Internet Marketing Glossary
Terminology and acronyms explained
F.Y.I
Talk to most people about CPC, CTR, ROAS or SEO and
you'll probably get a blank look of bewilderment, but
this is the lexicon of the Internet marketer and its
growing every day. We've taken a long coffee break to
list some of the more frequently used ones. For future
reference - Bookmark
this page as we'll keep adding to it.
A/B Testing - the process where two creative
variations are tested to measure and monitor effectiveness
(e.g. two pay-per-click adverts or two website landing
pages with different copy)
Above the fold - a term that came from newspaper
publishing referring to the top section of the newspaper.
In digital marketing it refers to the visible part of
a users screen without the need for vertical scrolling
to reveal content lower down the page
Ad Clicks - the number of times that a user
registers a click on a particular banner or advertising
creative
Ad Group - a collection of adverts within a
digital marketing campaign. For example a series of
product PPC adverts within a product portfolio. The
ad group can feature multiple advertising creatives
Ad network - a group of individual websites that
feature display advertising through an advertising broker/agent.
There are three types: representative (where the advertiser
has full knowledge of the sites their ads will appear
on), blind (where the advertiser does not specify where
their ads will appear, often low cost remnant inventory)
and target (where ads are placed on a contextual or
behavioural basis
Ad Scheduling - the practice of managing ad-serving
according to parts of the day you deem most effective
for sales/lead generation to occur. For example, your
customers might show a higher propensity to purchase
during typical business lunch hours (e.g. 12 - 2pm)
so you restrict advertising to this time to maximise
your chance of attracting sales. Google Adwords offers
15-minute increments for ad-scheduling
Ad Views - also know as 'impressions' it refers
to the number of times that an advert is displayed on
a website page to a user. Many media owners sell banner
advertising on an impression volume basis (e.g. CPM)
as opposed to a cost-per-click model
Advertising Network - some websites choose to
outsource the sales of their advertising inventory to
a 3rd party network who attract and manage advertisers
for the publishing website
Affiliate - a website owner that promotes your
products or services through banner adverts, textual
content or basic links on a commission/reward basis
such as cost-per-acquisition or cost-per-click
Algorithm - the mathematical formula that a
search engine uses in order to produce a list of results
that match a user's search term query. Engines such
as Google and Yahoo regularly make changes and amendments
to their algorithm in order to refine their accuracy.
This means that marketers need to constantly monitor
their search positioning and amend their sites to ensure
they maintain and improve their ranking
API - an acronym for 'Application Programming
Interface'. This is for technical developers to create
bespoke applications that can access information and
data from other programmes. Google offer API access
so data from Adwords can be taken into tracking systems
etc
ASP - an acronym for Active Server Pages, although
it is also an acronym for Application Service Provider
(such as an email broadcasting tool that is 'web-based')
Average Response Value - The calculation of the
average revenue value of each click, calculated by taking
the total revenue divided by total clicks
BTF - an acronym for 'Below the Fold', the area
that isn't immediately visible on a web browser unless
the user has vertically scrolled down to view it
Backlinks - are links on other websites that
point to your website and drive traffic to your website.
They are a vital part of effective SEO strategies because
search engines often apply favourable weighting to a
site that has good quality backlinks
Banner Ad - graphical advertising that comes
in many formats and layouts. Popular sizes include 468x60,
120x600 and 120x120. Formats include Animated GIF, JPEG
and rich media formats that allow for data capture and
user interaction. For a selection of banner and graphical
media sizes, see our Internet advertising size guide.
Bookmark - the saving of a web page address
in a browser so a user can quickly return to the page
they were visiting, similar to the use of a physical
bookmark being used to mark the page of a book. Methods
of bookmarking vary from suggesting to a user that they
manually create a bookmark to automated scripts that
assist with this process
Bot - this is an abbreviation for 'robot' which
is a programme used by search engines for crawling the
Internet in order to index pages for their directory.
