Internet Marketing Definitions And Terms

Important Internet Marketing Definitions, Terms & Abbreviations…

The following is a list of internet marketing definitions, terms and abbreviations for beginners to follow.  Knowing the following terms will help you in your pursuit of being a successful online marketer.

Often the reason that many beginners get frustrated and lost is because they don’t understand simple terms.  That causes a whole domino effect of  confusion, where if you just understood that one term you could have stopped that domino effect of confusion.

Any time you don’t understand a term or definition just come here and look it up.  If I do not have it listed, feel free to e-mail me at Greg@MeLoveMoney.com to ask, and I will add it to the list for you.  The list is in alphabetical order.

Note: All definitions are MY definition of the word.

• Affiliate Link An affiliate link is a special link that is used to track affiliates traffic. A unique link is given for each different product you promote. So if you were promoting a “Dog Health” product and a “Cat Health” product, you would get a unique affiliate link for each product. When someone purchases the product through your affiliate link, you get a commission from the sale, whatever percentage or set amount the product owner specifies.
• Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is a term that is used to describe marketing other people’s products (physical or informational) for a percentage of the price. For example, if someone was selling a book on “Making Money On The Internet” for $40, and they offered affiliates %50, the affiliate would get $20 (minus any minor fees) each time they made a sale of the product. Affiliate’s sales are able to be tracked by a special link called an affiliate link.
• Affiliate Network An affiliate network is a network (or website) that hosts a bunch of different products in one place so that they can be easily found by affiliates. Some networks have tens of thousands of different products that you can choose from and promote via the affiliate link they give you.
• Analytics This is also known as “Web Metrics”. Analytics is a collections of data about a website and it’s visitors. It gives information to you on things such as performance data on clicks, time, pages viewed, and tons of other important information. This information can be used to increase conversions and the amount of money your website makes.
• Back Link(s) A back link is a link from another web site pointing to any page of your web site. Back links are very important for the ranking of your web site, and placement in the search engines.
• BH or B.H. BH is an abbreviation often used for Black Hat, defined below.
• Black HatBlack Hat is a term used for methods of making money that are not totally ethical (opposed to “White Hat”). Black hat methods of making money are usually short term.
• Blog Blog is a term that is short for “Web Log”. Blogs are usually considered part journal, part web site.
• Broad Keyword A Broad Keyword is a keyword that is very common, and often very hard to rank high for in the search engines. An example of a broad keyword would be “make money”, opposed to “make money online by building blogs” (which is considered a “long tail keyword” – defined below).
• Click Arbitrage Click Arbitrage is basically buying low price traffic and then selling it higher. Many people consider click arbitrage as using pay per click ads to drive cheap traffic to their web sites, and then getting those visitors to click on ads that will make more money than the traffic they payed for. Click arbitrage is getting harder and harder to profit from, and I don’t recommend it.
• Click Through Rate (CTR) Click Through Rate (CTR) is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions (times shown). So 100 clicks on 1,000 impressions is a CTR of 10%. This is usually used to determine the effectiveness of your ad. The higher your CTR, the more relevant your ad is, and the better it is (in almost all cases).
• CloakingCloaking is basically showing a search engine spider or bot one version of a web page and a different version to the actual visitor. Unapproved cloaking will quickly get you banned from search engines, which is not good for business.
• Contexual Advertising Contexual Advertising is a feature that is offered by some search engines (mostly the major search engines) which will place your ad on an actual web site that is related to the content of your ad (and more important to the web site that ad points to). Contexual advertising is usually considered more advanced or tricky then “regual” pay per click ads.
• Cost Per Click (CPC)Cost Per Click (CPC) is the price that you agree to pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Often, many search engines allow you to set a maximum CPC, which is the absolute maximum you will pay for each click. Just about all the time you pay less than your maximum CPC, how much less depends on many different factors.
• Cost Per Impression (CPM) Cost Per Impression (CPM) is the cost you are willing to pay per 1,000 impressions. For CPM, clicks are irrelevant to how much you pay.
• CPC CPC is an abbreviation for the term Cost Per Click, defined above.
• CPM CPM is an abbreviation for the term Cost Per Impression, defined above.
• CTR CTR is an abbreviation for the term Click Through Rate, defined above.
• Domain Name A Domain Name is the name of your web site. So my domain name is melovemoney.com, or www.melovemoney.com.
• E-Commerce E-Commerce is basically the ability to purchase online. A more common name you may recognize is a “shopping cart”.
• Geo-Targeting Geo Targeting is when you advertise to people in a specific location. So if I only wanted to market to people in the United States, I would set my geo-targeting to the United States.
• Hyperlink A hyperlink is clickable text. Just the longer term for “link”.
• Keyword Keywords are the words or group of words that someone searches for in the search engine. Keywords are also referred to as the certain words that you want people to be able to type into the search engine and have your web site come up as a listing. When people talk about “ranking for keywords”, they are talking about the words that they want people to be able to search for in the search engines and find their web site as a result.
• Keyword Research Keyword Research is the research that you do in order to find the best keywords to optimize your web site for (so that when people do a search for these keywords they find your web site). This is a very aspect of becoming successful in internet marketing. In general, the more searches the keyword gets, the harder it is to rank for (as in rank highly in the search engines). And of course vice versa for the less searches a keyword gets.
