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Glossary

Select a phrase from the list on the left or scroll down to find the defintion you're looking for. If the word or phrase you're looking for isn't listed, let us know here and we'll put it up!

 

Affiliate Marketing
Online-based, commission-driven form of advertising. An affiliate usually places a special link on their website that redirects to the seller of the product's site. When that product is purchased, the affiliate obtains a commission for referring the sale. Affiliate marketing is a great way for new website owners to start out if they don't yet have a product or service to sell.

Breadcrumbs
A form of navigation on a website. If you look at the top of this page near the left, you will see the words "home > glossary". This is an example of breadcrumbs - leaving a "trail" from where the site begins to which page is being viewed. Breadcrumbs have been found to be very search-engine friendly.

Blacklist
In short, something you do not want to have happen to you. This can occur if a certain ISP bans you from sending email to their clients (when emailing) or when a search engine detects you are trying to cheat your way to the top of the ranks by implementing certain strategies on your website.

Conversion Rate
A number derived from the total number of unique visitors to a webpage and the number of sales/signups/whatever level of success you wish to measure from that page.

Domain
The name of your website. This would be www.(domain).com, or .net, .org, etc. Domains should be selected very carefully to ensure the content of the site is relevant to the domain.

Flash
A type of graphics displayed on a website used to grab attention, often using moving and animated images.

Frames
A structure used for designing webpages that is not as popular now as it once was. Frames are now notorious for not being search engine friendly.

Google
The world's largest search engine and the primary search engine you need to be concerned about when optimizing your website. Don't get on their bad side.

Head Tags
Part of the HTML code of a website that can be manipulated for on-page search engine optimization. Head tags include title tags, meta description tags and meta keyword tags, among others.

Hits
A measure of how many items a visitor to your website is shown when visiting a particular page. If you have 2 images on a webpage and that visitor only views that particular page, the hit-count would be 3 as the page counts for one hit and the 2 images count as separate hits. People typically speak of hits as a definitive form of website traffic, however a unique visitor count is much more accurate.

HTML
The basic code used to form a website. In most cases, you can view a website's HTML code by right-clicking on the webpage and selecting "view source".

IP Address
Each time you access the internet, your computer is assigned a particular IP address which will look something like 7.14.16.9. Your IP address can either be static (does not change each time you're on the internet) or dynamic (randomly generated each time you access the net).

ISP
Short for Internet Service Provider, a company that enables you to access the internet for a monthly fee. In many cases, your ISP is the same company that provides your telephone service.

Javascript
A type of programming language enabling a site to have changing features on it. Javascript promotes an interactive environment between the visitor and the website.

Keywords
Words and phrases you want to use on your site so when these words and phrases are searched in a search engine, your site will come up in the listings. Keywords can be tweaked and used strategically to manipulate your search engine ranking.

Layers
A structure type used in webdesign enabling the webpage to have overlapping features and fields of easily movable and adjustable sizes. Layers are more search engine friendly than frames but results can be inconsistent across different web browsers.

Link Popularity
According to search engines, the popularity of your site according to outbound vs. inbound links, the quality of the inbound links according to content and PageRank, amount of broken links, links to sites that are blacklisted, etc. Link popularity depends on more factors than anybody really knows, however people do know that link popularity is the most important factor used for ranking your site in the search engines.

Navigation Bar (NavBar)
A set of internal links setup somewhere on your page that helps direct your visitors to requested pages within your site. NavBars also help direct search engine spiders to other pages within your site.

Opt-in
A method of confirming an email address when signing up for something on the internet. After signing up for a free online newsletter for example, you may receive an email to that address asking you to confirm your request for subscription to this newsletter. The opt-in email method is great for visitors as it prevents people from signing you up to random programs and having you end up with loads of junk mail in your inbox, and great for websites as it provides them with a legit list of email addresses. Opt-in email marketing is also great for avoiding being blacklisted by ISP's.

PageRank
A feature provided when installing the Google Toolbar (available at toolbar.google.com). PageRank provides you with Google's rank of a page on a scale of 0-10 according to a number of largely unknows factors, but include link popularity, search engine ranking and content quality as some of these factors. PageRank is a handy tool to have installed on your computer when considering exchanging links with outside sites.

Pay Per Click
A form of search engine marketing where you bid for link placement on certain search engines, and you are billed for this placement according to the number of times people have clicked through your link. As an example, bidding for the keyword "golf clubs" on a pay per click engine may yield a cost of 25 cents per click for a first place link and 5 cents per click on a 30th place link. If you chose to take the first place position for this search term and 1000 people clicked on this link in a given month, you would be billed $250. Google AdWords is the name of their in-house pay per click program.

SEO
Short for Search Engine Optimization. This is the process where websites are altered via onpage and offpage techniques to boost their search engine ranking for selected keywords.

Salescopy
The content on a webpaged used to deliver a call to action. Depending on the nature of your website, the salescopy does not have to promote the visitor to buy a particular product or service; the salescopy can be used to entice the visitor so sign up for your free newsletter/contest/tip of the week, etc.

Search Engine
A source of the majority of traffic for most websites. Search engines and directories list websites according to their content and other variables and rank them by what they perceive are the most relevant results for a particular search term.

Spam
Unsolicited email sent to you from a source you have not requested contact from or you have had no previous contact with. NEVER consider spam as a method of marketing - you risk being blacklisted - effectively throwing your online marketing campaign out the window.

Also a moderately appetizing canned meat dish.

Spiders
Programs used by search engines to "crawl" through your website looking for content used to rank your website in their engine. Spiders are launched automatically and will help getting your site listed properly in the search engines.

Also small, eight-legged, multi-eyed creatures descending from the order Araneae.

Tables
Another structure type for building websites. Tables are much more search engine friendly than frames, and provide virtually the same design flexibility as layers. The distinct advantage of tables is they often hold design constant across different web browsers.

Webeditor
Software used to design a website. Popular webediting software includes FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc. Though software like this can cost some money to acquire and take a little bit of time to learn, it is well worth it in the long run...hiring a webdesigner can cost well into the thousands.

Webhost
A company charging a monthly fee to host your website on their server to be viewable on the internet. If you want to have a website, you need metaphorically "rent space" from them for your site to be on the internet. A good webhost should provide you with a complete report of statistics for your website and be readily available should you encounter any problems along the way.

Yahoo!
Currently the second most popular search engine on the internet. Recently, Yahoo! purchased Overture (a large pay per click company) and developed their Yahoo! Search Marketing program.

 

 

 

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• Website Consulting and Marketing to Boost Sales and Drive Traffic •
• Website Consulting and Marketing to Boost Sales and Drive Traffic •

 

• Website Consulting and Marketing to Boost Sales and Drive Traffic •