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A

Adwords

Adwords is the name of the Goggle's PPC advertising system. It lets advertisers run paid advertisements on Google's Search Results based in the keywords that users enter.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a process whereby merchants enlist other web sites to advertise their products or services in exchange for a referral fee based on click-throughs to the merchant's site.

B

Backlinks

All of the links pointing at a web page. Also called inbound links

Bid

The amount you are willing to pay per click for keywords in your PPC campaign

"Black Hat" Search Engine Optimisation

"Black Hat" Search Engine Optimisation is any strategy that manipulates a web page for the purpose of giving it an artificial boost in the search engine rankings. Each of the major search engines provide specific guidelines describing what should and should not be done to web pages in order to achieve a better search engine ranking.

Some methods which are universally considered "black hat" technqiues, include hidden text, doorway pages, and mirror pages.

"Black Hat" SEO is also known as SEO spam.

C

Click Through

The action of clicking through from, for example, a search engine's results page to a web site.

Clickthrough Rate

The percentage of people clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link.  Click through rates are useful in Search Engine Advertising campaigns where they are an important factor in determining the success of a campaign.

Conversion Tactic

The action you want a visitor to take on your site. Actions can include purchase, subscription to the company newsletter, request for follow-up or more information (lead generation) or download of a company free offer.

Cost per Click (CPC)

Cost per Click (CPC) is the amount an advertiser pays for each click on a link from a paid search engine advertisement, leading to their web site.

Crawler

See Search Engine Spider

D

Description

Metatag that define a description of a web page which may be displayed when a page is listed by search engines. Not all search engines use this tag.

Domain Name

Refers to an organisation's unique name on the internet e.g.search-marketing-australia.com.au

Doorway Page

A web page created for the sole purpose of obtaining rankings within the organic search results of a search engine. Doorway pages are generally filled with keywords and then direct visitors to the main web site. The use of doorway pages is generally considered an outdated search engine spam tactic and most search engines have guidelines prohibiting their use. This term is not to be confused with a “landing page.”

E

Entry Page

The page on a web site through which a visitor enters the web site. Also see Landing Page.

G

Gateway Page

See Doorway Page

Geo-Targeting

Specifying where your ads will or won’t be shown based on the searcher’s location.  Geo-targeting allows you to achieve more localised and personalised advertising.

H

Hidden Text

Hidden text is textual content on a web page which visitors cannot see, but which is still readable by the search engines. The idea behind hidden text is to load a Web page with keywords and keyword phrases to improve the page's rankings in the search engine results but to do so without detracting from the look of the page. Hidden text is identified as SEO spam by all of the major search engines.

I

Impression

One view or display of an ad. Ad reports list total impressions per ad, which indicates the number of times an ad was displayed by the search engine when searchers entered the keywords associated with the ad.

Index

A search engine’s index contains the information collected by a search engine crawler about web pages, and then uses this information to determine the search results that should be returned to a user as a result of a search.

Indexability

Indexability refers to the potential of a web site or its contents to be crawled or “indexed” by a search engine. If a site is not indexable there is a reduced likelihood of its pages being included in the search engines index.  Also known as crawlability and spiderability.   See the article SEO vs. Design - Search Engine Marketing Australia for more information on removing barriers to search engine indexability.

K

Keyword

A single word that relates to a specific subject or topic.  See also Keyword Phrase

Keyword Density

The number of times a keyword appears on a page as a percentage of the number of words on the page.

Keyword Phrase

Two or more keywords relating to a specific topic.  See also Keyword

L

Landing Page

The web page that a visitor will reach after clicking a search engine listing.

Link Bait

Link bait is content on a website that people will find of value and will then want to link to from their site. Because links from external sites to your site (particuarly from sites that the search engines consider "important") are major factors in improved search engine rankings, developing "link bait" content can be an important Search Engine Optimisation strategy.

Link Popularity

A raw count of how "popular" a page is based on the number of backlinks it has. It does not factor in link context or link quality, which are also important elements in how search engines make use of links to determine rankings.

Link Text

The text that is contained within a link.  Link text is important to search engines in determining a page’s relevance

M

Meta Tags

Information included in a web page not intended for users to see but which typically passes information to search engine crawlers, browser software and some other applications.  Meta tags can include Description and Keywords

Meta tag - Description

Defines a description of a web page which may be displayed when a page is listed by search engines. Not all search engines use this tag.

Meta tag - Keywords

Defines keywords for the web page that may be used in the search engine ranking process. Not all search engines use this tag.

Mirror Pages

Mirror pages are pages that have substantially  the same content.  Mirror pages are identified as SEO spam by all of the major search engines.

O

Organic Search Results

Organic search results are unpaid search engine listings produced by search engines based on the search query.  This is in contrast to the pay per click advertisement listings displayed along with the unpaid search results.

P

Paid Inclusion

Paid Inclusion is a method whereby Search Engines charge website owners for inclusion in their search index.  This form of Search Engine Marketing is less popular these days than it used to be.  In terms of the two main search engines, Google does not offer this service, and while Yahoo used to offer this option, they no longer do.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

See Search Engine Advertising

Paid Placement

See Search Engine Advertising

R

Rank

The position at which a web page or web site is listed in a search engine's results

S

Search Engine Advertising (SEA)

As well as unpaid (or organic) search results Search Engines show paid ads based on the search terms entered by a user.  Advertisers pay a fee each time a user clicks through on the advertisement (i.e. pay per click).

This type of advertising is variously known as Search Engine Advertising, Pay Per Click advertising or Paid Placement

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is defined by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) as:

The entire set of techniques and strategies used to direct more visitors from search engines to web sites.

Search Engine Marketing encompasses a number of different techniques and strategies including: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Advertising (or Paid Placement or Pay per Click) and Paid Inclusion.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the act of altering a web site to improve its in the organic search results of search engines. Search Engine Optimisation techniques include: keyword optimisation, optimisation of web page attributes used by search engines, removal of barriers to search engine crawlers and link campaigns.

Search Engine Spider 

 The component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically crawling the web. The spider follows links to web pages and makes copies of web pages found and stores these in the search engine's index.  Sometimes called a crawler or robot.

SEO Spam

See "Black Hat SEO"

Splash Page

An entry page or main page of a web site that is interactive or graphically intense, for example, using Flash.

Stop Word

A word that often appears in a page content, but it has no significance by itself and is not indexed by search engines. Examples of stop words are: and, the, of, etc.

T

Title Tag

An HTML tag appearing in a web page that contains the page title. The page title should be relevant to the content of that particular web page. The contents of a title tag is generally displayed in a search engine result as a bold blue underlined hyperlink.

Traffic

The number of visitors a website receives.