Glossary of internet marketing terms

Here is a glossary of internet marketing terms. I hope that you find it useful.

See also: Glossary of marketing terms.

Affilate marketing: An internet marketing strategy, whereby you get paid for promoting another website. For example, a banner advert on your site leads to another website. If someone clicks on your banner and buys something from the other website, you receive payment. For example, The Marketing Compass offers 50% via affilate marketing: http://www.marketingcompass.co.uk/business-opportunity/

Anchor text: The text within a hyperlink. For example www.marketingcompass.co.uk  …or…  The Marketing Compass small business marketing advice. Search engines examine anchor text, in order to figure out what the destination web page is about. They are doing their best to be helpful to the searcher. Think of it this way: Google would like to know as much as possible about the subject of the page to which the link points. So inserting keywords into anchor text helps search engines such as Google to do a better job.

Tip: if someone wants to link to your website, send them a pre-prepared hyperlink (along the lines of the one above – but with your URL / keywords within it). Here is another tip – within your website, all of your links to other websites should open up in a new browser window. If you have an easy-to-use CMS (Content Management System), you will be able to do this without getting involved in the code (HTML).

Backlinks: AKA ‘Referring domains’, are hyperlinks within other websites which link to your website.

Banner adverts: (Sometimes called web banners). Advertisements which appear within websites which click through to the advertisers website, squeeze page or other online resource. They can be placed manually by the website owner, or delivered via an ad server (which is how corporate online banner advertising campaigns work – this is all sorted out by an digital advertising agency). There are numerous forms of payment on offer, including a flat rate for a period of time, click through rate,advert impressions, and payment upon sale. If you search for ‘ad networks’ if you are interested in this type of thing (however, be careful, because there are some dodgy outfits out there). Also see ‘Google AdSense’ within this glossary of marketing terms.

Blog: Contraction of ‘web log’. A blog is an online journal. It is chronological, so the most recent entry appears first. Blogging can help with your SEO results. My favourite blog platform is WordPress. www.nigeltemple.com/blog

CRM: Customer Relationship Management system. There are numerous software solutions available. The idea is to have all of your contacts and customers in one place.

CMS: Content Management System. This software allows you to make changes to your website. Examples include WordPress and Joomla.

CPC: Cost Per Click. This is the price that you pay each time someone clicks on your online advertisement (i.e. via Google AdWords).

Domain name: A website address. For example www.bbc.co.uk is the domain name for the BBC website. The TLD (Top Level Domain) element for the BBC = “co” (which stands for ‘company’).

Google AdWords: When you search for something within Google, adverts may appear at the top of the page and within the right hand column. The adverts can also appear towards the right hand side of the screen if you use Gmail. Advertisers pay for this service and are charged when someone clicks on their ad.

Google AdSense: This is a way of earning some money by having relevant advertisements appearing within your website, which are served up by Google. You can join AdSense for free – the advertiser pays Google (i.e. when someone clicks on their ad).

Google+: Google’s answer to Facebook. Within Google+, Circles enable you to segment your connections.

Hashtags: Within Twitter, you can use hashtags # in order to highlight keywords. For example, if you wrote: #Oxford …within Twitter, it would appear in blue and this word would become a clickable item – which allows Twitter users to click on that word and see recent Tweets which contain the same word. The use of hashtags enables Twitter users to find other Tweeters who are interested in specific issues / topics / products / people / locations etc.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language – the computer language used to build (most) web pages. Sections of code are ‘marked up’, using angle brackets (usually in pairs). This is used to tell an internet browser how to display information on the page, i.e start bold / end bold, or start headline / end headline, or ‘insert an image here’.

It is important to have a conceptual understanding of HTML, if you are going to be an effective internet marketer, as this knowledge will help you in countless situations. An excellent resource for gaining this knowledge is W3 Schools: www.w3schools.com

Keywords: Words or phrases which people search for (i.e. within Google). As part of your SEO strategy, it is a good idea to have a list of keywords and phrases which appear within your website’s content and meta data, in order to attract the search engines.

PPC: Pay Per Click advertising. The advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their online advertisement (i.e. via Google AdWords).

Referring domains: See ‘Backlinks’.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing. The art and science of improving a website’s organic search engine results, by improving the use of keywords, meta data and website content.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation. The science (and art) of attracting the search engines to your website. See ‘keywords’.

SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages. This is the list of website pages which appear when you use a search engine. Within Google, there usually are 10 results per page.

SMO: Social Media Optimisation is the strategic use of social media for business purposes, i.e. attracting visitors to your website. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_optimization

Squeeze page: A web page (or website which usually only comprises a single page) which has the sole objective of tempting visitors to ‘join your list’, i.e. your newsletter list.

Visitor: A ‘unique visitor’ (UV) to your website is identified by their IP (Internet Protocol) address. In a period of one month, let’s say that person Y visits in the first week and person Z visits in the second week. The website in question has two unique visitors. However, if person Y visits again in the third week, the site still only has two UVs. A high number of UVs is a good indication of a website’s popularity.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator or, more simply, a website page address. For example: www.bbc.co.uk It is important to think in terms of page addresses, as the search engines list URLs within their giant indexes of the web. Keywords and phrases are then associated with specific URLs.