The two main bots are Googlebot and Slurp (Yahoo's crawler
programme)
Bounce Rate - a metric used to describe the
percentage of visitors to any page within a website
that leave without visiting any other pages (i.e bounce
straight out again)
CGI-BIN - an acronym for 'Common Gateway Interface
- Binary' which a location on a web server that stores
scripts and programmes.The most common amongst these
include the processing of website forms
Churn - expression that refers to the action
of a customer lapsing from your product/service, often
expressed as a churn rate which is a percentage of churn
from your customer base
Click-Through Rate - a popular analysis metric
that measures the number of clicks that were attracted
to a promotional campaign where CTR is the percentage
of clicks to a given number of impressions (for example
250 clicks from 1,000 banner advert impressions would
be a 25% CTR)
Contextual advertising- promotional targeting
based on website pages, categories or keywords. Often
used by content networks.
Conversion Rate - this is another popular analysis
metric where clicks are measured when they result in
a sale or lead being generated. To calculate conversion
rate, divide 100 by the total number of clicks then
multiply by the number of sales/leads (e.g. 100 / 20
clicks x 5 sales = 25% conversion rate from clicks)
Cookie - a cookie is a text file that is stored
on a user's computer and records information provided
by the user that can be recalled on future visits. For
example forms can be pre-populated or content personalised
when the website is read by the web-server that sent
it. Users can choose to accept or reject cookies and
your website's privacy policy should state your use
of cookies and allow the user the opportunity to reject
them
CPA - an acronym meaning either Cost Per Action
or Cost Per Acquisition
CPC - an acronym for 'Cost Per Click', a core
reporting metric in Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing used
to manage keyword bidding
CPM - an acronym for Cost Per Mille (Latin
for thousand) referring to the price paid for 1,000
impressions or pieces of data (e.g. email addresses).
In banner advertising space will often be sold on a
CPM basis where you will pay a set price per 1,000 impressions
(e.g. £15 CPM)
CPS - an acronym for cost-per-sale, calculated
by dividing the total marketing expenditure by the total
sales attributable
CSS - an acronym for Cascading Style Sheet (a
document stored with the suffix .css) which is a file
that governs website elements such as font types, font
sizes, colours etc
CTR - an acronym for 'Click Through Rate' which
is a popular analysis metric that measures the number
of clicks that were attracted to a promotional campaign
where CTR is the percentage of clicks to a given number
of impressions (for example 250 clicks from 1,000 banner
advert impressions would be a 25% CTR)
Crawler - a piece of software used by search
engines to visit websites and 'crawl' using links and
then index the content for use on search engine results
pages (SERPs). They are also referred to as 'robots'
or 'spiders'
Description - the description tag is an element
of META data which describes your website, web page
or company in search engine results. Descriptions can
either be approved in engines and directories that employ
human editors or can be 'crawled' from header section
information on your web page
DHTML- an acronym for Dynamic Hypertext Markup
Language
Directory - an alternative to a search engine
where results are categorised into specific groups,
often by human editors such as Yahoo Directory or Open
Directory Project (DMOZ)
Direct response in an online environment would
include email campaigns and banner adverts
DNS - Domain Name System websites exist on IP
addresses and the user friendly domain name is itself
associated with the IP address where the website is
located. This saves the user needing to remember strings
of numbers. The DNS is a process where the user friendly
name can be associated with the IP address of the appropriate
web server
Domain - the domain refers to the last three
(or sometimes two or four) letters after the final dot
in a website address. It is an indication as to the
type of organisation that you are visiting. Popular
domain types used in the UK include: .com, .co.uk, org,
net etc
Email - Electronic Mail, the process of sending
electronic communications from one computer to another
EPC - Earnings Per Click, an analysis metric
that shows the revenue generated from each click in
a campaign. For example, if a PPC campaign drove 200
clicks to your website and you generated £600
from the campaign then your EPC would be £3. EPC
is calculated by dividing revenue by total number of clicks.
