SEM Centric And Possibly The Most Concise Internet Glossary Available
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Redirect & Error Code Meanings
301 Redirect – URL has been moved permanently.
302 Redirect – Temporary redirect of a URL
400 Server Error Code - Bad Request
401 Server Error Code - Authorization required
403 Server Error Code – Forbidden URL
404 Server Error Code – URL Not found
405 Server Error Code - Method Not Allowed
406 Server Error Code - Not Acceptable
407 Server Error Code - Proxy Authorization Required
408 Server Error Code - Request Time Out
409 Server Error Code - Conflicting Request
410 Server Error Code - Gone
411 Server Error Code - Content Len Rquired
412 Server Error Code - Precondition Failed
413 Server Error Code - Entity Too Long
414 Server Error Code - URI Too Long
500 Server Error Code - Internal Server Error
501 Server Error Code - Not Implemented
502 Server Error Code - Bad Gateway
503 Server Error Code - Service Unavailable
504 Server Error Code - gateway Timeout
505 Server Error Code - HTTP Version not Supported
AJAX – The acronym that stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML which is a programming language that allows for the updating of any specific
sections of web pages content without the need to completely reload the page
API – The acronym that stands for Application Programming Interface.
A/B Testing – A/B testing is a simple form of testing where two versions of a web page or web page object are displayed randomly to visitors and the tracking
of the resultant differences in user behavior
Absolute URL - Absolute URLs use the full-path address of the resource, such as http://www.domain-name.com/page-name.htm.
Acquisition Strategy – A process by which potential customers who are in the market and ready to buy are leadto a web site and converted to clients.
Affiliate Marketing – Recruiting merchants to sell your product on a commission basis
Algorithm – The rules employed by a search engine to rank the web pages listed within its database
ALT Text – AKA alternative text or alt attribute is an HTML tag (ALT tag) used to provide images with descriptive text and is visible while “hovering” over the image. Also used accessibility purposes
Anchor Text - Words used in the hyperlink (typically blue underlined) to any destination resource (relevance)
Automatic Optimization – Search engines identify which advertisements for an individual advertiser demonstrates the highest CTR (click-through
rate) over time, showing that advertisement more often than other advertisements in the same Ad Group/Order
Backlinks – All the links pointing at a particular web page AKA inbound links, inlinks
Ban – AKA Delisting refers to the removal of an account or site as a punitive action imposed by a search engine as a response to being gamed.
Baseline Metrics – Time-lagged calculations which provide the basis for making comparisons of past performance vs current performance
Behavioral Targeting – The practice of targeting and serving advertisements to groups of people who exhibit similarities not only in their location,
gender or age, but also in how they act and react within their online environment
Bid – The amount of money that an advertiser is willing to pay each time a searcher clicks on an advertisement
Bid Boosting – A form of automated bid management that allowing for an increase of bid prices when advertisements are served to someone whose age or gender matches your target demographic (adCenter)
Bid Management Software - Software that monitors and changes bid prices, pauses campaigns, manages budget maximums, adjusts multiple keyword bids based on CTR, position ranking etc
Black Box Algorithms – Black box is technical jargon for a when system is viewed primarily in terms of input and output characteristics, the internal workings are unknown such as secret algorithms
Blacklists - A list of Web sites that are considered off limits, spamy or dangerous. A Web site can be placed on a blacklist because it is a fraudulent operation or because it exploits browser or email vulnerabilities to send spyware and other unwanted software to the user.
Blogs – A truncated form for “web log.” A blog is a frequently updated journal that is intended for public viewing. Frequently takes the form of a CMS such as WordPress
Brand – Customer or user experience represented by images and ideas, often referring to a symbol, a slogan and a design scheme
Branding – The accumulation of experiences with any specific product or service, both directly relating to its use, and through the influence of advertising, design, and media attention
Brand Lift – A measurable ’sustained’ increase in consumer recall for a specific, branded company, product or service
Brand Messaging – Creative imagery and verbiage that presents and maintains a consistent corporate image across all media outlets
Brand Reputation - The socioeconomic position a company brand occupies, a trust relationship
Branding Strategy – The effort to develop a strong brand reputation on the web in an attempt to drive an increase of brand recognition and in doing so create a significant volume of impressions and thereby generate higher sales
Bridge Page – The web pages that link together many doorway pages on a web site
Bucket – An associative grouping for related concepts, keywords, behaviors and audience characteristics associated with your specific offerings.
