Glossary Collection

(B)
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Back Link: Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.

Bot: Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Bidding Engine: Search engines that operate a bid-listing model, such as Overture of Espotting.

Bid Listing: The use of Pay Per Click (PPC) models by search engines in a dynamic, real time auction for search listings. As the auction is never-ending and real time, your listings will change as the bidding level changes. Bids drop of as budgets run dry, or are cancelled, and new bids are added. This makes monitoring and changing of bids essential.

Bid-Listing Monitoring: The act of monitoring activity in bid engines in order to keep a bid listing campaign as competitive as possible.

Bookmarking: The action of marking a webpage in your browser, to make it easy to return to later. Most statistics packages will measure this a a new visitor, even though a loyalty relationship has been established.

Brand Infringement: The act of using another company's brand in a non-ethical way, such as inclusion in meta tags, claiming to be that company, or making false statements about that company.

Brand Intelligence: Bigmouthmedia's brand infringement detection and investigation service.
BMM: Bigmouthmedia

(C)

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Cloaking: Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Conversion: Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Files that instruct browsers on how to format a document (which fonts to use, how links should behave etc.) Some browsers treat CSS in different ways.

Click: Term used to describe when a user selects a link or search engine listing by pressing the mouse button while holding the pointer over the link

Client-Side: Web-coding that instructs the browser to undertake a task. Opposite to server-side

CTA: Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad (vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.

CTR: Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.

CPC - Cost per Click: The actual average cost incurred by the advertiser by the action of a potential customer following a link found on, for instance, a SERP.

CPM - Cost per Impression: (1,000 page views)

Cost Per Thousand (CPT)

CPM is frequently used in advertising to represent cost per thousand (where M is the roman numeral of 1000). When used in advertising it relates to the cost per thousand page impressions.
It is important to remember that when someone says something like, "our CPM is $5," this means that the Cost Per Impression is $0.005

Creative: Titles and Descriptions as they are submitted to directory editors

(D)

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Data gathering: The process of building profiles of customers by collecting data by their activity.
Knowing your customers better will allow you to provide better products and customer service.

Database Presence: The inclusion of database driven content within a site

Design Technology: Technology used in the design process

Directory Creative: Text written by BMM and submitted to editors

Directory Search: A search made by clicking through directory categories without use of keywords or phrases.

Domain: All devices connected to the internet are referenced by their IP address. To make using the internet easier, most will have IP addresses have names associated with them - for instance .com. a domain can have any number of sub-domains prefixed before it, to create a complete domain name.

Domain Mapping: The server administration required to 'point' a domain at a specific location or "IP Address"

Doorway Page: Also called a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

(E)

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E-Commerce: The processes of selling online, via a website

Editorial Search Engine: Engines that rank sites using human editors and not by reading meta tags

Emergency Alerts: To signal that an event that is being monitored has occured, for instance, by email or SMS.

(F)

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Featured Site: The term used by many portals, and other search properties, that incorporate some element of bid-listing results in their normal search results.

Feed: A file listing a large number of pages to be indexed or items for sale which spiders can download and read automatically from a website. Some feeds can be created easily using a spreadsheet. Others, such as RSS and Google SiteMaps may require some XML expertise.

Flash: Macromedia Flash Technology

(G)

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Generic Keywords: General terms relating to subject matter, e.g. marketing (generic) search engine optimisation(specific) Goofle's own system for ranking web pages.


Gateway Page: Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

(H)

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Hit: An often mis-used word that refers to any file download from a website, including one hit for the HTML page, and one for each embedded file such as graphics, Flash movies, WAV files etc. Consequently, one page view can generate several hits. Often, the word hit is mis-used where the phrase "visitor session" would be more appropriate.

HTML Coding: HyperText Markup Language is a coding Language used to make HyperText documents for use on the Web.

(I)

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IP Address: A four-byte numeral (bytes have a value between 0 and 255), which represents an exact address of an internet location, eg. 255.0.192.47. There are almost 4,300 million unique IP addresses, however this is currently not enough for global use, and often users share IP addresses through a proxy server.

IP Delivery (Cloaking): A technique whereby false content is presented to search engine spiders in an attempt to gain ranking points. Search engine spiders are recognised by their IP Address.

(J)

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Javascript: A web coding language with different capabilities to HTML. Not recognised by Search Engine Spiders. Can be client-side, and sometimes server-side.

