “feed” that website users can subscribe to so they are updated when you add new content to your site.

URL” = Uniform Resource Locator. Your website address.

Of course, there are many more than these, but I’m keeping this post at level one.