ATS Keywords
Digital Marketing Specialist ATS Keywords: What Gets Your CV Past the Filter
Applicant tracking systems scan digital marketing CVs for specific platform names, metrics, and channel terms before a human ever sees them. Missing core keywords like Google Ads, GA4, or conversion rate optimization can silently sink an otherwise strong application, regardless of real experience.
Optimize Your CVATS Optimisation
Must-Have Keywords
Include these keywords in your CV to improve your ATS score.
Strengthen Your CV
Power Phrases
Use these multi-word phrases to strengthen your CV.
Avoid These
Words to Avoid
Remove these overused or weak words from your CV.
ATS Score
Before & After ATS Optimization
Before
Missing Keywords
After
Added Keywords
Formatting
ATS-Friendly Format Tips
Use standard section headers like 'Work Experience' and 'Skills' — ATS parsers often fail to categorize content under creative headers like 'My Journey'.
Spell out acronyms at least once, such as 'Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)', so the CV matches both keyword variants an ATS might scan for.
List platform names exactly as job postings do — 'Google Ads' not 'Google AdWords', 'Meta Ads' not just 'Facebook'.
Avoid embedding key skills in images, text boxes, or tables — most ATS parsers skip these elements entirely.
Save and submit as a .docx or a text-based PDF, not a scanned or design-heavy PDF, so the parser can extract text cleanly.
Mirror the exact keyword phrasing from the job description where truthful — 'paid social' and 'social advertising' can be scored differently.
Keep a dedicated Skills or Tools section listing platforms like Google Ads, GA4, and HubSpot so keyword scans catch them even when the prose doesn't repeat them.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
No — focus on the tools mentioned in the job posting plus two or three others that are genuinely core to your experience; padding with irrelevant tools can dilute keyword match density.
It can — many ATS systems only do exact or near-exact string matching, so include both the acronym and the spelled-out term at least once in your CV.
Not always, but a low score significantly lowers the odds a recruiter ever opens your CV, since many companies rank or filter applicants by ATS match score before manual review.
Yes, as long as they're truthful to your experience — mirroring the employer's exact terminology, like 'paid social' versus 'social media advertising', measurably improves keyword match scores.
Yes — listing them by their official name creates additional keyword matches and can also satisfy certification filters that some ATS platforms apply.
Two to three times across different sections, such as summary, experience, and skills, is usually enough — beyond that you risk keyword stuffing, which some modern ATS and human reviewers penalize.
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