JHTML: Normal HTML that includes "server-side" JavaScript instructions.

(K)

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Keyword Search: A search made by keying a keyword, or combination of words into a search box on a search engine, directory or portal.

Key Phrases: Combinations of keywords, also called "search terms".

Keyword Search Frequency: Number of search requests for particular keyword.

Keywords: The actual words used to describe the site in meta tags and creatives and to find the site using "searches".

Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.

(L)

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Links: An electronic connection between two Web sites (also called "hyper-link").

Link Farm: A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Link Popularity: A method used by search engines to determine the importance of a listed site. Based on the idea that sites with many inbound links is more credible than one without

(M)

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Message Boards: Websites that allow visitors to post messages, and for others to reply to them. Unlike email, all discussions take place in public, any anyone can join in. Usually, such discussions are themed by subject matter.

Meta Search Engine: A search Engine that simultaneously refers to several other search properties to retrieve search results. Copernic and Vivisimo are examples.

Meta Tag: HTML coding embedded in the site, to provide spiders with keyword information

(N)

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Newsletter Marketing: The process of building relationships with existing customers and gaining new ones by publishing and mass distributing an email containing features and articles of interest to them.

(P)

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PR: Abbreviation for PageRank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.

Paid Linking: The act of paying for another site to link to your own.

Page View (Impression): One view of a web page (or banner ad) by a user.
Partner Sites (Bid Engines Terminology): Relates to bid engines. Partner sites are sites that also display some or all of the bid listing results from that bid engine.

Pay Per Click: A charging model for search engine listings based on a set charge for users clicking on that search engine listing. This model is used by Overture and Espotting in the UK, in a bidding fashion (see bid listing)

Permission Based Email: Since late 2003, to email individuals in Europe as part of a mass distribution, the express, unequivocal permission of the recipient must be obtained first, and this should form basis of an ethical, permission based campaign.

Portals: Web sites which offer some or all of the following - search, email, news, weather, shopping

PR: Public Relations - the process of maintaining and controlling your relationship with the public and your public persona.

PFI: Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.

(R)

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Rank: The position attained on the Search Engines, Directories and Searchable Portals

Rebrand: The process of changing the form of an established brand and managing that change effectively to avoid losing brand recognition.

Reciprocal Linking: The act of two sites linking to each other, for mutual benefit, and with no cost incurred by either site.

Robots: Programme which meta search engines send out to read the metas and/or body html of a submitted site.

Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP): Text file placed under e.g. www.example.com/robots.txt Used to prevent spider trawls of private or sensitive areas and image folders/stats files etc.

ROI: Return On Investment - A measure of the success of a marketing campaign in comparison to the money spent on that campaign.

(S)

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Search Engine: A website that provides a list of useful links (SERP's) in response to a text query. Many Search engines have gradually evolved from pure search engines, such as Google, into portals, such as Yahoo!

Search Engine Optimisation: A crucial element of search engine marketing - the process of adapting web pages to maximize their effectiveness at matching (and occurring highly in the results pages for) common search phrases on search engines.

Search Engine Log Data: Actual search engine logs, from which BMM retrieve data on search frequency of particular keywords.

Search Engine Results Page: The page on which search results are displayed in response to a query submitted by the user.

Search Term Evolution: New words or phrases which are relevant to your industry.

SEO: Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of
making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases

SEM: Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)

SERP: Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.

Semantic Web: Sometimes called Web2.0. This refers to the goal to make the information in world-wide-web understandable to computers, using technology such as XML and SOAP. Basically, web pages include information not only explaining how pages look, but what they actually mean. Search engines already make use of this in the form of information feeds, such as RSS and XML site maps

Server-Side: Web coding that instructs a server to undertake a task. Opposite to client-side

SHTML: Normal HTML that includes "server-side" instructions

Slang: The use of alternative or colloquial phrases. In terms of SEM, slang is important to take into consideration when formulating an optimisation strategy.

Spam/Spammed: General term relating to practices not approved by the engines and editors

Spiders: See Robots

Style Sheet Errors: Incompatibilities between Cascading Style Sheets designed for one browser, when viewed through another.

Submission: The act of making search engines aware of new web pages and sites. Each search engine will have its own individual process for doing this.

Spam: In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning.

Spamdexing: Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine's index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Spider: also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Spider Trap: A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and "ban") spiders that do not respect robots.txt.

Stop Word: Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as "the".