The higher the EPC the better
FMCG acronym for fast moving consumer goods
such as toiletries and can also include food and drinks
products
Geo-targeting - the process of delivering advertising
creatives to a specific geographic area. Google Adwords,
Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter all feature
geo-targeting for PPC campaigns with Google offering
a radius tool allowing advertisers to limit their ad-serving
to a set distance from a set location. This is perfect
for local businesses that offer services within a particular
catchment area
GIF - (Graphic Interchange Format) widely regarded
as the most common banner advert format, the GIF format
has built in compression and displays in 256 colours.
Animated GIF files are also a popular form of animation
used in banner advertising.
Googlebot - the name of the robot used by Google
to crawl the Internet. Webmasters can provide information
for the Googlebot using the robots.txt file. This includes
instructions such as to ignore or view particular pages.
The information collected by Googlebot can be seen in
the Google Webmaster Tools application
Google Dance - a term used by search marketers
to refer to the turbulent time shortly after a search
engine's algorithm has been changed and results change
positions and can drop in ranking
Hit - one of the original analysis metrics that
was used to gauge the success of a web page, however
it is any request made to a web server for any type
of file. This includes pages, images and scripts. A
single website page can register several 'hits' as it
calls up information and resources from the server to
present the content to a single user. Therefore 1000
hits does not refer to 1,000 individual user sessions
as was the popular misconception
HTML - an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language
which is language used to make hypertext documents for
use on the Internet. Text and information is surrounded
by codes which indicate to the browser how it should
appear to the user. HTML also allows pages to be linked
using hyperlinks from one page to another (either within
the site or on another site on the Internet)
HTTP - an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol,
which is the format of the World Wide Web. When a web
browser (such as Internet Explorer or Safari) sees "HTTP"
at the start of a website address, it knows that it
is viewing a WWW page
HTTPS - an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
Secure which is often denoted to your visitors with
the yellow padlock icon at the bottom of the browser
Hyperlink - the method by which users click
to move from one page to another within a site or a
completely different website on the Internet. Hyperlinks
can be embedded in text or graphical content
ICANN - an acronym standing for Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is a non-profit
organisation that oversee technical management functions
currently managed by the U.S. Government, or by its
contractors and volunteers. You can find out more about
ICANN by visiting http://www.icann.org
Impression - (Ad Impression or Page Impression)
the metric relating to the viewing of a website page
or advertising creative on a page, irrespective of whether
or not the visitor clicks on a particular link or advert.
In display advertising, inventory is most commonly sold
on an impression basis, usually per thousand impressions
(CPM)
Interstitial - also commonly known as 'pop-ups',
these are pages that are inserted between a perceived
flow of pages on a website. These are often used for
advertising in an instructive form. They come in a variety
of sizes from full screen to smaller creatives designed
to catch the users attention before they close the window
IP address - an acronym for Internet Protocol
address. Every computer/server that is connected to
the Internet has an assigned IP address. This comes
in a standard format of four groups of numbers separated
by dots. The numbers range from 0-255. Whilst every
website has an IP address, using a domain name server,
they are more commonly known by their domain name
JPEG - an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts
Group and is a graphical format that uses millions of
colours and is ideal for displaying photographic content
KEI - acronym for Keyword Effectiveness Index,
the comparison of searches for a keyword divided by
the total number of results displayed for that keyword.
The higher the KEI, the more popular a keyword is and
the less competition it has so should be more realistic
to get a higher ranking
Keyword - a very common method of searching
for information on the Internet is keyword searching.
A website owner can identify important keywords and
present these as META content in the header section
of their page source code and also throughout the content
of the page. Search engine crawlers index words from
your website to retrieve when a user searches for this
word of phrase. Determining these words and their inclusion
in your code/page is where good SEO is essential
Keyword density - often expressed as a percentage
value, denoting the number of times a keyword/phrase
is used on a page in relation to all the textual content
on that page. Keyword density checking ensures that
a word isn't being overused. There is little agreement
on the optimal effective percentage, although we try
and optimise between 8-12%
Keyword Matching - a phrase often used in paid-search
marketing. The Google Adwords system offers four keyword
matching options which allow you to vary your ads exposure
to different search groups. These options are: broad
match, phrase match, exact match and negative match
KPI acronym for Key Performance Indicator which
are organisation defined measurements of achievements
(such as clicks, sales, enquiries)
Landing page - either a custom-created page for
a specific marketing campaign or any site page designated
as the destination of an inbound link from any source
(e.g. search engine, email, banner advert etc.)