• Keyword Stuffing Keyword Stuffing is when someone stuffs a bunch of keywords in proper areas of the web site tags (such as meta tags, titles, etc), so that they can try to rank for a bunch of different keywords. Don’t do this, as it doesn’t work. You don’t want to focus on ranking for too many keywords.
• Landing Page A landing page is the first page that a visitor lands on after clicking on an advertisement. Most people just use the web sites home page as the landing page. Whatever page you do send the person to, make sure that your landing page is a specialized page with information that you can easily test and change to find the best results.
• Link Building Link Building is the process of obtaining links from other pages back to your site. There is tons of different ways to build links, and this is a very important aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – that improves your sites ranking in the search engines.
• Long Tail Keywords Long Tail Keywords are basically longer keywords. Often people will build niche sites around long tail keywords, because long tail keywords are much easier to rank high in the search engines for. Long tail keywords get less traffic, but the traffic is often very targeted, which is good. You want to find long tail keywords that get a good amount of traffic, but also don’t have much competition. An example of a long tail keyword would be “train golden retriever to stop jumping”, opposed to “dog training” (which is a “broad keyword” – defined above. Long tail keywords are usually much more profitable, as the traffic is much more targeted.
• Natural Listings Natural Listings (Also “Organic Listings”) are the non-advertised listings in the search engines. You use a combination of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to get your web site further and further up into the natural listings. The number 1 spot in the search engines is the best place to be, as you are the first listing that comes up when you are the number 1 spot for a certain keyword.
• Off-Page Optimization Off-Page Optimization are the things you do off your site (such as building links) to increase your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Also see definition for “Search Engine Optimization”.
• On-Page Optimization On-Page Optimization are the things you do in the HTML of your site to increase SEO (such as keywords in title tags and meta tags, making your keywords proportionate and relevant to the content of your site, making sure all of your pages are linked together, making sure there are no broken links). Also see definition for “Search Engine Optimization”.
• Organic Listing Organic Listings are the same as Natural Listings, definitions is above.
• Paid Listing Paid Listings are the paid ads that display when a person types keywords into a search engine and does a search. You position in the paid listing varies from search engine to search engine, but in general the more you pay per click, the higher your listing will be. In the Google search engine, your Click Through Rate (CTR) of your ad group is also very important on the positioning of your paid listing.
• Pay Per Click (PPC) Pay Per Click is a very common form of internet marketing where you place ads (based on certain keywords that people type in to search for), and you pay each time someone clicks your ad (and in turn visits your “landing page” – defined above).
• PPC PPC is an abbreviation for the term Pay Per Click, defined above.
• Rank, or Rank(ed) For When someone states “where do you rank?” or “I am ranked for…[certain keywords in certain position]” they are talking about their placement in the search engines. So if I say that I am “ranked #1 in Google for my main keyword which is ‘make money on the internet’”, that means that I have the first position in the Google search engine for the term “make money on the internet”.
• Reciprocal Link Reciprocal Links are basically an exchange of links between sites. The sites will each display a link to the other site somewhere on their web site, which in turn increases both site’s link popularity.
• Return On Investment (ROI) Return On Investment is the amount of money your ads generate compared to how much you had to pay for those ads. So if you generate more money from your ads than you spend, you have a positive ROI.
• ROI ROI is an abbreviation for the term Return On Investment, defined above.
• Scraping Scraping is basically stealing content from a web site and using it on your own.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Optimization is neat way of saying, “making your site search engine friendly”. SEO is a very complex definition to properly define, but just know that it is the things you do to your site to make it rank higher in the search engines. There are things you can do specifically in the HTML to increase SEO (such as keywords in title tags and meta tags, making your keywords proportionate and relevant to the content of your site, making sure all of your pages are linked together, making sure there are no broken links) and that is called “On-Page Optimization”. Then there are things that you can do off your page (such as building links), which is called “Off-Page Optimization”.
• SEO SEO is an abbreviation for the term Search Engine Optimization, defined above

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• Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Search Engine Results Page is the term used to explain the search results that display in a search engine when you do a search.
• SERP SERP is the abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page, definition above.
• Sticky or Stickiness Sticky or Stickiness is a term used to describe how often visitors are likely to come back to your site. If a site is considered real sticky, it means people are likely to come back to your site time and time again

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• Web 2.0 Web 2.0 is a fancy word for the internet marketing services industry. MySpace and Facebook are considered Web 2.0 sites

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• WH or W.H. WH is an abbreviation sometimes used for White Hat, defined below.
• White Hat White Hat is the term that is used to describe the ethical ways (or the “right way”) of doing things (opposed to “Black Hat” – defined above). White Hat and Black Hat are also included with the term SEO, to see if someone used an ethical way or an unethical way to raise their site in the search engine results pages (“SERPs” – defined above). White Hat and Black Hat are also usually attached to a method being sold. If someone is selling a “secret method to make money”, people will often ask if it is Black Hat or White Hat. White Hat of course meaning that it is ethical.