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Advertiser
(Also called Merchant, Retailer, E-retailer, or Online Retailer) Any Web site
that sells a product or service, accepts payments, and fulfills orders. An
advertiser places ads and links to its products and services on other Web
sites (publishers) and pays those publishers a commission for leads or sales
that result from their sites.
Affiliate Marketing Program
(Also called Affiliate Marketing, Advertising, Performance Marketing,
Partner Marketing, CPA, or Associate Program) In an affiliate
marketing program, a publisher receives a commission for generating
a transaction, such as a lead or sale, for an advertiser that
the publisher is promoting. The advertiser provides its ads
to publishers and assigns a commission for each action it wants
to accomplish. Publishers place the tracking code for these
ads on their Web sites, in their email campaigns, or in search
listings. Whenever a visitor uses these links to generate an
action on the advertiser site, that transaction is tracked
online. If a product or service is purchased, the customer
pays the advertiser directly, and the publisher is paid a commission
for that transaction.
Algorithm
A complex mathematical formula used by a search
engine to rank the web pages that it finds by crawling the web.
ALT Tags
Used to display a short text description
of an image when you hover your mouse over it. The ALT description is also
displayed in place of the image if the user is browsing with
image display turned off.
Image ALT tags are useful to your page's visitors. Equally as important, they
can help with your search engine rankings by increasing the keyword density
(if you use your keywords in your ALT tags).
Example:
<img src="blue-widget.jpg" width="156" height="175"
ALT="Photo of blue widget">
Apache Web Server
The web server software
that is most used on the internet today.
ASP (application service provider)
An ASP is an online network that is accessible through the Internet instead of
through the installation of software. It is quickly integrated with other Web
sites and the services are easily implemented and scalable. An example of an
ASP is the CJ Marketplace.
Bad Neighborhood
A web page that has been
penalized by a search engine (most notably Google) for using shady SEO tactics,
such as hidden text or link farms.
Backlinks
Links from another web
page to your web page. Most search engines provide an easy way to
get a list of all of the backlinks to a specific page. Also referred to as Incoming
Links.
Broken Link
A link that
no longer takes the user to the destination page when it is clicked on. This
is usually the result of the destination page having been renamed or deleted
from the server. Also referred to as a Dead Link.
Click-Through
The action of clicking on
a link to visit a web page. A click-through refers to the action a consumer
takes when they are referred from one Web site through a link or advertisement
and is taken to another Web site. Click-through ratio is the percentage of
clicks for the number of advertising impressions displayed.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
The number of times
a link is clicked on divided by the number of times that same link is displayed
(called an impression).
Example:
A link is displayed 100 times (100 impressions) and clicked
on 5 times. The CTR is 5% (5/100=.05).
Cloaking
Serving one version of a page to
a human visitor and a different version of the same page to the search
engines. This is usually done to "fool" the search engines into giving
the page a higher rank than it would normally receive while making sure
the human visitor sees a useful and attractive page.
Note: Cloaking is discouraged by most major search engines, including Google.
CPA (cost per action)
CPA is a metric for online advertising where a rate is set for every action
that is taken by a user.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions)?
CPM is a metric for online advertising where a rate is set for every thousand
impressions.
Comment Tags
Used in a web page's HTML source
code to indicate certain information about a section of the page code.
Some search engines will consider keywords contained in comment
tags for keyword density purposes, others (including Google)
will not.
Example:
<!--This is a comment-->
Commission payout
A commission payout is an amount of income received by a publisher for some quantifiable
action such as selling an advertiser's product and/or service on the publisher's
Web site.
Content
The information located on a web
page. This includes text, images, and any other types of information
that a webmaster places on the page.
Counter
A script that counts the number
of hits, unique visitors, and/or page views that a web page (or an entire
site) receives. These "stats" provide very useful information for the
webmaster.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action.
The action that determines conversion is determined by the advertiser and may
be a sale on the advertiser's Web site, a completed lead form, or another action.
Crawler
A
program used by search engines to "crawl" the web by following
links from page to page. This is how most search engines "find" the
web pages that they place in their index. Also referred to as
a spider or robot.
