Internet Marketing Terms
There are a number of terms specific to online marketing and the internet that are helpful to know in order to understand how Direct Online Marketing™ can make your business money. The following are a sampling of these internet marketing terms. We always strive to speak in plain, easy-to-understand English, but if you ever don't understand something we say or write, please ask! You won't know how effective we really are at generating profits for you through our internet marketing services if you don't understand the basics.
Quick Jump to Internet Marketing Terms
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Above the Fold The part of the page you can see without scrolling down or over. The exact amount of space will vary by viewer because of screen settings. You often pay a premium for advertisement placements above the fold, which will add to the costs of internet marketing services, but may also add to results.
Advertising Network A group of Web sites where one advertiser controls all or a portion of the ads for all sites. A common example is the Google Network , which includes AOL, Amazon, Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves), and thousands of other sites.
Affiliate Marketing A type of internet marketing in which you partner with other Web sites, individuals, or companies to send traffic to your site. You will typically pay on a Cost per Acquisition (CPA) or Cost per Click (CPC) basis.
Algorithm The term search engines use for the formulae they use to determine the rankings of your Natural Listings. Search engines will periodically send a Spider through your Web site to view all its information. Their programs analyze then analyze this and other data to value your site and fix whether or not, and how high or low pages on your site will appears on various searches. These algorithms can be very complicated (Google alone currently uses 106 different variables) and search engines closely guard their algorithms as trade secrets.
ALT Tags HTML tags used to describe Web site graphics by displaying a block of text when moused-over. Search engines are generally unable to view graphics or distinguish text that might be contained within them, and the implementation of an ALT tag enables search engines to categorize that graphic. There is also talk that business Web sites will all be required to utilize ALT tags for all pictures to comply with certain American Disability Act requirements.
Analytics Also known as Web Metrics. Analytics refers to collection of data about a Web site and its users. Analytics programs typically give performance data on clicks, time, pages viewed, Web site paths, and a variety of other information. The proper use of Web analytics allows Web site owners to improve their visitor experience, which often leads to higher ROI for profit-based sites.
Backlinks Links from other Web sites pointing to any particular page on your site. Search engines use backlinks to judge a site's credibility; if a site links to you, the reasoning goes, it is in effect vouching for your authority on a particular subject. Therefore, Link Building is an incredibly important part of Search Engine Optimization. How many links, the quality of the sites linking to you, and how they link to you all are important factors. Also called Inbound Links.
Banned When pages are removed from a search engine's index specifically because the search engine has deemed them to be violating their guidelines. Although procedures are starting to loosen up somewhat, typically a search engine will not confirm to you that your site has been banned or why it has been banned. If you knowingly did something against the rules (written or unwritten) that got your site banned, you can probably clean up your act and get back in the game. We hear stories, though, from time to time of companies hiring Search Engine Optimization companies that deliver great, fast results, leave town, and then their Web site mysteriously disappears from the rankings. Thye
Banners Picture advertisements placed on Web sites. Such advertising is often a staple of internet marketing branding campaigns. Depending upon their size and shape, banner ads may also be referred to as buttons, inlines, leaderboards, skyscrapers, or other terms. When using specifics, banner ads refer to a 468x60 pixel size. Banner ads can be static pictures, animated, or interactive. Banner ads appear anywhere on a site top, middle, bottom, or side. Banner costs vary by Web site and advertiser; two of the most popular pay structures are Cost per 1,000 Impressions (CPM) and flat costs for a specified period of time.
Behavioral Targeting (BT) An area of internet marketing becoming increasingly refined, behavioral targeting looks to put ads in front of people who should be more receptive to the particular message given past Web behavior, including purchases and Web sites visited. The use of cookies enables online behavioral targeting.
Black Hat SEO - The opposite of White Hat SEO, these Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, tactics are (attempted) ways of tricking the Search Engines to get better rankings for a Web site. If not immediately, using black hat methods will eventually get your site drastically lower rankings or banned from the search engines altogether. While there are completely legal and ethical techniques you can use to improve rankings, if you design and market a Web site mostly for humans and not for the search engines's Spiders, you should be okay.
Blog Short for Web log, blogs are part journal, part Web site. Blogs are becoming increasingly popular as forums for people to express their views to a potentially unlimited audience. Personal recommendations from bloggers with large or dedicated followings can greatly help a business. Likewise, complaints can drive away many potential clients.
Click through Rate (CTR) # of clicks / # of impressions. Click through rate is a common internet marketing measurement tool for ad effectiveness. This rate tells you how many times people are actually clicking on your ad out of the number of times your ad is shown. Low click through rates can be caused by a number of factors, including copy, placement, and relevance.
