Glossary of Digital Definitions
Glossary of Digital Definitions
Digital Dictionary
Glossary of Key Online Marketing Terms
Digital Marketing Lingo
Online Glossary
Internet Vernacular
Media Geekspeak
Marketing Agency Buzzwords
SEO SEM Shoptalk
Inbound Idioms
Content Creation Colloquialisms
Javascript Jargon
Viral Marketing Vocabulary
Advertising Analytics Argot
Glossary of Digital Definitions list of other phrases I made up for funsies:
Digital Dictionary
Glossary of Key Online Marketing Terms
Digital Marketing Lingo
Online Glossary
Internet Vernacular
Media Geekspeak
Marketing Agency Buzzwords
SEO SEM Shoptalk
Inbound Idioms
Content Creation Colloquialisms
Javascript Jargon
Viral Marketing Vocabulary
Advertising Analytics Argot
A
Anchor — An anchor is the text that is displayed for a link. It describes the linked website without having to show the full URL that is the destination of the link. You have to tailor the anchor specifically for optimizing a website for search engines.
Analytics — It is about the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purpose of recognizing who your visitors are and optimizing your website accordingly.
Above the Fold — This denotes the area of a web page that is viewable without the visitor having to scroll. Being likely to be viewed by the visitor, ad space in this space often carries a higher rate than others.
Animated GIF — This refers to an animation created by combining multiple images into one file creating the impression of movement.
API — This refers to an application programming interface (API), which is a source code interface that operating system, library or service provide, for supporting requests made by computer programs.
Abandonment Rate – See “bounce rate.”
Acquisition – Refers to the point in time when a visitor to a website becomes a qualified lead or customer.
Acquisition Cost – See “cost-per-acquistion.”
AdCenter – See “Microsoft adCenter.”
AdSense – Google AdSense is a pay-per-click advertisement application which is available to bloggers and Web publishers as a way to generate revenue from the traffic on their sites. The owner of the site selects which ads they will host, and AdSense pays the owner each time an ad is clicked.
AdWords – The pay-per-click (PPC) search-engine marketing (SEM) program provided by Google.
Aggregator – An Internet-based tool or application which collects and curates content (often provided via RSS feeds) from many different websites and displays it in one central location. Google Reader is one popular example of an aggregator.
Akismet – A widely used application for blogging platforms, such as WordPress, that functions as a filter for trapping link spam, comment spam and other forms of undesirable user-generated content.
Alerts – Notifications that can be set up for various search terms, events or website actions. These are often sent to an individual via email, e.g., whenever a company/product name appears on the Internet in newly published content. Alerts are usually sent to an individual via email.
Algorithm – Mathematical rules and calculations a search engine uses to determine the rankings of the sites it has indexed. Every search engine has its own unique, proprietary algorithm that gets updated on a regular basis. Google’s famously has more than 200 major components.
ALT Attribute – A line of text used to describe the content associated with a non-text based file, typically an image. A traditionally strong correlation exists between use of keywords in these attributes and high rankings for the pages that contain them.
Anchor Text – The non-URL text that is displayed in a hyperlink.
Avatar – A graphical representation of a real person, often seen in user profiles for online forums, social networks or chat/instant-message services. Avatars can be two-dimensional images, representing the author of a blog or microblog; or they can be three-dimensional figures, occupying space in a virtual world, such as Second Life.
B
Banner Ad — This is a form of advertisement that appears on a Web page (most commonly at the header or bottom footer) — and is strategically designed to encourage a visitor to click for more information.
Blog — Shortened form of weB LOG, a blog is a user-generated website either maintained by one user, or a group of users, where entries are made in journal style and customarily displayed in a reverse chronological order.
Back Link — This refers to a link every SEO wishes to acquire, to a specific website from another. The importance of backlinking is that it improves the standing of a website in acknowledging its popularity when evaluated by a Web crawler such as PageRank.
Back Up — Back up is an integral constituent in information technology, and refers to creating copies of data and storing them in a device or server, so these additional copies may be used to restore the original, even if the data is lost.
Bounce Rate — Bounce rate, a term used in website traffic analysis, refers to tracking the rate of bounce that occurs when a visitor abandons a Web page or website without visiting any other pages, before the occurrence of a designated session-timeout.
Backlink – See “inbound link.”
Ban – Removal from a search index when a page and/or entire website is deemed inappropriate for a given engine’s results, usually on a temporary basis until the offending site corrects itself.
Banner Ad – Graphical image or small animation file embedded within a Web page and used for advertising, often containing a link to other sites, products, etc.
Blip – A “blip” can refer to a music or video clip which a user has posted via the popular media hosting sites, Blip.fm and Blip.tv.
Blog – Short for “weblog,” this is a special kind of website for self-publishing, often done by the owner of the site (the “blogger”), but sometimes by a committee of authors who rotate by day, for example. Blogs typically record and categorize all content updates by date/time and topic for easy tracking by readers. The posts appear on a blog’s homepage in reverse-chronological order (thus the original term, “weblog”).
Another feature of blogging is a space reserved for comments (usually following every post). These interactive sections can often be longer, and sometimes more interesting, than the original post. Visitors can view regular blog updates by going to the actual site or using an RSS feed aggregator like Google Reader.