Crawling The Web
Search engines use crawlers to
move from web page to web page by following the links on the pages. The pages "found" are
then ranked using an algorithm and indexed into the
search engine database.
Cross Linking
This is where the owner of
two or more websites interlink the sites in order to boost their search
engine rankings. If detected, cross linking often results in a search
engine penalty.
Dead Link
See Broken
Link.
Deep Linking
Linking to a page that is one
or more levels removed from the home directory. Deep linking is often
desirable to build PageRank to a specific page on a website.
Example:
http://www.yoursite.com/tutorials/diy_seo.html
Description
A short sentence or paragraph
that describes a web page's content, usually used as part of a link to describe
the page being linked to. See also link anchor text.
Description Meta Tag
A meta tag
that describes the content of the web page in which it is found. Used by
some search engines for keyword density purposes. Also, some SE's will use
the description meta tag for the description provided to a user when the
page is returned in a listing of search results. It is recommended that you
use a couple of your targeted keywords in the description meta tag.
Example:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="This sentence
describes the content on this page.">
Directory
A categorized list of websites
that is maintained by human editors instead of crawlers. Yahoo.com
is the most widely recognized directory on the web, but there are literally
thousands of others.
Domain
The human-friendly "address, or URL" of
a website. When a user types a URL into a web browser, a dedicated computer
somewhere on the web known as a Domain Name Server, or DNS translates
the URL into a discrete IP address which is then used to find the actual
website being requested.
In the URL http://www.rlrouse.com, rlrouse.com is
the domain.
Domain Name Servers (DNS)
These
are special computers that translate human-friendly URLs into
computer-friendly IP
addresses. This process takes place every time a user requests a page
from a website.
DNS Propagation
Every time a new domain
name is registered (or an existing one is transferred to a new DNS), the
information about the domain and the DNS that hosts it must make its way
around the entire internet. This process usually takes around 24 hours, during
which time the domain will be inaccessible to users.
Doorway Page
A page that is usually optimized
for a particular search engine and search term. Multiple doorway pages are
often used to help ensure that the same basic content is ranked well on several
different search engines. The use of doorway pages for this purpose is
frowned upon by most larger search engines, including Google.
Duplicate Content
Two
or more separate web pages that contain substantially the same content are
said to contain duplicate content.
Google and other top search engines have set up filters to detect duplicate
content when their crawlers are active on the web. When pages containing
duplicate content are detected, they are often assessed a duplicate content
penalty which means a lowering of the page's ranking from what it would
have received naturally.
Dynamic Content (dynamic pages)
Web pages
that are often generated from database information based upon queries initiated
by users. Dynamic pages often include the ? character in the URL.
The URLs of dynamic pages often use these extensions: .asp, .cgm, or .cgi.
Most search engines don't index dynamic content very well (or at all). Google
has recently been doing a better job at indexing them however.
Dynamic IP Address
An IP address
that changes every time a computer logs on to the internet. See also Static
IP Address.
EPC (average earnings per 100 clicks)
EPC is an exclusive metric of the CJ Marketplace given for publishers, advertisers,
and individual ads, and is a relative rating that illustrates the ability to
convert clicks into commissions. For publishers, an advertiser's EPC shows how
well that advertiser converts traffic into actual sales or leads. For advertisers,
a publisher's EPC shows how well that publisher sends relevant traffic to advertisers'
sites. EPC is published in two forms, 7-day and 3-month.
Filters
A filter is a software routine that
examines web pages during a robot's crawl looking for search engine spam.
If the filter detects the use of spam on the page, a ranking penalty is
assessed.
Common filters look for hidden text, links to bad neighborhoods,
and many other SEO techniques that the search engine doesn't like.
Google.com
The leading search engine on
the internet today with approximately 80% of all search traffic.
When people speak of search engine optimization (SEO), they're often
referring specifically to Google.
Googlebot
The crawler that Google
uses on a daily basis to find and index new web pages.
