Term

Definition

Above the fold

A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling. Some people also define above the fold as an ad location at the very top of the screen, but due to banner blindness typical ad locations do not perform as well as ads that are well integrated into content. If ads look like content they typically perform much better.

AdSense

Google's contextual advertising network. Publishers large and small may automatically publish relevant advertisements near their content and share the profits from those ad clicks with Google.

AdWords

Google's advertisement and link auction network. Most of Google's ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost per click basis in an auction which factors in ad click-throughrate as well as max bid. Google is looking into expanding their ad network to include video ads, demographic targeting, affiliate ads, radio ads, and traditional print ads.

Alexa

Amazon.com owned search service which measures website traffic. Alexa is heavily biased toward sites that focus on marketing and webmaster communities. While not being highly accurate it is free.

Algorithm

The proprietary formula (mathematical equation) that a search engine uses to calculate the relevance of a web page to a search word or phrase. Search engines guard their algorithms carefully and constantly adjust them to incorporate new techniques and accommodate cultural changes in search activity.

Alt Attribute

Blind people and most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish what is in an image. Using an image alt attribute allows you to help screen readers and search engines understand the function of an image by providing a text equivalent for the object.

Alt tag

Alt tag refers to the text that is associated with an image. This originated from when web browsers were not universally available as "Graphical Browsers" so the "Alt text" was a description used to describe the image. Now a days it is also used in the "mouse over" text popup that appears when you move your mouse over a graphical image.

Back link

A link to your site from another website.

Blog

Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

The number of clicks on a link, as a percentage of the number of views of the link.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a method by which specific content is served up to the search engine spider that is different then what the normal surfer sees. This is a practice, that if a website is caught can get your website de-listed from the search engines.

Conversion Rate

The key metric to evaluate the effectiveness of a conversion effort (accepting a free gift, setting an appointment), reflecting the percentage of people converted into buyers (or subscribers, or whatever action is desired) out of the total population exposed to the conversion effort. For Web sites, the conversion rate is the number of visitors who took the desired action divided by the total number of visitors in a given time period (typically, per month). For example, the conversion rate of visitors that subscribe to a newsletter = number of visitors divided by number of subscribers. If a website has 10,000 visitors and 500 subscribe, the conversion rate equals 1 in 20 or 5%.

Description META Tag

A meta tag describing the content of the web page. Used by some search engines for keyword density purposes and may display at its discretion. It is recommended that you use a couple of your targeted keywords in the description meta tag.

Directory

A search site whose index is compiled by human editors (as opposed to web spiders). Although editors may pro actively include sites they consider to be of value, most inclusions are the result of submitted requests. The decision to include a site, and its subsequent ranking and categorization, is one of editorial judgment rather than being computed by an algorithm.

Hits

This generally means all requests from a web server including requests by a web browser for html pages, jpeg's, gif's and other images. Hits is a phrase often thrown around but is generally not very meaningful in quantifying search engine traffic.

HTML

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the set of markup symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser page. The markup tells the Web browser how to display a Web page's words and images for the user. Each individual markup code is referred to as an element (but many people also refer to it as a tag). Some elements come in pairs that indicate when some display effect is to begin and when it is to end.

Index

A search site's database, consisting of all the site content it has recorded. A directory's index typically consists only of titles and descriptions, while a search engine's database may include excerpts of page copy and cached pages. (v.) The act of recording a site, page or data into an index.

Keyword

The word(s) or phrase(s) a person types into a search box. Also refers to the word or phrase a site owner wants to be found under.

Keyword Density

A formula to determine whether keywords are being overused on a page. The formula is the total number of words in al keyword mentions divided by the total number of words on a page.

Keywords Meta Tag

An HTML tag that lists all of the main keywords and key phrases that are contained on that web page. Some search engines pay attention to this tag, some do not.

Landing Page

The page a visitor arrives at when clicking through to a site, typically from a paid advertisement. Similar to a doorway page, but a legitimate marketing function — it is used for counting and tracking arrivals and determining the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

Link Popularity

The number and quality of links on other sites pointed to a Web page. Search engines increasingly rely on this to determine their rankings.