Blogger – An individual who generates content for blogs, either personal or professional. Reasons for being a professional blogger are many: delivering timely commentary; showcasing expertise; engaging with audiences and fellow bloggers; and building personal brands. Some professional bloggers generate levels of esteem and prestige equivalent to that of journalists, an occupation which has also found value in blogging for the above reasons.
Blogroll – A list of recommended or similar blogs that a blogger lists on his or her own blog as a resource for the audience.
Bookmarking – The act of saving a website address for future reference. This can be done individually on an Internet browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, or through a dedicated social bookmarking site, such as del.icio.us. Social bookmarking allows visitors to easily share groups of bookmarks with each other across computers regardless of browser, as well as comment on and rate the stored content. Other social bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon and Mixx.
Bounce Rate – Refers to the percentage of a given page’s visitors who exit without visiting another page on the same site. This term is often used in e-commerce conjunction with merchandise shopping carts. Also known as “abandonment rate.”
Broken Links – Links to pages which no longer exist or have been moved to a different URL without redirection. These links usually serve pages with the “404 error” message (see “404 error”). Incidentally, most search engines provide ways for visitors to report on broken or “dead” links.
C
Click Through Rate (CTR) — CTR is not counted in in terms of number of persons who clicked; but by reference to the number of clicks divided by number of impressions.
Cloud Computing — Cloud computing refers to Internet or ‘cloud’ based development and use of computer technology i.e. computing. In this style of computing, dynamically scalable and frequently virtualized resources are delivered as a service over the Internet.
Code — Code is referred to as an instruction for transforming a piece of information, a letter, word, phrase, or gesture into another form or representation i.e. one sign into another sign, which may not necessarily be of the same type.
Contextual Advertising — This refers to a form of online advertising targeting a certain visitor to a website, based on the page content.
Content — Web content is a form of visual, textual or aural content which you come across as part of the user experience on websites. This includes sounds, videos, text, images, and animations among others.
Conversion Rate — This is a crucial term used in Internet marketing and refers to the percentage or number of visitors who convert from casual website visits into desired actions (such as purchases, etc.) based on indirect or direct requests from Web marketers, advertisers, or content strategist.
Categories – Ways to organize content on a site, especially blogs. One typical way to store both current and archival blog posts is by an alphabetical list of topical categories.
Click-Thru Rate (CTR) – The percentage of people who actually click on a link (e.g., in an email message or sponsored ad) after seeing it.
Cloaking – A prohibited practice of tricking a search engine into indexing different content than the user actually sees. In essence, it is serving one version of a page to search engines (for intended SEO benefit) and another to humans. Often the content is entirely unrelated to the actual topic/theme of the rest of the site.
Collaboration – In reference to Web 2.0, this concept states that shared contributions of large numbers of individuals, using social media tools, is a main driver of quality content on the Internet.
Collective Intelligence – The idea that a community or group of individuals is more efficiently capable of higher thought processes than an individual. Social-media applications of this concept include online communities which provide user-created informative content, such as Wikipedia.
Comments – Comments are content generated by users in response to an initial publication, most notably blog posts. These are usually posted below the blog entry, and can often be vehicles for creating advanced levels of discussion that increase the lifespan of blog posts. Comments are also typically associated with news articles, videos, media-sharing sites, and Facebook posts.
Congoo – Congoo is a news-sharing social network that offers free subscription content across hundreds of broad and niche topics.
Connections – See “friends.”
Content – Any text, image, video, audio, app or other material published on the Internet for audience consumption.
Contextual Link Inventory – An extension of search engines where they place targeted links on websites they deem to have similar audiences.
Conversion – A desired action taken by a website visitor, such as making a purchase, registering for an event, subscribing to an e-newsletter, completing a lead-gen form, downloading a file, etc.
Conversion Cost – See “cost-per-acquisition (CPA).”
Conversion Rate – This is the percentage of visitors to a site or ad who actually take a further action, like buying a product or filling out a survey. For example, if your primary goal is to collect survey data through your site, and 20 people visit it, but only 5 people complete the survey, you have a conversion rate of 25%.
Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) – Represents the ratio of the total cost of a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to the total number of leads or customers, often called “CPA” or “conversion cost.”
Cost-Per-Click – A method of paying for targeted traffic. For a fee, sites like Google or Facebook direct traffic to your site. You agree to pay a set amount for every click.
CPA – An abbreviation for “cost-per-acquisition.”
CPC – An abbreviation for “cost-per-click.”
CPM – This is the “cost-per-thousand” views of an advertisement. Often, advertisers agree to pay a certain amount for every 1,000 customers who see their ad, regardless of conversion rates or click-thrus. The “M” in “CPM” is derived from the Latin word for 1,000 (mille).
Crawler – An automatic function of some search engines that index a page, and then visit subsequent pages that the initial page links to. As the cycle continues over time, search engine crawlers or “bots”/“spiders” can index a massive number of pages very quickly.
Crowdsourcing – In the context of social media, this is a process used by many social bookmarking sites where individuals are allowed to vote on news stories and articles to determine their value and relevancy within the site. Related to other social media concepts such as collaboration and collective intelligence, it can also be a research tool. Due to its significant popularity, this new word famously has entered standard English dictionaries in recent years.
