Internet Marketing Glossary

As with most industries, certain terms may be used regularly that may seem out of place to someone that might not be familiar with them. 

Below is a glossary of terms commonly associated with internet marketing as well as a brief description of explanation of the term as it’s used by internet marketers :

Analytics:
Analytics is a way of measuring traffic, trends and ultimately the effectiveness of a website.  Analytics can be used to track any defined user interaction with the most commonly measured metrics being the source of traffic, number of visitors and content browsed.

Black Hat SEO:
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines.  These techniques are usually aggressive with speed of results being placed ahead of longevity.  Black hat techniques are generally considered to be unethical, actively breaking search engine terms and conditions and could lead to penalties or an out-right ban.

Blog:
Is a Web Log usually maintained by an individual, or specific team, with regular entries around a common subject or theme.  Most blogs tend to be somewhat interactive with many encouraging comments on their posts, polls and other engaging content that encourage visitors to take some kind of action.

Content Farm:
A website that contains and maintains a large volume of textual content often with the aim of “gaming” search engine algorithms for improved rankings.  More recent updated by Google have reduced the effectiveness of these content farms with the Farmer and Panda updates, Google have greatly reduced the value of poor quality content and the links that these pieces may contain.

Cookie:
A cookie is a short packet of data passed from one program to another where the data is opaque and remains unchanged.  These files are traditionally used to store session identifiers so that website owners may track website usage

Google AdWords:
Google AdWords is a form of paid search marketing where an ad for a website is included in Google’s search results for a specific keyword.

Google Analytics:
This is Google's own analytics offering and possibly the most commonly used analytics program at this time.  Google have recently launched their Universal Analytics which no longer relies on cookies to track onsite activity.  The method of using a user id is expected to produce a more accurate onsite measurement of activity.

Hits:
Are the total number of client requests (file requests) made to the server which include HTML, JavaScript and images to name a few.  This metric is often, misleadingly, used to describe traffic to a website.

Landing Page:
A landing page is a page designed as a destination for a particular marketing effort.  These can be designed to draw traffic for a specific search (such as a new development) or as a destination to a form of paid marketing (print ad or banner ad).  These pages are created to quickly offer the visitor more information on a single topic with the aim of maximising the likelihood of a conversion.  Not to be confused with "splash pages".

Link Bait:
Is any content or feature designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to a website.  These are often in the form of a video, info graphic or a joke that gains popularity quickly.

Link Schemes:
As Google’s PageRank Algorithm is based heavily on a websites link profile webmasters and marketers have engaged in many different methods of generating links to a website including reciprocal linking, three-way-linking and spamming links.

Links:
A Hyperlink, or more simply a link, is a reference to a document usually another web page that the reader can directly follow.  Links on the World Wide Web are generally considered in one of the following three categories: inbound, outbound and internal.

Meta Tags:
Are tags that supply further information on a page, “data about data”, and is not viewed by visitors to that page but is machine understandable information specifically for the web.  These tags can be used to define information about a page or to control how other programs may use the page in question.

PageRank:
Is a link analysis algorithm used by Google search that assigns a weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents most notably web pages, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set.  The theory behind PageRank it would seem is that the more popular (linked to) a page the higher it should rank, however the internet is not a free or equal democracy as no two links are counted the same. 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC):
Is an internet advertising model used to direct visitors to websites where the advertiser only pays when the ad is actually clicked.  These are usually served by Google’s AdWords, or the more recently amalgamated Yahoo Bing Network which serves Bing Ads. 

SEO:
Search Engine Optimisation, often abbreviated to just SEO, is the process of improving the visibility of a website through the marketing of its individual pages within a search engine’s un-paid or organic search results.

Splash Page:
A splash page on a website is generally a pre-home page requiring some form of action before reaching the website proper.  Splash pages are generally considered bad SEO practice as they are more often than not devoid of any meaningful content. 

URL Redirect:
These are redirects for a visitor or search engine to another page for various reasons.  There are two main kinds of redirect, temporary and permanent.  Temporary redirects would suggest that to user and search engine that the old URL will be reactivated at a later date while a permanent redirect is generally put in place after a website has been redeveloped and the pages may have been changed.

White Hat SEO:
White hat SEO is what would be considered general best practices.  Those stick to the terms and conditions of a search engine when optimising their website are said to be white hat SEOs.  This method generally takes longer to show returns than black hat techniques, but is unlikely to see any kind of penalty placed on their website.

Web Browser:
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information on the World Wide Web.  While web browsers were primarily intended to access and browse the World Wide Web, they are often used to access information on private networks or files in file systems.  While the main web browsers at this time are Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera there remain many other choices on the market.