Cloaking Showing a search engine spider or bot one version of a Web page and a different version to the end user. Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking. Those violating these guidelines may find their pages penalized or banned from a search engine's index. As for approved cloaking, this generally only happens with search engines that offer a paid inclusion program. Anyone offering cloaking services should be able to demonstrate explicit approval from a search engine for what it is they intend to do.
Content Management System Content Management Systems allow Web site owners to make text and picture changes to their Web sites without specialized programming knowledge of software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage. Content Management Systems can also control email campaigns and landing pages and can be edited by anyone with basic word knowledge via an internet connection. No need for length or costly web development contracts or need to wait on someone outside your company to make changes.
Content Tags – HTML tags which define the essence of the content contained within them and readable by search spiders. These include Header and Alt Tags.
Contextual Advertising A feature offered by major search engine advertisers allowing your advertisement to be placed next to related news articles and on other Web pages. Contextual advertising seeks to match Web content from the display page with your advertised search term(s). Like Behavioral Targeting, contextual advertising has come a long way since its conception, but is still an area of internet marketing being refined.
Conversion Rate This statistic, or metric, tells you what percentage of people is converting (really!). The definition of conversion depends upon your goals and measurements. It could mean a sign up for free information, a completed survey, a purchase made, or other.
Cookie Think of cookies like Batman's Bat Tracer. When you visit a Web site, Batman sticks a cookie on your browser to follow you around. Batman can then go back to his Bat Cave and watch where you're going and where you've been. A little Big Brother-ish to be sure, but cookies also provide direct benefits to surfers, including remembering passwords and bringing you offers in which you are genuinely interested (see Behavioral Targeting above).
Cost per Acquisition (CPA) An online advertising cost structure where you pay per an agreed upon actionable event, such as a lead, registration, or sale.
Cost per Click (CPC) A common way to pay for search engine and other types of online advertising, CPC means you pay a pre-determined amount each time someone clicks on your advertisement to visit your site. You usually set a top amount you are willing to pay per click for each search term, and the amount you pay will be equal or less to that amount, depending on the particular search engine and your competitors' bids. Also referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC) or Paid Search Marketing.
Cost per Impression (CPM) A common internet marketing cost structure, especially for banner advertising. You agree to pay a set cost for every 1,000 Impressions your ad receives. Search engine marketing may involve CPM costs for Contextual Advertising. This internet advertising pay structure should really be called Cost per 1,000 Impressions.
Crawler Component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically "crawling" the Web. A search engine's crawler (also known as a Spider or robot) follows links to Web Pages. It makes copies of those pages and stores them in a search engine's index.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software solutions that help enterprise businesses manage customer relationships in an organized way. An example of a CRM would be a database containing detailed customer information that management and salespeople can reference in order to match customer needs with products, inform customers of service requirements, etc.
Delisting When pages or whole Web sites are removed from a search engine's index. This may happen because, but not necessarily, they have been Banned.
Description Tags HTML tags which provide a brief description of your site that search engines can understand. Description tags should contain the main keywords of the page it is describing in a short summary - don't go crazy here with Keyword Stuffing.
Directories A type of search engine where listings are gathered through human efforts rather than Web crawling. In directories, Web sites are often reviewed, summarized to a brief description and placed in a relevant category.
Domain Name A Web site's main address. Direct Online Marketing™'s domain is DirectOM.com.
Doorway Page A Web page created to rank well in a search engine's organic listings (non-paid) and delivers very little information to those viewing it. Instead, visitors will often only see a brief call to action (i.e., "Click Here to Enter"), or they may be automatically propelled past the doorway page. With cloaking, they may never see the doorway page at all. Several search engines have guidelines against doorway pages, though they are more commonly allowed through paid inclusion programs. Also referred to as bridge pages, gateway pages and jump pages and not to be confused with Landing Pages.
Domain Name Monitoring Watching Domains across various extensions. Some companies offer to do this for, say a .com site by checking the same domain name in .net, .org, .eu, etc.
Ecommerce – The ability to purchase online. Ecommerce also goes by other super-snazzy names like etail. Web site features that allow ecommerce are commonly called shopping carts.
Ego Keyword – A keyword an individual or organization feels it must rank for in either or both natural listings or paid search results regardless of cost and Return on Investment. Read more about ego keywords.
Email Campaign System – Email is perhaps the most overlooked and underutilized (based on cost and effectiveness) form of internet marketing today. Email campaign systems allow organizations to send out emails to their email lists with a standard look and feel. Features often include the ability to segment lists.