CTR – An abbreviation for “click-thru rate.”
D
Database — A database refers to an integrated collection of logically related records or files that are consolidated into a shared pool providing data for many applications.
Deep Linking — In the World Wide Web, deep linking refers to the creation of a hyperlink that points to a definite page or image on another website, rather than any of its landing page or home page.
Description Tag — Refers to the meta elements that can be used to specify keywords, page description and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and features.
Digital Brand Engagement — Digital brand engagement refers to the engagement of a brand with key focus on communication via the Web. With the dominance of social media, digital channels are now proactively used to hold a dialogue between a brand and a consumer, or groups of consumers.
Downstream — In information technology, this refers to the transfer speed by which data can be sent from the server to the client; and the process by which downstream is utilized is known as downloading.
Dashboard – Any area of administrative control for operating applications, especially social media settings, blogging software, and user profiles for websites that offer multiple customization options.
Del.icio.us – A popular social bookmarking site which allows members to share, store and organize their favorite online content.
De-listing – See “ban.”
Digg – Not as popular as it once was, Digg is a tech-centric social bookmarking and crowdsourcing site with a large, devoted audience that famously directs server-busting traffic to websites that have articles linked from its popular top rankings.
Directory – An index of websites where the listings are compiled by hand, rather than by a crawler. Whether general or niche-oriented, the best of these sites are structured, reviewed and regularly updated by humans with transparent editorial guidelines.
DMOZ – Also known as the Open Direct Project continually expanding directory is run by volunteers. It claims to be the largest (and is one of the most famous) of the human-edited directories.
DNS – Stands alternately for “Domain Name Service,” “Domain Name Server,” and “Domain Name System”: the DNS is a name service which allows letters (and numbers) that constitute domain names to be used to identify computers instead of numerical IP addresses.
Doorway Page – A low-content page traditionally created expressly for the purpose of ranking on a search engine. Usually very keyword-heavy and user-hostile, most search engines now frown on these pages.
E
E-Marketing — Also referred to as Internet marketing, Web marketing or online marketing; it refers to marketing of products or services over the Internet.
Entry – A piece of writing posted to a blog, microblog, wiki, or other easy-access Web publishing platform.
F
Feed — Feed or Web feed (also referred to as syndicated feed) in digital marketing terms refers to a data format that is used for providing users with frequently updated content. When a collection of Web feeds is made accessible in one place, it is known as aggregation.
FTP — File transfer protocol (FTP) refers to a standard network protocol that is used to exchange and deploy files over an Internet protocol computer network, such as the Internet.
Frames — Framing in World Wide Web is a method of displaying multiple HTML documents on one page.
Frequency Cap — This refers to a limit on the number of times an online advertisement is displayed to a particular visitor. A typical frequency cap is considered to be once per 24 hours per visitor.
Flash — Flash from Adobe is a platform that allows increased interactivity and graphics, besides driving online games, videos and highly interactive websites as well.
Facebook – A dominant, free-access social-networking site which is available to companies and any person 13 years of age or older. Facebook was initially non-commercial and limited to students with a college email domain, but has since expanded to accommodate fan pages, paid advertising and e-commerce stores.
Flash – Refers to a form of video software developed by Adobe Macromedia that creates vector-based graphic animations that occupy small file sizes.
Flickr – A media-hosting network where users can upload and share image files. It is the largest photo-storage and photo-sharing site on the Web.
Forum – An area on a website (or an entire website) dedicated to user conversation through written comments and message boards, often related to customer support or fan engagement.
Frames – See “iFrames.”
Friends – Individuals connected to one another’s profiles on a social networking site, most frequently used in association with Facebook (e.g., Facebook friends).
G
Geolocation — Geo-location refers to the implementation of assessing the location, or to the actual geographic location of an object, such as a cell phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal.
Geo Targeting — Geo Targeting, in internet marketing terms is the technique of determining the physical location of a website visitor and deliver customized content to that visitor based on his or her location, organization, ISP or other criteria.
Google Analytics — Analytics is a free, browser-based vital tool from Google for SEO that allows users to track various different statistics with reference to a held website. By allowing it to link with Google Adwords, you can have control over the ads from the Google analytics site.
GIF — The Graphics Interchange Format or GIF is an eight-bit-per-pixel bitmap image format that has come into extensive usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability factor.
Gateway Page – See “doorway page.”
Graphical Search Inventory – Images and banner ads that are tied to particular search terms on a search engine. They are then displayed to the user after a related search term is entered.
Groups – Micro-communities within a social networking site for individuals who share a particular interest. LinkedIn groups are a particularly notable example of this phenomenon.
H
HTML — HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language is a code, placed in special markers (tags) and is added to a text document, so as to make it function as a Web page.
Hyperlink — These are significant ‘Call-to-action’ links used in online marketing campaigns that take the reader to the next step in a process.
Hashtags (#) — Hashtags have become a rage since the advent of Twitter, because by using the concept of tags a user can draw attention to certain aspects of a post. By placing a #symbol before a word (that requires phrases to be joined without spaces) it is highlighted as a tag.