Google Toolbar
A downloadable toolbar
for Internet Explorer that allows a user to do a Google search without
visiting the Google website. The toolbar also displays the Google PageRank
(PR) of the page currently displayed in the browser. The latest version
also includes a very good popup-blocker. The Google Toolbar is a must
have for
every serious webmaster.
The Google Toolbar can be downloaded here:
http://toolbar.google.com
Header Tags
HTML tags that help outline
a web page or draw attention to important information. Keywords located
inside header tags can provide a rankings boost in the search engines.
Examples:
<h1>This is an H1 tag.</h1>
<h2>This is an H2 tag.</h2>
Hidden Text and Hidden Links
Using
a text font that is the same (or nearly the same) color as the background
color, rendering the text or link invisible or very difficult to read.
The same effect can also be achieved by using various HTML tricks.
Hidden text and hidden links are often used to artificially increase a web
page's keyword density for a keyword or keyphrase and/or to artificially boost
the link popularity of other pages on your site(s).
The use of hidden text and hidden links is frowned upon by Google and most
other search engines. Using them will most likely result in your web page(s)
incurring a penalty by the search engines.
Hits
The term hits
is commonly misused. Many people think of a hit as a visit to one of their
web pages. This is incorrect. A hit takes place every time a file is
accessed on your website.
For example, let's say your friend's home page has a logo gif and 12 pictures
on it. Every time a visitor loads that page, 14 hits are recorded: 1
for the logo gif, 12 for the pictures, and one for the page itself. So don't
be all that impressed if he boasts that his site receives 1000 hits a day.
In our example, those 1000 hits could have been generated by as few as 72 visitors to
the site.
The only meaningful way to evaluate the traffic flow of a site is to consider
the average daily or monthly number of unique visitors and page
views a site receives.
Home Directory
The main directory where
your site's main index page is located. The index page in your home directory
can be accessed like this: http://www.yoursite.com
Image Map
Placing separate hyperlinks on
different areas of the same image. Clicking on different parts of the image
will take the user to different web pages. Not very search engine friendly.
Impression
An impression is the viewing of an advertising banner, link, or product on the
Internet.
Inbound Links
See Backlinks.
Index
The list of web pages stored and ranked
by a search engine. Also known as a database.
Indexing
After a search engine has crawled
the web, it ranks the URLs found using various criteria (see algorithm)
and places them in the database, or index.
IP Address
A unique numerical
Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) that is assigned to every computer
that connects to the internet. IP addresses can be either static (never
unchanging) or dynamic (changes with every internet connection).
Your computer's IP address is what enables it to be "found" on the internet
in order to receive email, web pages, etc.
Example:
216.239.36.10
IP Spoofing
Returning
an IP address that is different from the one that is actually assigned
to the destination website. This is often done with redirects. A huge
no-no (it's even a criminal offense when done under certain circumstances).
Keyword (Key Phrase)
A
word or phrase typed into a search engine in order to find web pages
that contain that word or phrase. A web page can (and should be) optimized
for specific keywords/phrases that are relevant to the content on that
page.
Keywords Meta Tag
An
HTML meta tag that lists all of the main keywords and key phrases that
are contained on that web page. Some search engines use the keyword meta
tag to help rank web pages in their databases. Google does not.
Example:
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="small business,
business,advertising,sales">
Link Anchor Text
The "clickable" part of
the link structure. Using keywords in the link anchor text of
your inbound
links will help your search engine rankings for those keywords.
Example:
<a href="http://www.yoursite.com">This is the
link
anchor text for this link</a>
Link Exchange
Placing a link to another
website on your own site in exchange for a return link back. Also known
as reciprocal
linking.
Link Farm
A web page
created solely for search engine ranking purposes that consists almost
entirely of a long list of unrelated links. These types of pages are
penalized by almost all search engines, including Google.
Link Popularity
A
measure of how "popular" a web page is on the internet as measured by
the number of inbound links pointing to your web page. Link popularity
is one of the main factors used to help determine search engine rankings.
Linking
Placing a
link to another web page (usually on another web site) on one of your
own web pages.
Links
URLs placed
within a web page so that when they're clicked on the browser is served
with a different web page, often on a completely different web site.