Eyetracking A process that allows testing of Web sites for usability
or any other purpose. Eyetracking is performed by a small number of companies utilizing high speed cameras to monitor and record where the eyes of test subjects actually move on screen.
Feed –  Coming in an XML language that uses either RSS or Atom formatting are an extremely popular way for organizations to get their messages through the clutter and into the hands of interested parties. With the simple click of an orange button (right), users can stay connected to a site's content (Blogs, news, podcasts, etc.) automatically anytime their computers are connected to the internet. That button will connect you to the feed for the Direct Online Marketing™ Blog.
Forum A place on the internet where people with common interests or backgrounds come together to find information and discuss topics.
Geo-Targeting - The ability to reach potential clients by their physical location. The major search engines now all offer the ability to geo-target searches in their Pay-Per-Click campaigns by viewing their ip addresses. Geo-targeting allows advertisers to specify which markets they do and don't want to reach.
Golden Triangle - Eye-tracking studies show an "F" shaped pattern that most people tend to look at most often when looking at Search Engine Results Pages. These patterns vary slightly among the different Search Engines, but show the importance of placement among Natural Listings and Pay-per-Click ads.
Graphical Search Inventory Banners and other types of advertising units which can be synchronized to search keywords. Includes pop-ups browser toolbars and rich media.
HTML heading and subheading tags
are critical components of search engine marketing, as often times both are graphical, thereby unreadable to search engine spiders. Optimally, page titles should also be included to clearly define the page's purpose and theme. All of the header tags should be used according to their relevance, with more prominent titles utilizing <h1>, subheaders using <h2>, and so on.
HTML HyperText Markup Language, the programming language used in Web sites. Developers use other languages that can be read and understood by HTML to expand what they can do on the Web.
Hyperlink Often blue and underlined, hyperlinks, commonly called "links" for short, allow you to navigate to other pages on the Web with a simple click of your mouse. This hyperlink takes you to a page with more information about Direct Online Marketing™'s free consultations.
Image Maps Clickable regions on images that make links more visually appealing and Web sites more interesting. Image maps enable spiders to "read" this material.
Impressions The number of times someone views a page displaying your ad. Note that this is not the same as actually seeing your ad, making placement and an understanding of the site's traffic particularly important when paying on a Cost per 1,000 Impressions basis.
Inbound or Incoming Links See Backlinks
Index The collection of information a search engine has that searchers can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the Web pages they have found from crawling the Web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all the Web sites that have been categorized.
Internet Marketing Any of a number of ways to reach internet users, including Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Banner advertising. Direct Online Marketing™ specializes in these internet marketing services.
Interstitial An ad that appears between two pages a person is trying to view. The ad often appears near a hyperlink allowing someone to quit viewing your ad and go directly to the page he or she originally tried to access. Direct Online Marketing™ typically does not employ this type of advertisement as part of its internet marketing services.
Keyword Almost interchangeable with Search Term, keywords are words or a group of words that a person may search for in a Search Engine. Keywords also refer to the terms you bid on through search engine marketing in trying to attract visitors to your Web site or Landing Page. Part of successful Search Engine Optimization is including keywords in your Web site copy and Meta Tags.
Keyword Stuffing – When the Web was young and search engines were strating to gain in popularity, some smart Web site owners realized that the search engine Algorithms really liked some Meta Tags. Really liked them. So they started stuffing a bunch of keywords, often with high search volumes and no relevancy to the site, into title, description, and keyword tags. Sites instantly rocketed to great SERPs. Soon thereafter the search engines changed their ranking formulae and the sites lost their positions or were outright Banned.
Keyword Tags HTML tags which define the keywords used on Web pages. Meta keyword tags are sometimes useful in reinforcing the terms deemed most important for a specific page. Not all search engine crawlers support Meta keyword tags.
Landing Page The first page a person sees when coming to your Web site from an advertisement. This page can be any page on your Web site including your home page. Almost anytime you direct someone to your Web site from an advertisement, you should send them to a specialized landing page with tailored information to increase your landing page conversion rate. Radio advertisements are a notable exception as spelling out specific URL's can be time consuming and difficult to remember. Direct Online Marketing™ has extensive experience in creating, testing, and modifying landing page conversion rates to give your business the highest quality, least expensive, most cost effective leads possible.
Link Building – The process of obtaining hyperlinks (links) from Web sites back to yours. Link building is a crucial part of Search Engine Optimization.
Link Popularity How many Web sites link to yours, how popular those linking sites are, and how much their content relates to yours. Link popularity is an important part of Search Engine Optimization, which also values the sites that you link out to.