Homepage — The homepage is the URL or local file that automatically loads when a Web browser starts or when you press the browser’s “home” button.
Host — This refers to an Internet hosting service that runs Internet servers, allowing organizations and individuals to serve content to the Internet, offering various levels and kinds of services.
H-Tags (H1, H2, etc.) – Also known as “header tags,” these page elements represent different levels of headings in HTML. From the largest (H1) to the smallest (H6), these define the titles/headings and sub-headings of Web copy. For SEO and reader benefits, headers should contain keywords wherever possible.
Hashtag – A symbol (#) placed directly in front of a word or words to tag a post on Twitter. It is often used to group tweets by popular categories of interest and to help users follow discussion topics.
HTML – Hypertext markup language (HTML) refers to the text-based language which is used to create websites.
Hyperlink – Known as “link” for short, a hyperlink is a word or phrase which is clickable and takes the visitor to another Web page. This page can be within the same site or on a completely different site. Instead of a full URL string, a word or phrase is typically displayed in the body copy for the linked page (see “anchor text”), which can bring both reader and SEO benefits.
I
Instant Messaging — Instant messaging also referred to as IM is a kind of communication service that enables you to create a sort of private chat room environment with another individual — thus facilitating real-time communication over the Internet.
Internet Service Provider — Also referred to as ISP, this refers to a business that offers Internet access for a monthly fee.
iCloud — Considered to be one of the easiest way to manage your content online, iCloud helps you store your music, photos, apps, calendars, documents, and more.
Inbound Link — This refers to a hyperlink transiting domains where links are considered to be inbound from the perspective of the link target. While on the other hand, from the perspective of the originator, links are considered to be outbound.
Internet and Intranet — While Internet refers to a global network of interconnected computers, empowering users to share information along multiple channel; an intranet refers to a private computer network that uses Internet protocols and network connectivity to share adjudicated secure information or operations about the organization with its employees.
iFrames – Also known as simply “frames,” these HTML tag devices allow 2 or more websites to be displayed simultaneously on the same page. Facebook now allows companies to create customized tabs for its fan pages using iFrames, a process which developers find much easier than using the previous “FBML,” or Facebook markup language.
Impression – An instance of an organic search-engine listing or sponsored ad being served on a particular Web page or an image being viewed in display advertising. In paid search, “cost-per-impression” is a common metric.
Index – The actual collection of data and websites obtained by a search engine, also known as “search index.”
Inbound Link – A link from another website directed to yours, also known as a “backlink.”
Instant Messaging – A service where individuals can communicate through a real-time, text-based interface over an Internet connection. The exchange of small files and screen-sharing are also typically available on these platforms. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is one of the most famous (and original) American examples of this software. Many other software programs provide this functionality, including Skype, Facebook, Gmail, and corporate videoconference clients.
IP Address – This series of numbers and periods represents the unique numeric address for each Internet user.
J
jQuery — jQuery has been designed to change the way you write JavaScript by simplifying HTML document, animating, event management and Ajax interactions for rapid Web development.
JPEG —Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) refers to the standard for compressed pictures that are widely used on the Web. This technique is best used for photographs and images that comes with many shades of colour.
Javascript — This is a popular scripting language most often used for client-side Web development. Besides being dynamic, softly typed, prototype-based language with first-class functions, JavaScript (designed to have a similar look to Java) is influenced by many languages and has proven itself to be easier for non-programmers to work with.
Java – Java is a powerful programming language which is independent of platforms, meaning it can run on multiple computers and operating systems.
Jaiku – A cousin of Twitter, this now-defunct microblogging social network and mobile-phone app was started in Finland and later purchased by Google.
JavaScript – JavaScript is a relatively simple scripting language which can be seamlessly integrated with HTML and is used on many websites. JavaScript is less complex and consequently, less powerful than Java.
K
Keyword — This refers to a word or phrase that potential customer’s type into a search engine while searching for a product or service.
Kaboodle – A social shopping network where members create their own shopping lists and find, suggest and share products and reviews.
Keywords – The terms that a user enters into a search engine. They can also signify the terms a website is targeting to rank highly as part of an SEO marketing campaign.
Keyword Density – The proportion of keywords to the total number of words in the face copy of a website.
Keyword Proximity – The relative placement of keywords in prominent areas of a Web page, including the distance between keywords in the visible text.
Keyword Stemming – The practice adopted by search engines to group search results not only by exact keyword matches, but also by variations of keywords in semantic groups, such as singular-plural, related suffixes, and synonyms.
L
Landing Page — Also aptly called the lead capture page in online marketing, a landing page refers to the page that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines; this appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link.
Lightbox — This is a JavaScript application that uses modal dialogs on Web pages for displaying images.
Link Farms — Link farm in Internet terms refers to any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group.
Link Popularity — Link popularity is a virtual measure of the quality and quantity of other websites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web.
Long Tail — This refers to unusual and infrequently used search words in the search engine, which are many in numbers and, if targeted, can help start-up websites compete with established names to rise to the top of the search engine results with long tail keywords.
Landing Page – A stand-alone Web page that a user “lands” on, commonly after visiting a paid search-engine listing or following a link in an email newsletter. This kind of page often is designed with a very specific purpose (i.e. conversion goals) for visitors.