Log Files
Files that
are constantly and automatically created and updated on your web server
that provide very specific details about the activities taking place
on your web site.
This includes referring URLs, IP addresses, pages visited, errors generated,
number of unique visitors, total page views, total hits, and much more.
Carefully reviewing your log files can provide valuable information about
your site's performance and visitors.
Meta Search Engine
A website that takes
your search query and passes it on to several different search
engines and directories, then summarizes the results in a logical manner
for you to review.
Mirror Sites
Identical,
but separate websites on different domains. They are commonly
used legitimately by large websites to share heavy server loads,
and by search engine spammers to
generate more search engine referrals and revenue.
In general, the search engines frown upon mirror sites and do not hesitate
to assess duplicate content penalties when they feel they are
warranted.
Outbound Links
Links from your web
page to another web page.
PageRank (PR)
A proprietary numerical score
that is assigned by Google to every web page in their index. PR for each
page is calculated by Google using a special mathematical algorithm,
based on the number and quality (as determined by Google)
of the inbound links to the page.
Page Views
Each time
a web page on a site is accessed by a visitor, it counts as one page
view. It doesn't matter if the same user viewed the same page 5 minutes
ago, it still represents another page view.
For example, let's say that a website receives two unique visitors in
one day. The first visitor surfs around the site and views a total of
six pages. The second visitor views 11 pages. This represents 17 page
views for the day by two unique visitors. (This poor webmaster needs
to do some serious SEO and site promotion!)
Paid Inclusion
Some
directories will only consider placing your URL into their database if
you pay them a fee.
Yahoo charges a fee per year evaluation fee for commercial sites.
Note that this fee doesn't guarantee that your URL will be accepted
and placed in the Yahoo database, but rather that Yahoo will consider your
site for inclusion in a timely manner. If your site is rejected, you're
just out your fee. But you do have an opportunity to appeal the decision.
Other smaller directories will guarantee to list your site upon payment
of their fee, provided that your site meets their guidelines (these are
clearly explained ahead of time).
Many search engines also have a paid inclusion program, including Inktomi
and Alta Vista. You don't have to pay to be included in search
engines however. If you have a few quality inbound links to your
site, the search engines will find and index your site on their own eventually.
The advantage of utilizing their paid inclusion services is they'll usually
crawl and index your site within 48 hours or less instead of the weeks
or even months that it often takes otherwise.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engines
This
is a traffic generating method where a search engine or directory places
your link in their searchable database and charges you a fee every time your
URL comes up in a search and it gets clicked on. The amount
of the fee that you pay is usually determined by bidding on keywords
or keyphrases.
The two largest PPC search engines are Overture and Google AdWords. There
are also numerous smaller PPC engines on the net, some very good a delivering
affordable targeted traffic, others not.
Penalty
A punishment levied against a web
page by a search engine as a result of using an SEO tactic that it doesn't
approve of. Tactics that most often result in penalties include using hidden
text,
sneaky redirects, and linking to a bad neighborhood.
A penalty usually results in a web page being credited for a lower Google
PageRank (PR) than it has actually "earned". Penalties also result in a page
being "buried" deep within the SERPS where it will almost never be found
again by searchers.
Performance-based Marketing
Paying for actions taken by a consumer as they occur on the Internet, rather
than paying up front for advertising space. Any type of revenue sharing program
where a publisher receives a commission for generating a lead or sale for an
advertiser.
Publisher
(Also referred to as an affiliate, associate, partner, reseller, content site,
email marketer, or search marketer) An independent party that promotes the
products or services of an advertiser in exchange for a commission on leads
or sales. The publisher displays ads, text links, or product links on its Web
site, in email campaigns, or in search listings and is paid a commission by
the advertiser when a visitor takes a specific action, such as filling out
a form or making a purchase.
Rankings
The order in which individual web
pages are returned in the SERPS for a given search query. Search
engines rank the
web pages based upon relevancy to your search terms according
to their proprietary algorithm.
Reciprocal Links
Links to another website
placed on your site in exchange for links back to your site from theirs.