Link - a connection between two pages (or even
sections within a page) or between two separate websites
Link Popularity - a metric that several major
search engines use to rank the importance of a website
by examining how many inbound links a website has and
the individual quality of these. Link popularity is
regarded as a key factor in Google's PageRank
LTV acronym for lifetime value. The calculated
value of a customers worth to an organisation based
on existing and projected future revenue.
Localisation - a process where website and website
content is tailored for a specific country or market.
This could include user manuals, sales literature and
press releases etc.
META tags - section of an HTML page that specifies
content of the site such as title, description and keywords
that are used by search engines to classify the page
Microsite - a page or set of pages that operate
independently of the main site and focus on specific
promotions or products. Microsites will often have a
dedicated URL that will also be used for the marketing
of the microsite.
MPU - acronym for Mid Page Unit (or multi purpose
unit). Commonly a square or rectangular space on a page
for either flat or interactive advertising content.
One-to-one marketing - high degree of personalisation
to the individual with tailored offers according to
purchase habits and response data
Opt in/Opt out - email marketing terminology
relating to the 'permission' status of an email address
intended to received promotional material. Business
to consumer email marketing requires explicit consent
from the recipient that they want to receive promotional
communications and 'opt-in' to receive these messages.
Business to business communications fall under 'opt-out'
status, although many companies choose to seek permission
from their customers/prospects at the point of sale
or enquiry. In the UK PECR legislation governs the marketer's
actions relating to permission marketing
Overture - now known as 'Yahoo Search Marketing',
Overture is a major PPC network that feeds a number
of search engines with sponsored advertising results,
including Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos and Alltheweb. Bids
are placed on specific keywords and this governs the
prominence your advert has on the search results pages
Page Views - number of times a user requests
a page that may contain a particular ad. A page is defined
as any file or content delivered by a web server that
would generally be considered a web document. This includes
HTML pages (.html, .htm, .shtml), script-generated pages
(.cgi, .asp, .cfm, etc.), and plain-text pages. It also
includes sound files (.wav, .aiff, etc.), video files
(.mov, etc.), and other non-document files. Only image
files (.jpeg, .gif, .png), javascript (.js) and style
sheets (.css) are excluded from this definition
Pay-per-Click - a model of remuneration where
the advertiser doesn't pay on an impression basis but
when the user clicks on the promotional advert. Less
common in banner advertising but at the heart of paid-search
marketing and PPC networks such as Google Adwords and
Yahoo Search Marketing
Pay-per-Impression - a traditional model of
remuneration where the advertiser pays for a volume
of displays of their advert, irrespective of whether
or not users click on the advert. This is the dominant
model for banner advertising. Impressions are not a
guarantee of individual user views of a creative. For
example if an advert has run-of-site placement then
a single user might see the creative several times
Pay-per-Sale - a common remuneration model for
affiliate marketing where the advertiser only pays a
publisher when a sale/transaction has been completed
as a result of that promotional activity
Permission marketing the consent from a customer
to receive marketing communications after having opted-in
to receive them
PFI - an acronym for Paid For Inclusion, the
process of paying for a link to be included in a search
engine's index, but no guarantee of the rank it will
have
PPC - an acronym for pay-per-click, the remuneration
model where an advertiser only pays when a visitor clicks
on an advert, irrespective of the number of impressions.
This model allows for good tracking and analysis of
ROI
Reciprocal linking where two websites agree
to display links to each others sites
Redirect the process of moving a URL to point
at another website or page. For example if a domain
has moved or a page has changed its URL path a direct
would point the user to the correct location. 301 is
the redirect for a permanently moved page/site
Referrer - the website or web page that is responsible
for delivering a visitor to your website or web page.