Link Popularity – A measurement of the number and quality of sites that link to a given site, especially as cataloged in a search-engine index.
Link Text – See “anchor text.”
Link Farm – A website exclusively devoted to listing a very large number of links without groupings, categories, or structure. These sites are largely discredited by major search engines, and your site’s engagement with one can potentially lead to ranking penalties.
LinkedIn – A business-oriented social networking site for professionals. Much like Facebook, LinkedIn allows members to connect with other users on the network, share status updates, and participate in groups and chats, although with a career focus.
Listings – A listing is a website’s presence in a search engine or directory, and is not necessarily indicative of its search-engine positioning.
M
Mobile Apps — This refers to the little sets of code designed and developed for use on a portable device and are intended to improve the features of a portable device by offering added functionalities and utilities that increase the device’s beneficial and entertaining features.
Mobile Marketing — Mobile marketing refers to a set of best practices that enables organizations to communicate and participate with their audience in an interactive and pertinent manner through any mobile device or network.
Mashup — A digital media file that comprises any or all audio, video, graphics, text and animation drawn from pre-existing sources to create a new derivative work.
Meta Keywords — While a keyword refers to the content or the type of meta element included in a given Web page’s HTML code; a meta keyword may include several comma-separated keywords (or keyword phrases, each of which may again contain several individual words).
Metatag —Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a web page, and can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes.
Meta-Search Engine – A search engine that does not compile its own independent results, but rather pulls data from two or more search engines, such as Dogpile.com.
Meta-Tags – Also called meta-data, this information found in HTML page headers used to be the bread and butter of SEO marketing tactics. Still used today despite widely perceived diminishing relevance to search-engine rankings, the most common are the “title,” “description,” and “keyword” tags (see below).
Meta-Description Tag – A tag on a Web page located in the heading source code containing a basic description of the page. It helps search engines categorize the page and can potentially inform users who come across the page listing in search results.
Meta-Keywords Tag – In the past, this tag allowed page authors to insert a massive list of keywords related (and occasionally unrelated) to a page in order to game search-engine results. Today, this tag’s potential to influence rankings has diminished to the point where it is widely disregarded by major search engines.
Microblog – A microblog is a social media utility where users can share short status updates and information. The most famous example is Twitter, which combines aspects of blogs (personalized Web posting) with aspects of social networking sites (making and tracking connections, or “friends”).
Microsoft adCenter – The pay-per-click (PPC) search-engine advertising program provided by Microsoft in conjunction with its Bing search engine, now also populating Yahoo! search results.
Mirror Site – Duplicate copy of a website already in existence, used to increase response time for high-volume sites.
MySpace – A once-leading social-networking site, the music-themed MySpace allows more freedom for users to personalize their profiles than other social-networking sites, such as Facebook, which are more structured. Though its membership has shrunk significantly from its peak, the community is still popular among musicians as a platform for sharing music and interacting with fans.
N
eNewsletter — This is an electronic newsletter that is periodically published in reference to one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers; and distributed electronically via email.
Natural Listings – See “organic listings.”
Ning – A hosting service with a set of community-building tools that allows anyone to create a social network.
Nofollow – “Nofollow” is an append which is coded into the HTML markup of a hyperlink. It is used to prevent a search engine from indexing a link to a particular Web page. Some strategic uses of external “nofollow” are associated with link popularity management, e.g., for site owners that do not want to give full “follow” credit to links posted by users in their forums or blog comments.
O
Open Source — Open source refers to an approach taken for design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical ease of access to a software’s source code.
Optimization — Optimization of the search engine is the process of improving the volume as well as quality of traffic to a website from search engines via ‘organic’ search results.
Organic — This refers to a process by which World Wide Web users can search and find websites having unpaid search engine listings. And this is as opposed to using the pay per click (PPC) advertisement listings displayed among the search results.
Open-Source Software – Computer software with a special license that allows users in the general public to edit and improve the source code. Famously exemplified in the Firefox Web browser and Wikipedia encyclopedia, it is an example of the kind of collaboration that is encouraged under the Web 2.0 ethos. Contrast with closed, propriety software that does not share its codebase beyond an exclusive group of authorized developers.
Organic Listings – Also known as “natural” listings, these are search-engine results that have not been purchased. They are calculated solely by an engine’s algorithm and are based on the merits of the listed pages. Typically, most search engines will display several sponsored ads related to search terms (often separated by background color or otherwise highlighted) before displaying the non-paid listings.
Outbound Link – Any link on a Web page to an external Web page.
P
Page Rank — This is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents — with the intent of measuring its comparative importance within the set.
Page Views — A page view (PV) or page impression refers to a request for loading a single page of an Internet site.
Pay Per Click — Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet marketing technique used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked.
Paid Search — Also, known as sponsored search, paid search is characterized by advertiser bids on queried keywords. The USP of paid search is that its results appear typically at the top, right or bottom of a search results page — i.e. separate from organic search results.
Permission Marketing — This form of marketing in the World Wide Web refers to obtaining an individual’s consent to obtain marketing and advertising information from a company.