Local Search - A huge and growing portion of the search engine marketing industry. Local search allows users to find businesses and Web sites within a specific (local) geographic range. This includes local search features on search engines and online yellow page sites. Optimizing for local search requires different practices than for traditional Search Engine Optimization.
Local Business Listings - Each of the major search engines offer local business listings that appear next to maps at the top of the page on many locally targeted searches. Business may either submit new requests or claim existing local business listings if the search engines have already added the company to the results. Having a Web site is not required for having a local business listing.
Long Tail Keywords - Rather than targeting the most common keywords in your industry, you can focus on more niche terms that are usually longer phrases but are also easier and quicker to rank for in the search engines. Long tail keywords can amount for up to 60% or so of a site's search traffic.
Meta Search Engine A search engine that gets listings from two or more other search engines rather than crawling the Web itself.
Meta Tags (see also keyword tags, description tags etc.) Meta tags allow you to highlight important Keywords related to your site in a way that matters to Search Engines, but that your Web site visitors typically do not see. Meta tags have risen and fallen in terms of valuation by internet marketers and search engines alike (see Keyword Stuffing), but they still play an important role in Search Engine Optimization. Examples of meta tags include Header Tags and Alt Tags.
Mobile Marketing As cell phone technology advances, advertisers can not reach their target audience virtually anywhere. While mobile marketing is really just an extension of online marketing, it provides businesses many new opportunities and challenges. How does your Web site look on your Blackberry or Treo?
Natural Listings - Also referred to as "organic results", the non-advertised listings in Search Engines. Some search engines may charge a fee to be included in their natural listings, although most are free. How high or low your Web site is ranked depends on many factors, two of the most important being content relevance and Link Popularity .
Opt-in This type of registration requires a person submitting information to specifically request he or she be contacted or added to a list. Opt-ins typically lower lead flow rates and raise Costs per Acquisition from internet marketing campaigns, but may produce higher percentages of interested leads.
Opt-out Here people are automatically signed up to receive contact, but can opt out of receiving newsletters, calls, etc. at any time.
Organic Listings –See Natural Listings.
Outbound Links Links on any Web page leading to another Web page, whether they are within the same site or another Web site.
Paid Inclusion Advertising program where pages are guaranteed to be included in a search engine's index in exchange for payment, though no guarantee of ranking well is typically given. For example, Looksmart is a directory that lists pages and sites, not based on position but based on relevance. Marketers pay to be included in the directory, on a CPC basis or a per-URL fee basis, with no guarantee of specific placement.
Paid Listings Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic (natural) listings are not sold.
Paid Placement See Paid Search below.
Paid Search –Also referred to as Paid Placement, Pay Per Click, and sometimes Search Engine Marketing, paid search marketing allows advertisers to pay to be listed within the Search Engine Results Pages for specific keywords or phrases. Paid placement listings can be purchased from a portal or a search network. Search networks are often set up in an auction environment where keywords and phrases are often associated with a cost-per-click (CPC) fee. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the largest networks, but Microsoft adCenter (live.com) and other sites also sell paid placement listings directly as well.
A good search engine marketing company offering Paid Search will select an exhaustive set of industry-related Search Terms, set up your accounts, write advertising copy, create Landing Pages, control your bidding (how much you're willing to pay per Search Term click) and budgeting, and test and refine your advertising for effectiveness.
Pay-for-Performance Term popularized by search engines as a synonym for pay-per-click, stressing to advertisers that they are only paying for ads that 'perform' in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM-based ads, which cost money, even if they don't generate a click.
Pay per Click (PPC) See Cost per Click (CPC), above. The most common type of search engine advertising cost structure is PPC search engine marketing. Google, Yahoo, MSN, and many more search engines all use PPC.
Permission Marketing Along the lines of Opt-in registrations, permission marketing focuses on receiving the consent of users before being contacted or, in some cases, even seeing an advertisement. Permission marketing is centered around the concept that people are increasingly tuning out the barrage of advertisements they see each day. Its focal tenet is that a business will have a better chance of gaining a client when the client first gives permission to be sent an ad or contacted. Search engine marketing by its nature can be thought of as a type of permission marketing showing advertisements to people already searching for that information as long as the ad is relevant to what they are searching.
Pop-Under An advertisement that opens in a new Web Browser window once you visit a particular page or take some other action. Considered less annoying than Pop-Up ads because the new window appears behind the existing one.
Pop-Up An extremely abused type of online marketing advertisement, pop-ups open new windows on your screen that partially or wholly cover your current Web Browser window. Some search engines ban ads that create a certain number (or even any) pop-up ads. Direct Online Marketing™ does not include pop-ups or pop-unders as part of its internet marketing services.