Off Page SEO

Off Page SEO (search engine optimization) refers to the text and "inbound" linking from OTHER web site pages to your web site pages. This is a much more difficult if not impossible factor to completely control.

On Page SEO

On page SEO (search engine optimization) simply refers to the text and content on your web site pages. Basically editing your page and content so the Search Engine can find your webpage when a surfer is searching for your web sites particular topic.

One Way Link

One way link is a term used among webmasters for link building methods. It is a Hyperlink that points to a website without any reciprocal link; thus the link goes "one way" in direction. It is suspected by many industry consultants that this type of link would be considered more natural in the eyes of search engines. Similar to 'one way links', there is a three way link building technique in Search engine optimization (SEO). There are many theories on text link building and one way links verse reciprocal links. Google is the company that has made this concept very popular with their PageRank technology. This term is mostly used in the business field of search engine optimization, Internet marketing and online advertising.

PageRank

As defined by Google "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Paid Inclusion

An exchange in which a site owner pays to have pages (or entire sites) immediately indexed into a search database. Sometimes the payment is arranged through an affiliate or partner of the database company. Unlike pay-for-placement marketing, the owner cannot influence how the pages will be ranked — that's up to the search site using the data, based on its own algorithm. The site owner may or may not pay a Cost-Per-Click.

Paid Listing

Directory listings where the results display only advertisers who have paid for inclusion, and possibly for position.

Paid Placement

Any search results program where the order or assuredness of a listing's appearance depends on payment by the site listed. Typically, the more an advertiser pays, the higher their position in the search results. Where paid placement listings and natural listings appear on the same page, the paid placement listings are set apart and identified, usually as "sponsored links."

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

The amount an advertiser pays an ad host (such as a site owner, search engine or ad network) each time a visitor clicks on the advertiser's link.

Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is a service provided by a billing processor, which allows credit card information to be collected and passed over the internet. A payment gateway can be thought of as a digital equivalent to a credit card processing terminal. Although there are many payment gateways available, some of the most popular include AuthorizeNet, USAePay and Verisign.

Position / Rank

Where a listing appears in search results, relative to the first listing. For example, in results delivering 10 listings per page, a listing that appears fifth on the third page is ranked 25th.

Reciprocal Link

A situation where two sites link to and from each other, though not necessarily to the pages that contain these links, usually the result of an agreement between the sites.

Relevancy

The extent to which the searchers who find your page(s) are interested in what you're marketing. As with all marketing, the better the targeting, the greater the probability of positive conversion.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on Investment associate with a particular marketing activity. The immediate return is usually expressed as a percentage of the amount spent (the ROI of a successful investment is greater than 100%). Influencing factors include calculable returns, such as revenues from repeat buyers over the long term, future sales, enhancement of brand image, awareness and public relations value.

Search Engine

A site or software that enables users to search a database of web pages, documents and/or other information. Contextually defined, a search engine's primary function is to deliver relevant matches to human-entered search queries.

Search Engine Friendly

A web page designed and optimized for high search engine rankings. Such pages are rich in keywords and structured for ease of crawling.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Any marketing activity involving a search site, including advertising on search result pages, paying for placement and/or Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Planning and adjusting the content of a web page in order to improve its position in natural search results, including modifications to code and displayed content.

Site map

A site map (or sitemap) is a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

Spider

Software developed and run by a search engine or other research entity that surfs the web without requiring human interaction. A spider gathers information from a web page, then follows one of its links to another page, gathers more data there, and so on until the entire site is indexed. (v.) This process of indexing, also known as "spidering" or "crawling."

Stop words

Stop words are words that occur very often and which do not convey any particular meaning. Examples are 'the', 'a', 'you'.

Traffic

The measurement of the amount of users that visit a Web site.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Unique Selling Proposition. Sometimes mistakenly defined as Unique Selling Point. The reason why somebody should buy from you and not your competition. The unique benefits that your products or services offer consumers.