PageRank – A former proprietary method of Google (now disavowed) for measuring the popularity of a Web page. Much-debated in the SEO community, the measurement is believed to be influenced chiefly by the number and quality of inbound and outbound links associated with a given page. Updated infrequently, this rank was indicated as a number between 1 and 10 most commonly displayed in a green bar chart in the Google toolbar add-on for browsers. The SEO community consensus opinion is that the measurement was nothing more than Google’s incomplete assessment of the relative strength of a website.
Paid Listings – Listings sold to advertisers for a fee. Also known as “paid placement.” See “pay-per-click.”
Paid Placement – See “pay-per-click.”
Pay-For-Performance – A paid-search system nearly identical to (and essentially synonymous with) pay-per-click.
Pay-Per-Click – Also known as “PPC,” this type of paid search marketing involves placing advertisements that run above or besides (and occasionally below) the free search-engine listings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Typically, to get the highest position among these ads, website owners place a per-click bid. It’s not uncommon to participate in a bidding war for coveted top spots. For example, if a website’s listing is among the top 3 advertisements on a page, the same ad appears in the same location on partner websites. Some marketing firms, provide bid management services get the most value for each search term.
PDF – “Portable Document Format” is a type of file for viewing documents, created by Adobe. PDFs are especially suitable for print-out viewing, so the format is a good choice for sharing high-value collateral like white papers and guides.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) – Refers to any type of interaction between two or more people within a specific social network. Most viral media by definition get their popularity via such P2P sharing. The term is also widely associated with (often illicit) file-sharing networks for music and movies, though not exclusive to that realm.
Podcast – A series of audio or video content which can be downloaded and listened to/viewed offline (or a particular episode in that series, e.g. podcast #6 of The Sporkful). A podcast is essentially an asynchronous Internet version of a “broadcast,” but to a very specific audience of willing subscribers. Podcasts are sometimes created to provide stand-alone copies of existing radio or television programming (such as daily/weekly shows), but they may also consist of entirely unique content intended for devoted Web-based subscribers.
Pop-Up Ad – A form of advertisement which automatically opens (or “pops up” in) a new window in a browser to display an ad. Also seen in the form of “pop-under” ads, a slightly less intrusive version. These interruptive approaches to advertising are generally disliked (and therefore ignored) by Internet users. Many browser-based and stand-alone software programs exist to block these ads.
Position – Same as “rank” in reference to search-engine listings.
PPC – An abbreviation for “pay-per-click.”
Profile – A profile is a personal page within a social network created by a user for sharing with others on the network. The profile provides basic biographical information and often links to the profiles of the user’s friends/connections.
Q
Query – The term(s) entered into a search engine by the user.
R
ROI (Return on Investment) — This refers to the percentage of profit or avoided costs generated by an expenditure. Although it is difficult to arrive at a logical conclusion as to what the return on your investment are, an ROI is any business generated above the initial investment made.
RSS —Also known as really simple syndication, the RSS technology allows people to constantly receive updated content without having to revisit a website. An RSS document, also referred to as ‘feed’ or ‘Web feed’ contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text.
RSS Reader — This refers to the application that is used to subscribe and monitor selected RSS content feeds.
Reciprocal Link — A reciprocal link refers to a mutual link between two objects, generally between two websites, so as to ensure mutual traffic.
Run of site (ROS) — ROS refers to scheduling advertisements across an entire website rather than within a specific section or sub-section. The USP of ‘Run of site’ ads is that they are typically sold at lower rates than targeted ads.
Ranking(s) – The position of a website’s listing(s) in search-engine results pages. The higher a rank for a specific keyword, the more generally visible a page is to search-engine users.
Rapid Inclusion – The indexing of websites in search engines and directories based on a per-page fee. As opposed to free submissions, where indexes are updated every few weeks (or less frequently), rapid indexing occurs every 48-72 hours.
Reciprocal Link – A link to a website that is reciprocated in the form of a backlink, often prearranged by sites with mutually benefitting audiences. If abused, e.g., two sites with no topical relation decide to link to each other (and many other sites) exclusively for the sake of linking, penalties from search engines could result. See “link farm.”
Redirect – See “301 redirect.”
Registration – The process of signing up to participate in an online forum, community or social-media network. At minimum, this act usually involves sharing a name and email address in order to set up a username and password.
Results Page – See “SERP.”
Robot – Also known as “bot.” See “crawler.”
Robots.txt – A small text file included on a website that directs a search engine to include/exclude specific pages from its index. It can be submitted manually to search engines to ensure the latest version is followed regardless of the “crawl cycle.”
ROI – An acronym for “return-on-investment.” ROI is the percentage of profit from a given digital marketing activity. For example, if you pay $50 a month for CPC advertising, and it leads to $500 in profit, your ROI would be 1000%.
RSS – “Really simple syndication” is the process by which content such as blog posts or podcasts can be updated regularly and syndicated to subscribers in feeds. RSS feeds enable users to access content updates from various outlets—e.g. their favorite blogs, news sites, and digital audio/video providers—all in one central location.
S
Search Engine —Search engine for the Web is designed to look out for information (consisting of web pages, images and other types of files) on the World Wide Web.
Search Engine Marketing — Search engine marketing, or SEM is an Internet marketing technique that seeks to promote websites by improving their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.