This is a proven way to build link popularity which is instrumental
in getting high search engine rankings.
Redirect
A tactic sometimes used to send
a user to a different page that the one she found in the SERPS. For
example, a webmaster optimizes a web page for a very popular keyword.
When a user finds the page by searching on that keyword, she is subsequently
redirected to a different, possibly non-relevant page that the webmaster
stands ready to make money from.
This is considered to be an invalid use of a redirect and the search
engines (including Google) will penalize pages that use one in this
manner.
Referrer or Referring URL
The
URL of the web page where a visitor clicked a link to come to your
site.
Relevancy
The degree to which the content
on a web page that is returned in a list of search results (SERPS) "matches" the
topic of the information that the user was searching for. In other
words, if you use the search phrase "small green widgets" and a page
is returned that deals with "large red thingamajigs", the relevancy
of that page is very poor.
Robot
A program
used by a search engine to crawl the web in order to find, rank,
and index new
web pages.
Robots.txt
A special file that is commonly
used to exclude some or all robots from crawling certain files
or directories on a website. This file should b placed in your website's root
directory.
Search Engine Friendly
A web page that has been designed and optimized for high search engine
rankings. A search engine friendly page also makes it easy for
search engines to follow the links on the page.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The process
of optimizing a web page for high search engine rankings for
a particular search
term or set of search terms.
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS)
The
ranked listing of web pages that are returned for a specific search
query.
Search Query
The keyword, keyphrase, or
list of words that you type into a search engine to find web pages
on a topic that you're interested in.
Search Term
A list
of keywords or a keyphrase that a user types into a search
engine to find a list of web pages related to topic that he/she is
interested in.
SEO
See Search Engine Optimization.
Server
A computer that hosts web pages and
delivers them to a user's internet browser when requested. A dedicated
server hosts one website only. A shared server hosts multiple
websites. Dedicated servers deliver web pages faster and provide more
capacity and features than shared servers, but they're also considerably
more expensive to use.
PageRank (PR) For Money
Selling
or buying a link from a web page with a high Google PageRank for
the stated purpose of increasing the other page's PR. This is highly
frowned upon by Google and will result in a penalty for both
pages if
Google finds out about it.
SERPS
See Search Engine Results Pages
Spam
When speaking
of search engines, spam is loosely defined as any technique used to
give your web page(s) an unfair ranking advantage over other
pages.
Spider
See Crawler.
Static IP Address
An
IP address that is permanently assigned to a computer. The
IP address doesn't
change with each connection to the internet. See also Dynamic
IP Address.
Submitting Your URLs
This is the process
of telling a search engine or directory about your web pages. The URLs
that you submit are placed into a queue for later crawling or
human review.
If you have backlinks pointing to your web pages, there is usually
no need to submit your URLs to the search engines because their crawlers will
find the pages on their own and index them. You do need to submit
your URLs to directories however because they use humans instead of
robots to visit the sites that you submit and evaluate them.
Title Meta Tag
This HTML tag
is used to provide web browsers and search engines with an "official" title
for the page currently being displayed. Using a couple of keywords
in your title tag can help boost the page's search engine ranking for
those keywords.
Example:
<META NAME="TITLE" CONTENT="Page title goes here">
Top-10 Ranking
A web page that is listed in the first 10 search results for a search query.
Top-10 in Google also means on the first page using the standard
search criteria
Traffic
A website's average rate of traffic
flow within a given time period. It can be measured in a couple ways,
including unique
visitors and total page views. Don't confuse hits with
unique visitors and page views. The term hits is virtually useless
when evaluating website traffic statistics.
Unique Visitors
The number of visitors who
access a website within a given time period (usually 24 hours) from
a single IP address. If you visit the same website three times within
a 24 hour period, your visits only count as one unique visit for that
day.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Each web
page has it's own specific human-friendly URL, or web address.
URLs are mapped to computer-friendly IP addresses by special
computers called Domain
Name Servers, or DNSs.
Example:
http://www.rlrouse.com
User
See Visitor.
Visitor
A person who visits your
website. Also known as a User.
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