Buying Funnel – Also known as the Buying Cycle, Buyer Decision Cycle and Sales Cycle, Buying Funnel refers to any multi-step process of a consumer’s path to purchase of a product, from awareness to education to preferences and intent through final purchase
Buzz Monitoring Services – Offerings such as Google alerts that will monitor and email anytime a company’s name, executives, products, services or other keyword-based information on them are mentioned anywhere publicly accessible on the web
Buzz Opportunities – Topics popular in the media and with specific audiences that receive news coverage or pass along recommendations helping increase market exposure
COA – The abbreviation that stands for Cost of Acquisition meaning how much it costs to acquire a conversion (desired action), such as a sale.
CPA – The abbreviation standing for closet Per Action/Acquisition, this is a metric used to measure the total cost of each sale, lead or action from start to finish
CPC - The abbreviation standing for Cost Per Click meaning the cost associated with each user click on a served advertisement
CPM – The acronym standing for Cost Per Thousand Impressions of an advertisement (ad serves or potential viewers)
CPO – The acronym standing for Cost Per Order meaning the dollar amount of advertising or marketing necessary to acquire an order
CTR – See Click Through Rate
Campaign Integration – Planning and executing a paid search campaign concurrently with other marketing initiatives, on and offline
Canonicalization – The process of converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” representation
Cascading Style Sheets or CSS – HTML layout details externalized on a different page
Click Bot – A program generally used to artificially click on paid listings within the search engines in an effort to artificially inflate click amounts.
Click Fraud – Clicks on any Pay-Per-Click advertisement that are unethically motivated
Click Through - When a user clicks on a hypertext link and is taken to the destination page of that link
Click Through Rate (CTR) – The percentage of those clicking on a link as compared to the total number of those who see the link
Client-side Tracking - The use of a client-side javascript based tracking cookie in order to facilitate web site functions
Cloaking - The process by which any web site can display multiple versions of a web page under different circumstances
Comment - The text contained within a “comment” tag in a web page or comment section of a blog post. “Comments” are used in a variety of situations, such as communication between web developers and Cascading Style Sheets or guest poster and blog writer
Competitive Analysis – The analysis of strengths and weaknesses of competing web sites, including identifying traffic patterns, major traffic sources, and keyword selections
Consumer Generated Media (CGM) - User generated content created by consumers to support or oppose products, web sites, or companies
Content Management Systems (CMS) - In computing, a content management system (CMS) is a document centric collaborative web application for
managing web sites and web content
Content Network – See Contextual Networks
Content Targeting – An advertisement serving process in Google and Yahoo! in which keyword triggered advertisements related to the content or subject (context) of the web page are displayed.
Contextual Advertising – Advertisements automatically served/placed on a web page based on that page’s content, keywords and phrases
Contextual Distribution – Search advertisers marketing on certain publisher sites across the web instead of, or in addition to, placing PPC ads on search networks.
Contextual Network – Also called Content Ads and Content Network, contextual networks serves advertisement on web site pages on which the adjacent content contains the keywords being bid upon.
Contextual Search – A search type that analyzes the page being viewed by a user and gives a list of related search results
Contextual Search Campaigns – A paid placement search campaign that takes a search advertisers listing beyond the search engine results pages and onto the sites of matched content web partners
Conversion Rate - Conversion rates are measurements that determine how many of your prospects perform the prescribed or desired action step compared to how many view the step
Copyright – Ownership protection of works or expressions fixed in a tangible form, including words, art, images, sounds, and music Also see DMCA
Copy – The main text of a clickable search, context-served ad or, web page in which a sales pitch is contained.
CRM - The abbreviation that stands for Content Management System. CRM’s typically take the form of web site creation software such as WordPress and Joomla
Crawler – Automated programs in search engines that gather web site listings, also called a spider or robot, a crawler makes copies of the web pages found and stores them in the search engine’s index, or database.