Social Bookmarking — This refers to a popular method used by Internet users to search, organize, store and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.
Social Media — This form of media is designed to be distributed through social interaction, created using highly scalable publishing techniques. Most businesses have been using social media as user-generated content or consumer-generated media.
Spam — This refers to an e-mail message that is unwanted or unsolicited by the recipient. Legitimate e-mails are also sometimes incorrectly identified as spam. A few alternative terms used for spams are junk e-mail, bulk mail, and commercial e-mail.
Search Engine – A website that allows users to search the Web for specific information by entering keywords. Can include paid or organic listings of websites and sometimes specific images, products, videos, music, place entries or other enhanced results.
Search-Engine Marketing (SEM) – A phrase sometimes used in contrast with “SEO” to describe paid search activities, SEM may also more generally refer to the broad range of search-marketing activities, either paid or organic.
Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of using website analysis and copy/design/structural adjustments to ensure both the highest possible positioning on desired search-engine results pages and the best experience for a given site’s users.
Search-Engine Referral – This statistic represents a visitor who arrives at a website after clicking through a search-engine results listing.
Search Term – The precise word or phrase(s) entered into a search engine by a user (also called a “query”).
Second Life – A 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.
SEM – An abbreviation for “search-engine marketing.”
SEO – An abbreviation for “search-engine optimization.”
SERP – An acronym for “search engine results page,” displayed after a query is entered on a search engine.
Shopping Search – A specialized type of search or dedicated search engine that indexes groups of products, prices and reviews for side-by-side comparison, especially helpful for shopping online.
SlideShare – A popular presentation- and document-sharing social network, especially useful for B2B marketing.
Social Media – Refers to all online tools and places that are available for users to generate content and communicate through the Internet. These media include blogs, social networks, file-hosting sites and bookmarking sites, among others.
Social Network – A site or community on the Internet where members can interact with one another and share content. This term is more or less used interchangeably with “social media” in reference to Internet marketing.
Spam – In email marketing, this refers to any message that is deemed by users or email providers to be an unsolicited commercial offer. Also called “junk mail.”
“Spam” may also refer to links or comments that are left on blogs, forums and message boards designed exclusively to steer users to a site for commercial gain. This kind of spam, generated by random visitors, is called “link spam” or “comment spam.” In SEO, “spam” can be any Web page that a search engine views as harming the credibility of its results. Examples of these can include doorway pages, link farms, keyword stuffing, cloaking and other duplicitous or otherwise user-hostile practices. The standards for what constitutes SEO spam varies by search engine and current algorithm factors.
Sphinn – A niche social-bookmarking website for online marketers.
Spider – Same as “crawler.”
Squidoo – A popular UGC site that allows members to create easy-to-build, single-page websites (called “lenses”) featuring whatever topic they choose. Typically, marketers use these pages to aggregate other content from across the Web under a common theme.
Style Sheet – A design template used for defining the layout of multiple pages within a website, most commonly seen in the form of “CSS” (cascading style sheets).
Submission – The process of registering a site with a search engine or Web directory. It does not guarantee inclusion, but can lead to it being reviewed or crawled. It offers no guarantee of ranking. The process can be done manually or by using commercial software packages.
Subscribing – The process of opting in to an email newsletter or adding an RSS feed to an aggregator (e.g. for reading blog updates).
T
TLD (Top-Level Domain) — TLD refers to the letters at the end of an Internet domain name, which denote the type of organization that owns the website. Just for example, .org refers to organization, while .com refers to a commercial organisation or business.
Tag — Tag (metadata) refers to a keyword or term associated with a piece of information.
Tag Cloud — A tag cloud is a visual representation of user-generated tags used normally to describe the content of websites. Usually denoted by single words and typically listed alphabetically, the significance of a tag is displayed with font size or color. Moreover, tags are generally hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items associated with a tag.
Title Tag — HTML elements in an HTML document are tags, as well as text; and they act as indicators to a Web browser.
Traffic — This refers to the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website. Even though it refers to a large portion of Internet, traffic is determined by the number of visitors who land up on the website and the number of pages they visit. There are a number of ways to monitor traffic and gather data.
Tag – A keyword (often in a string) which is attached to a blog post, tweet (see “hashtag”), social bookmark or media file. Tags help categorize content by subject.
Technorati – A leading blog search engine that aggregates blog content and scores blogs’ popularity or influence.
Title Tag – A form of meta-data used by search engines to categorize Web pages by title. Search-engine algorithms traditionally value title tags to determine/categorize page content.
Tweet – A “tweet” is the special name for an entry made on the microblogging site, Twitter. Up to 140 characters long, tweets can consist of random status updates, news, commentary, or anything an individual wants to communicate to followers at that moment, including personal messages to other users or groups and links to external content (articles, photos, videos).
Tweetup – A take-off on “meet-up,” a Tweetup is a meeting organized for friends, fans and/or strangers on Twitter. Also known as a “Tweetchat,” it can be used in marketing for consumer engagement and brand awareness by building and educating large communities of people.
Twitter – Twitter is a microblogging platform which allows users to create profiles, share short updates on a timeline, and engage with other users, much like a social-networking site.