This information is captured in the log file and many
site analysis packages will graphically display the
referring sites and URLs
Repeat visits a metric that shows when a user
has visited a page/site more than once. This is done
through tagging the user
Rich Media advertising a display advert that
allows the user to interact with the banner prior to
clicking through to a website. For example this could
include completing form data which is then pre-populated
when the user visits the site
Robot - see spider or crawler
Robots.txt - a file placed on your website directory
tree which gives instructions to robots/spiders as to
what content to access
ROAS - an acronym for 'Return on Ad Spend'
which is the revenue generated from a specific campaign
or keyword (not the profit). Calculated by revenue divided
by ad spend gives you the ROAS figure
ROI - an acronym for 'Return on Investment'
which is the amount of profit you've made from a particular
campaign or keyword. Calculated by profit minus advertising
spend divided by advertising spend x100. This gives
you an ROI percetage figure. Internet marketing is an
idea medium to track and manage return on investment
Search Engine - an application that indexes
website content on the Internet and returns results
when keywords and phrases are entered by a user
SERP - acronym for Search Engine Results Page
Segmentation the process of subdividing a group
or audience in order to better target a marketing message
to them or track their responses to a generic campaign
SEM - an acronym for 'Search Engine Marketing'
which covers a range of services including organic optimisation,
paid-search, paid-inclusion and directory listing
SEO - an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation,
the process of driving traffic to a website through
achieving prominent listing on a search engine's result
pages through on-page and off-page techniques
Spam - unsolicited junk email, badly targeted
and indiscriminate marketing communications
Spider - a term used to describe search engines
data gathering applications (such as those employed
by Yahoo and Alta Vista), called spiders because of
the way they cruise all over the web to find information
SSL an acronym for Secure Socket Layer which
is an encryption process for data to be securely transmitted
over the Internet
Stickiness - a term used to describe the effectiveness
and usefulness of a website and how visitors remain
on the site. If a site has poor stickiness then users
won't remain on-page for very long and bounce out to
another site
Submission - refers to content submitted or
suggested to a search engine or directory. Several search
engines and directories supply forms for users to complete
to suggest content to be included. In most cases the
actual submission should be optimized to include relevant
keyword phrases to increase the chances of being found
in a search
Title - an element of a web page which appears
in the top left of most browsers. It is also the part
of a directory submission that represents the title
of the website. Page title selection is one of the most
important parts of SEO and often appears as the title
seen in search engine result for your website
Traffic - a term used to describe the volume
of visits that a website receives
Unique Users - individual/different users that
visit a website or web page, irrespective of the number
of times they make return visits
UCE - an acronym for unsolicited commercial email,
more commonly known as 'spam'
URL - an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator,
which is an HTTP address to denote a certain website
or web page. The URL is a unique identifier, or address,
of a web page on the Internet
Viral Marketing - a self-replicating campaign
that propagates itself online. A notable example of
this technique was the Burger King subservient chicken
campaign where users could instruct a man in a chicken
outfit to behave as they wanted (e.g. stand up, wave
your arms etc.). Users pass on the address of the campaign
to friends, family and colleagues and the viral 'infection'
spreads
Visits - a sequence of requests made by one
user at one site. If a visitor does not request any
new information for a period of time, known as the "time-out"
period, then the next request by the visitor is considered
a new visit. To enable comparisons among sites, I/PRO
uses a 30-minute time-out
W3/ W3C - World Wide Web Consortium. The W3C,
or World Wide Web Consortium, is a standards body dedicated
to ensuring interoperability between all the varied
system and network types that comprise the World Wide
Web part of the Internet
Web Site - the virtual location for an organisation's
presence on the World Wide Web, usually making up several
web pages and a single home page designated by a unique
URL
World Wide Web - the web allows computer users
to access information across systems around the world
using URLs to identify files and systems and hypertext
links to move between files on the same or different
systems
WYSIWYG - an acronym for 'What you see is what
you get'. This is a type of editor used for the creation
of website pages. Examples include Adobe Dreamweaver
and Microsoft Frontpage
Yahoo Slurp - the crawler programme used by
Yahoo to index website pages. Webmasters can provide
instructions to Slurp using the robots.txt file
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