Crawler: Also known as a bot and spider, a crawler is a program that search engines use to seek out information on the web. The act of “crawling” on a web site is referred to when the crawler begins to search through documents contained within the web site. Also see Index.
Creatives – Unique words, design and display of a paid-space advertisement including the ad’s title, description and, display URL
Custom Feed – Feeds created specifically for each of the shopping engines, typically XML data
DHTML – The acronym that stands for Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language.
DKI – The acronym that stands for Dynamic Keyword Insertion which means placing of the EXACT keywords queries for in the returned advertisement title or description.
DMCA – The acronym hat stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act which means the ‘criminalization of the circumventing of access control’, or simply put, copyright infringement on the Internet
Dayparting – An option keyed to serve specified advertisements based on day and time factors.
Deep Linking – Any inbound link pointing to an internal page on a web site
Description Tag - Refers to the META description tag.and the page descriptive information it contains
Directory Search – Also known as a search directory refers to a listing of web sites contained in an engine that are categorized into topics and can be browsed
Display URL – The web page URL that one actually sees in a PPC text advertisement
Distribution Network – A network of web sites (content publishers, ISPs) or search engines and their partner sites on which paid advertisements or other content can be distributed Domain – Refers to any specific web sites name or Ip address
Doorway Page – A web page created specifically to obtain rankings within the natural listings of a search engine (outdated, manipulative)
Dynamic Landing Pages – Web pages created ‘on the fly’ in order to match content to the click-through searchers queries
Dynamic Text (Insertion) – A technique that employs returning search engine queries framed within advertisements
eCPM – The acronym that stands for Effective Cost Per Thousand calculated by multiplying the CPC times the click-through rate (CTR), and multiplying that by one thousand
eCommerce - The Internet commercial transactions where goods, information or services are bought and sold.
Editorial Review Process – Check to ensure relevancy and compliance with editorial policy. This process could be automated human or both.
Entry Page – Refers to any page within a web site that is utilized to “enter” a web site
Eye Tracking Studies – Technology to track and map the eye movements of web page readers, in an effort to understand reading and click-through patterns.
FAQ – The acronym meaning “Frequently Asked Questions.”
F.F.A – The abbreviation meaning “Free for All” link pages (antiquated) F.T.P – The abbreviation meaning “File Transfer Protocol.”
Feeds – Typically an XML or RSS document that is a shortened or updated version of a web page created for syndication Flash – Technology for adding video, animation and interactivity to web pages
Frames - An HTML technology that allows two or more pages to display in one browser window, not spider friendly
G.U.I – The acronym abbreviating “Graphical User Interface.” which means a visual representation of the functional code and/or is a way for the average web user to interface with a database or program.
Gateway page – Manipulative, See Doorway Page.
Geo-Targeting – Geo-targeting allows you to specify where your ads will or won’t be shown based on the searcher’s location, enabling more localized and personalized results.
.htaccess file – A file with one or more configuration directives placed on any apache based web sites root directory which is applicable to all the sites directories
HTTP – An abbreviation that stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol.”
HTTPS – An abbreviation that stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure.”
HTTP Referrer Data – The logged source of traffic to any web site with which an analytics package makes an analysis
Head Terms – Search terms that are short, popular and straightforward based on a bell-curve distribution of keyword usage
Hidden text – Text that is visible to the search engines but hidden to a user
Hit – The request or retrieval of any web page or specific item located within a web page
IFRAME –The Inline Frame is an HTML element which makes it possible to embed another HTML document inside the main document.
IPTV – The acronym meaning Internet Protocol Television
Impression – One view or display of an advertisement displayed via a search engine query
Index – A search engine’s “index” refers to the a search engines database of documents found by crawling the web.
Indexability - The potential ability of a web site or its contents to be crawled or “indexed” by a search engine also known as crawlability and spiderability.
IP Address – An abbreviation meaning Internet Protocol Address which is a unique combination of numbers assigned to individual networks, sites and devices
IP Address Lookup – The process by which a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address is determined
IASAPI_rewrite - A Microsoft Internet Information Server technology with which to insure URL canonicalization
JavaScript – JavaScript is a scripting language based on prototype-base programming and is used on a web site as client-side JavaScript, and also enables scripting access to objects in other applications.