U
URL — An abbreviation of Uniform Resource Locator, URL suggests the technical name for a web address as it allows you to locate services via the Internet.
Usability — Usability is a term used to signify the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object, so as to achieve a certain goal.
User Centred Design — This refers to a design philosophy and a process where extensive attention is given to the needs, requirements, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document at each stage of the design process.
User Generated Content — It is also popular as Consumer Generated Media (CGM), and refers to the active, participating and creative audience that dominated the World Wide Web — thanks to the reasonably accessible media, tools and applications.
UGC – See “user-generated content.”
Unique Visitor – Also known as “absolute unique visitor,” this statistic represents visitors to a website that are counted once in a given time period despite the possibility of having made multiple visits. Determined by cookies, unique visitors are distinguished from regular visitor counts which would classify two or more visits from the same user as multiple visitors.
URL – “Universal” or “uniform resource locator,” this string of letters and numbers separated by periods and slashes is unique for every Internet page. A page’s address must be written in this form in order to be found on the World Wide Web.
User Sitemap – A page containing structured links to every other important page on a particular website grouped by topic or navigational hierarchy. These pages are equally useful for people and search-engine spiders alike, as they provide a categorized look at every page on a website at a glance (with hyperlinks).
User-Generated Content – Commonly abbreviated as “UGC,” it is any piece of content created by a member of a given website’s audience for use on that website and sometimes to be freely distributed on the Web. Wikis (and Wikipedia) are examples of UGC (see below).
V
Visibility Time — This refers to the ‘time’ a single page (including a blog, Ad Banner, etc.) is viewed.
Vlog — Shortened form of video blog, where the medium of video using a combination of embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata is used to relate a fact.
Viral — This is a term that refers to information that spread from person to person very quickly, much like a virus; with phrases being commonly used like “go viral.”
Viral Marketing — This refers to a marketing strategy where consumers are encouraged to share and pass along messages (including e-mails and video clips and images) to other connections with the intention to create additional exposure mainly through e-mail and social networking sites.
VOIP – An acronym for “Voice Over Internet Protocol.” This technology allows a user to make phone calls (with potential video) via a computer with an Internet connection or a wireless-enabled mobile device. The most famous example of a VOIP provider is Skype.
W
World Wide Web (WWW) — This is one of the best and foremost vehicle for digital marketing and is typically positioned as a prefix to website names.
Wireless Application Protocol — Also known as WAP, this refers to an international standard for applications that is open and use wireless communication. Its main function is to make Internet accessible from mobile phones.
Web 2.0 — This is collective term representing new technologies and online consumer trends like blogs, RSS, social networks and podcasting.
Web Cache — This involves the caching of Web documents (viz. HTML pages, images, etc.) so as to reduce bandwidth usage, server load and perceived lag.
Widgets — Widgets in computing terms refers to objects on a computer screen that the user interacts with.
Web 2.0 – This complex term covers many dimensions of the contemporary Web, including quick user access to streaming video, audio, images and other popular content. It can be generally used to describe interactive, community-driven content, namely blogs, file-hosting, UGC, and social-networking sites. Web 2.0 is also a philosophy that the Internet should be used more as a public-access platform and less as a vehicle for traditional, one-way publishing. Related concepts include collaboration, crowdsourcing and the use of open-source software.
Webinar – A Web-based seminar containing audio and video, often in the form of a slide deck.
Webconference – A “virtual” meeting of attendees where audio and visual content (including computer screens or live video feeds) can be shared freely over the Internet, so that attendees can have a close approximation to an in-person meeting despite being in different physical locations. Webconferencing takes advantage of a number of different social tools, including VOIP and instant messaging. GoToMeeting is one popular example of Webconference software.
Wiki – Refers to any page or collection of pages on the Internet or an intranet that can be easily edited by the public or a select group of registered visitors. Wikis are examples of collaboration. See “Wikipedia,” the most famous example of a wiki, below.
Wikipedia – A free, open-source, multilingual encyclopedia consisting of heavily edited user-generated content on topics of nearly every sort. The largest encyclopedia in the world, Wikipedia is administered by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit group. One defining characteristic of Wikipedia is its insistence on not publishing original research, but rather being an authoritative clearinghouse of citations of other material already published on the Web.
Wetpaint – A UGC website that combines aspects of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks, allowing any user to create and share online content.
X
Xhtml — This refers to the Extensive Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML, a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also follows XML syntax.
XML Sitemap – An XML file for search engines containing a list of URLs on a particular domain. This file can be used to supplement regular indexing, where a bot/crawler goes out and visits each page of a site by itself.
Y
YouTube – The most popular video-hosting and video-sharing site, it is also currently the largest search engine after Google (incidentally, also owned by Google). Users can view, upload and comment on video content for no charge, though companies can pay for sponsored promotion of videos or to have enhanced branding and design capabilities on their profile pages, known as “channels.”
Yahoo! Answers – An online question-and-answer community where anyone can ask a question on any topic and get immediate answers from real people, which are in turn rated or voted on. These types of communities are popular, and multiple websites follow a similar model of using the “wisdom of crowds” for answers. One example is the more exclusive, sophisticated version seen at Quora.
