A
AdWords: An advertising service offered by Google for its search engine.
Analytics: Analytics are reports on ad campaign data, showing you the numbers and comparisons of everything to help you make future decisions. Analytics can be provided to you by your publisher network, AdWords, or another service.
B
Back end: The “behind the scenes” of your website. Every page of your website has a back end, which needs to be optimized to increase your search engine ranking.
Bot: A program that scans the web in order to index it. These are also called web crawlers, and the information they collect creates search engine results.
C
CPA: Cost per action, or cost per acquisition. This refers to the amount of money that is paid to get a result. The result may be something such as a sale made or a new account created.
Commission: Income earned by an publisher when the publisher generates a lead, click, or sale on a website. Also known as a referral fee.
Content: Articles, graphics, videos, and other media that are posted to a website. Content should help consumers with a need, whether information or entertainment, while also being easily found by search engines. Better content on your website will lead to a higher organic SERP.
Conversion: When a customer completes an action such as making a purchase or submitting a form, this is called a “conversion”. The conversion describes the ultimate goal of a business.
Contextual link: A form of advertisement where a text link is placed within your website content, as opposed to the more traditional method of placing links in a sidebar.
CPC: Cost per click. This refers to the amount of money that PPC advertisers pay for a consumer to click on their link. For example, if you spend $200 on an ad campaign and had 100 people click on ads from that campaign, that your cost per click would be $0.50. (clicks generated / cost of campaign = CPC)
CPM: Cost per thousand. Used to refer to the cost of 1,000 people viewing a webpage.
D
Disclosure: A page on your website dedicated to letting website visitors know if you are being compensated for product recommendations and endorsements, whether through publisher marketing or any other method. In accordance with a recent law passed by the FCC, a disclosure is required to be posted on your website if you are engaged in publisher marketing.
Domain: The website name seen in the address bar, e.g. www.google.com.
Duplicate content: Content appearing on more than one website at once. Website content should be original, as posting duplicate content will lower your search engine ranking.
E
EPL: Earnings per lead.
External link: A link on your website that connects to a domain other than your own.
F
Footer: The section at the very bottom of every page on a website. The footer usually contains links to your disclaimers as well as links to all sections of your website.
Hyperlink: Hyperlinks may link to another page on your website, or to another domain. Hyperlinks are essential for making navigation within your website easy. Hyperlinks also provide your website with credibility, as you can quote other websites as sources and provide a hyperlink to the source.
I
Inbound link: A link on another website that links to your website. The existence of inbound links to your website is a strong indicator of quality content. However, paying for inbound links is not advisable, as search engine ranking systems will penalize an inauthentic link.
Internal link: A link to another page within your own website. Internal links are used to make in-site navigation easier for the visitor.
K
Keyword: A word or phrase that an internet user enters into a search engine. For example, “get cash fast” is a set of keywords that someone might use to find an online lender for personal loans. Understanding and using keywords is essential for all internet marketers, since keywords are the driving force behind search engine results.
L
Landing page: The webpage to which traffic is referred by a publisher.
Lender: A lender is an individual or business who loans funds to another individual or business, for any purpose. The person who is receiving the loan will pay back later, whether in increments or in a lump sum.
Link farm: A method of gaining inbound links, where you could go to a site to buy links to your site. Search engines penalize this kind of site, and it has fallen out of use and is now discredited.
Long tail: A long tail search is a search with more than two or three words. Long tail searches are used by internet users who are looking for a very specific result. Website owners use long tail keyword phrases in their content in order to increase their search engine ranking, especially in a keyword topic that is not very competitive, such as a specific type of business in one specific town. An example of a long tail search like this would be “seafood wholesaler in Sherwood, Oregon”. Any websites using that keyword would be first in my search engine results. Because there are many towns with the same name, it is important to add the state or country in the keyword.
M
Meta tag: A word or phrase appearing the your web page’s header. Meta tags help search engines to find and rank your website.
N
Negative keyword: Negative keywords are a feature of AdWords, where if the negative keyword is included in a search, your ad will not appear in those search results.
O
Optimization: Optimization is the act of creating your website and content in such a way that it is easily found and read by search engine crawlers. Without optimization, search engines will not know your website exists.
Organic search: A non-paid search result. For example, on a Google search, the paid ads appear in a separate section, at the top of the page or to the right. Below the paid ads are displayed the organic, or non-paid, hyperlinks.
P
Page rank: The page number of a search result. This number can be found at the bottom of the search results page. The lower the number, the better it is for your website traffic.
Payment threshold: The amount of money an publisher has to accumulate before receiving a pay-out.
PPC: Pay per click. A type of internet marketing where the advertiser pays a small fee to the search engine for every time an internet search engine user clicks on their ad.
PPL: Pay per lead. In a PPL publisher program, the publisher receives commission whenever a lead is generated. Examples of a lead include a form filled out, or a quote/estimate requested.
Privacy policy: A page on your website that serves the purpose of informing website visitors what you do with personal information that is received through forms or anonymous tracking methods. A website privacy policy is required by most publisher networks. A privacy policy is required to use Google AdSense and Google Analytics.
R
Redirect link: A link that redirects a visitor to a different page.
ROI: Return on investment. This is the amount of money earned compared to the cost of advertising. Return on investment is used often to study campaign effectiveness in Google AdWords.
S
SEO: Search engine optimization. This is the process of coding a website in such a way that it improves its ranking in search results. Search engine optimization is achieved with various methods, the effective use of keywords is one major success driver.
SERP: Search engine results placement. This is the position a site has in organic search results.
SEM: Search engine marketing. This involves researching, evaluating, and positioning a website within search engine results. The aim of search engine marketing is to achieve the best exposure for your website. Optimum exposure is gained by improving your website’s search engine ranking, participating in PPC campaigns, or a combination of these or similar actions, such as search engine optimization.
Squeeze page: A page that is designed with only one goal or conversion in mind. Squeeze pages usually remove all other distractions in order to focus on the goal. For example, navigation elements and other web page features may be removed in order to keep the website visitor focused on the goal or sales pitch on hand.
T
Text link: A text link is a link formed by text, as opposed to a banner ad or other type of image to link to another webpage.
Traffic: The number of visitors to your website and all of its pages. Studying traffic is very important in knowing how well your website is performing. Changes and trends in traffic are important pieces of information to the website owner. By understanding this information, you can know which pages need to be changed or updated.
Title tag: This is the title at the top of your web page. Title tags are the main piece of information that search engines use to find and evaluate your site.
Tracking method: This is whatever type of tracking that a service or network uses to track the activity, leads, and sales of publisher websites.
W
Webmaster: The person or group of people that own a website.
White hat SEO: Search engine optimization methods that are reputable in the industry of internet marketing. Compare this to black hat SEO methods.
301 redirect: A permanent redirect for a web page. Search engines will ignore the redirect page, and only read the new page.