Keyword - A single word that relates to a specific subject or topic typically used to query a search engine
Keyword / Keyword Phrase – A specific word or combination of words that a searcher might type to query a search engine
Keyword Density - The number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is displayed in the body of a web page divided into the total amount of words on the same web page
Keyword Phrase – Two or more keywords relating to any specific topic
Keyword Stemming – To return to the root or ’stem’ of a word for the purpose of creating additional words by adding a prefix or suffix, or using pluralization.
Keyword Stuffing – Generally refers to the act of adding an inordinate number of keyword terms into the HTML or tags of a web page for ranking purposes
Keyword Tag - Refers to the META keywords tag within the head section a web page code.
Keyword Targeting – Displaying Pay Per Click search advertisements on publisher sites across the Web
KPI, Key Performance Indicators - KPI’s are metrics used to quantify objectives that reflect the strategic performance of your online marketing campaigns.
Landing Page / Destination Page – The web page at which a searcher arrives after clicking on an ad SERP entry.
Latent Semantic Indexing - LSI uses word associations to help search engines know more accurately the topic and importance of any web page.
Lead Generation – Web sites that generate leads for any products or services
Link Cardinality – Extremely high Link Popularity
Link Farming – Any attempt to substantially and artificially increase link popularity
Link Popularity – Link popularity generally refers to the total number of links pointing to any single URL
Linkbait – Something on your site that people feel compelled to link to
Linking Profile – The results of an analysis of where your links are coming from.
Log File - The raw data stores of information about any web sites incoming and outgoing activities.
Long Tail – Keyword phrases containing three, sometimes four or five, words
Meta Feeds – Advertising networks that ’scrape’ advertiser listings from other providers.
META Refresh redirect - A client-side ‘browser’ redirect.
Metrics - Any system of measures that helps to quantify particular characteristics.
Minimum Bid – The least amount that an advertiser can bid for a keyword or keyword phrase and still be active on any search advertising network.
Mod_rewrite - An apache server technology with which to insure URL canonicalization
Multivariate Testing – A type of testing that varies and tests more than one or two page/campaign elements at a time to determine the best performing elements and combinations.
Naked Links – A clearly visible link in the text of a web page that directs to a web site.
Negative Keywords – Keywords exclusions used to prevent advertisement serves
No Frames Tag - A tag used to describe the content of a page frame to a users browser or search engine spider which had trouble displaying / reading frames and often referred to as “Poor mans cloaking”.
No Script Tag - The noscript element is used to define an alternate content (text) if a script can not or will not be executed
NoFollow - NoFollow is a hypertext link attribute that tells search engines not to count the link as a vote and not to send any trust to that site coded rel=”nofollow”
Organic Results – Search engine queried results vied solely dues to having been deemed algorithmically important
Organic Search Listings - Search engine queried results vied solely dues to having been deemed algorithmically important
Organic Search Rankings – Using specific keywords, the numbered listing of a web site on a search engines queried resultant web page.
P4P – The acronym meaning Pay for Performance
PFP – The acronym meaning Pay for Performance
PPC – The acronym meaning Pay Per Click.
PageRank (PR) – PR is the Google technology developed at Stanford University for determining and placing importance on pages and web sites
Paid Inclusion – Paying a Search Engine to be included in it’s index, carries no guarantee of ranking
Pay Per Call – A model of paid advertising where advertisers pay for every phone call that comes to them from a search ad.
Podcasts – A podcast is a media file that is distributed over the internet using any variety of means, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
Position – In PPC advertising, position is the placement on a search engine results page where your ad appears relative to other paid ads and to organic search results.
Position Preference – A feature in Google AdWords and in Microsoft adCenter enabling advertisers to specify which positions on the page they would like their advertisements to appear on.
PPC Advertising – The acronym meaning Pay-Per-Click Advertising, a model of online advertising with which advertisers pay only for each click on their advertisements that directs searchers to a specified landing page on the advertiser’s web site.
PPC Management – The continuous monitoring and maintenance of any amount of Pay-Per-Click campaigns including changing bid prices, expanding and refining keyword lists, editing ad copy, testing campaign components for cost effectiveness as well as successful conversions.
Quality Score – A number assigned by Google to paid advertisements in a hybrid auction that, together with maximum CPC, determines each advertisements rank and SERP position. The Quality Scores reflect an advertisements historical CTR, keyword relevance, landing page relevance, and other factors proprietary to Google.
Query – The keyword or keyword phrase a searcher types into a search field initiating a search and result in a SERP with organic and paid listings.
ROAS – The acronym which means Return On Advertising Spending
ROI – The acronym which means Return On Investment
Rank – How well positioned a particular web page or web site when it appears in search engine results.
Raw Data Feed – Digital information that has been collected but not formatted, analyzed or processed.
Reciprocal Link – Two different web sites that link out to one another also referred to as Cross Linking.
Relative URL’s - Relative URLs link to just the file, for example, “page12.htm”.
Relevance – A measure of how closely your (ad) title, description, and keywords are related to the search query and the searcher’s expectations.
Reverse DNS – The process of determining the hostname or host associated with an IP or host address.
Revshare / Revenue Sharing – A method of allocating per-click revenue to a site publisher that distributes paid-ads to its context network partners
Rich Media – Advertisements with embedded motion or interactivity. A growing option for PPC advertisers as rates of broadband connectivity continue to increase.
Right Rail – A name for the right most side column of a web page
Robots.txt - A text file present in the root directory of a website which is used to direct the activity of search engine spiders and is typically used to tell a spider whether or not it has access and to which files
RSS - A.K.A Really Simply Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary is a family of web feed formats used for distributing frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news, podcasts, and videos etc.
RSS Aggregate –A client software utilizing ‘Really Simple Syndication’ feeds to retrieve desired web content such as blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and product catalogs, or in the case of a search aggregation, a customized set of search results
SEO – The acronym defined as “Search Engine Optimization.” meaning the process of editing a web site’s content and code in order to improve visibility within one or more search engines
SERP – The acronym defined as Search Engine Results Page meaning the page delivered to a searcher that displays the results of a their query entered into the search field
SSP Feed – A Yahoo! service, see Search Submit Pro and Feeds
Saturation (Search Engine Saturation) - The number of any single web sites pages available in a search engine
Search Engines - A search engine is a database containing web pages, the primary purpose of which is to relay the results of queried information in accordance with relevance algorithms.
Search Funnel – A style of search that works from broad general keywords to narrower specific keywords, any stage of which is used for purchase information.
Search Submit Pro (SSP) – Search Submit Pro is Yahoo!’s paid inclusion marketing product that uses a “feed” approach where Yahoo! crawls your web site as well as an optimized XML feed to which is then applies its algorithm to both the actual web site pages and the XML feed to determine which listing is the most appropriate to appear in the SERP’s.
Secondary Links – Links that are indirectly acquired links through scrapping and other means.
Semantic Clustering – A technique for developing relevant keywords for PPC Ad Groups accomplished by focusing tightly on keywords and keyword phrases that are highly associative and thus, referred to as “semantic clustering.”
Server-side Tracking - The process of analyzing server log files to make sense of raw data and to generate meaningful reports and trends analysis.
Session Id’s – are dynamic parameters that cause users and search engines to see a different URL for each page each time that they return to (re-crawl) a web site.
Share of Voice – “SOV” is a brand’s (or group of brands’) advertising weight, expressed as a percentage of a defined total market or market segment in a given time period, typically advertising weight is defined in terms of expenditure, ratings, pages, poster sites, etc, etc
Siloing – Siloing (also known as Theming) is a site architecture technique employed to split the focus of a site into multiple themes. The goal being to create a site that ranks well for both its common and more-targeted keywords.
Site-Targeted Ads – Site targeting allows advertisers display their advertisements on manually-selected sites in the search engine’s content network for contextual ad serves. Many site-targeted ads are billed more like traditional display ads, per 1000 impressions (CPM), and not on a Pay-Per-Click basis.
Social Media or Social Search – Sites where users gather to actively participate in determining what is popular.
SPAM – Any search marketing method deems to be detrimental to any search engines efforts to deliver relevant, quality search results.
Spamming – Spamming refers to a wide array of techniques used to spread advertisement.
Spider – See Crawler.
Splash Page – Refers to a landing page or of a web site that is interactive or graphically intense.
Sponsored Listing – A term used to identify paid advertisers and distinguish them from organic listings.
Statistical Validity – The degree to which an observed result (typically the difference between two measurements) can be judged reliable and not attributed to any random error in sampling or in measurement such as in Multivariate Testing methods.
Stop Word - Alpha numeric characters appearing in a page’s copy or content, with little significance by themselves, examples of stop words are: and, the, of, etc.
Submission - The act of making web resources aware of your resource i.e ’submitted for your approval’.
Super Verbs - Action words that trigger strong emotions or vibrant imagery.
TLP – Acronym for Top Level Page, referring to any home page, category page, or product page that has unique value for the site and are therefor structured in the top levels of the site directory.
TLP Feed – Acronym for Top Level Page feed means automatic and on-subscription feed of an advertiser’s home page and/or unique category pages.
Targeting – Narrowly focusing ads and keywords to attract a specific type searcher and potential customer via geographic locations (geo-targeting), days of the week, time of day (dayparting), and by gender and age (demographic targeting). The latest techniques and software focus on behavioral targeting based on predictive analytics.
Theme - A theme is an overall idea of what a web page is focused on through analysis employed by search engines.
Tier I Search Engines – The big three in the world of internet search, also referred to as Major Engines, Top Tier Engines or GYM, for Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search.
Tier II Search Engines – Smaller, vertical and specialized engines and meta-engines that search and display results from other search engines typically for niche markets.
Tier III Search Engines – Contextual distribution networks through which advertisements appear on pages within the PPC engine’s content network.
Title Tag - An HTML tag appearing in the <head> section of a web page that contains the page title and is generally displayed in a search engine result as a bold blue underlined hyperlink.
Trackback - A protocol that allows a blogger to link to any post on any blog that relate to a selected subject on any trackback supported blog.
Tracking URL – A specially designed and/or unique URL created to track an action or conversion from an affiliate or from paid advertising. This type or URL can include strings that will show what keyword was used, what match type was triggered, and what search engine referred the visitor.
Trademark – A designation of ownership
Traffic – The number of visitors to a web site over a given period of time determined by examination of web logs.
Traffic Analysis – The process of analyzing a web sites traffic in order to understand what visitors are searching for and what is driving traffic to
that site.
TXT//AD – Mobile device text ads
USPTO – United States Patent & Trademark Office.
Unique Visitor – Identifies any actual person and is tracked by a unique identifiable quality as being a single visitor no matter how many times that visitor arrives.
Usability – This term refers to how easily a web site can be used. A site with good usability is a site that makes it easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for or to execute the action they require.
User Agent - This is the identity of a web site visitor, spider, browser, etc. most commonly Mozilla and Internet Explorer.
Value Propositions – “A customer value proposition is the total benefit a customer is receives in return for payment.
Vertical Creep – Positioning trends when vertical listings appear at the top of organic search engine results and below top sponsored listings on the SERP.
Vertical Portal / Vortal – Search engines that focus on a specific industry or sector rather that the web as whole.
Verticals – A vertical is a specific business group or category, such as marketing or hosting with targeted search options and PPC opportunities to a specific business category.
Viral Marketing – Also called viral advertising, viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce an increase in brand awareness
Web Forwarding - Web forwarding allows for redirects to exist within an .htaccess file typically to another web server.
Web Server Logs – The list of the search terms and referral sites used by visitors to/on your site.
Wiki — See Wikipedia
Wikipedia – “Wikipedia is a multi language, web-based, free content encyclopedia project that is written collaboratively by volunteers; its articles can be edited by any member with access to the web site.”
Word Count - The total number of words contained within a web sites page
XML – Stands for “Extensible Markup Language,” a data delivery language facilitating ease of transfer.
XML Feeds – A form of paid inclusion in which search engines are fed information about an advertiser’s web pages via XML, instead of requiring that the engine gather that information through crawling actual pages
XML Maps - XML maps are specially formatted links to your pages. They will never replace the need for HTML site maps.
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