Press Optimization – The optimizing of press releases for search engines. This process has many similarities to Search Engine Optimization, although it focuses much more on Keyword use in content creation in regards to how press releases are often picked up by Blogs and other forms of new media.
Rank How well a particular Web page or Web site is listed in the Search Engine's Results. For example, a Web page about apples may be listed in response to a query for "apples." However, "rank" indicates where exactly it was listed - be it on the first page of results, the second page or perhaps the 200th page. Alternatively, it might also be said to be ranked first among all the results, or 12th, or 111th. Overall, saying a page is "listed" only means that it can be found within a search engine in response to a query, not that it necessarily ranks well for that query. Also known as position.
Reciprocal Link A link exchange between two sites. Both sites will display a link to the other site somewhere on their pages. This type of link is generally much less desirable than a one-way inbound link.
Results Page Also referred to as a Search Engine Results Page.
Rich Media Web advertisements or pages that are more animated and/or interactive than static Banners or pages.
Real Simple Syndication (RSS) An increasingly popular new technology that allows information to be easily shared on Web sites or given directly to users per their request. Click here for a feed to the Official Direct Online Marketing™ Blog. RSS feeds create new online advertising opportunities, although marketers are still debating how best to use them.
Return on Investment (ROI) The key statistic for many companies: are your advertisements generating profits, and how much profit given the money you have had to pay. Direct Online Marketing™ always has its eye on ROI for all partners
and you should, too!
Robot or Bot See Crawler.
Robots.txt A file used to keep Web pages from being indexed or to tell which pages you want a search engine to index.
Run of Site (ROS) A contract specifying Run of Site means that a Banner or other type of online advertisement can appear on any page, and usually in any open placement, of a particular Web site.
Scraping – The process of copying content from one Web property and using it on another. In other words, stealing. Scraping technologies have evolved because of the needs for content and to stay ahead of legitimate content creators trying to protect what they've written. Some companies offer content monitoring to help protect against scraping.
Search Engines Search engines are places people go to search for things on the internet, such as Yahoo!, Google, or MSN Search. Most search engines provide Web sites two ways of appearing: Natural (free) and Paid. Natural Listings, also referred to as organic listings, appear based on the search engines' own formulae. You can't pay to have your site listed higher (although some search engines require that you pay to be included in the Natural listings), but you can perform Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Paid Listings usually appear above or to the side of Natural listings and are typically identifiable as advertisements. The most common cost for advertising on Paid listings through Paid Search is Pay per Click (PPC).
Search Engine Marketing All forms of marketing involving search engines - chiefly Search Engine Optimization and Paid Search Marketing. Sometimes this term will also be used to refer to Paid Search exclusively.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) A fancy way of saying making your site search engine friendly. Search engine optimization is typically difficult to do on your own, especially given the increasing complexity and differences among all the search engines. Two important factors that rank highly in all major search engines are Link Popularity (how many Web sites and how highly ranked those sites are link to you) and relevant content (how pertinent information on your Web site or a particular Web page is to a search).
Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) – Think of Search Engine Reputation Management as online spin control. SERM allows a person or organization better positioning through strategy involving Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Marketing, Press Optimization, Blogging, and Social Media. The most important part of SERM is starting early - before a crisis.
Search Engine Results Page Search Engine Results Pages, or SERPs, are the Web pages displayed by any Search Engine for any given search. They display both Natural (organic) Listings and Pay-Per-Click ads. How high you are listed and where your ad is shown depends on Search Engine Optimization; and paid Search Engine Marketing respectively.
Search Terms A search term is a word or group of words that a person types into a Search Engine to find what they are looking for. Based upon what a company sells, a Web site should incorporate the most popular or most popular specific search terms into the copy as Keywords. Figuring out the appropriate search terms to put into a Web site and to advertise on is a huge part of a Search Engine Marketer's job.
SEM Acronym for search engine marketing and may also be used to refer to a person or company that does Search Engine Marketing - either Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, or both.
SEO Acronym for Search Engine Optimization and may also be used to refer to a person or company that does search engine optimization.
Social Media - A type of online media where information is uploaded primarily through user submission. Web surfers are no longer simply consumers of content, but active content publishers. Many different forms of social media exist including more established formats like Forum and Blogs, and newer formats like Wikis, podcasts, Social Networking, image and video sharing, and virtual reality.
Social Networking A type of Social Media, Social networking Web sites allow users to interact and create or change content on the site. These sites, of which businesses are now using for marketing purposes, allow users to create their own Web sites / online spheres (e.g. MySpace, LinkedIn, and facebook), share photographs (e.g. Flickr), microblog / text small bits of information to their personal community (e.g. twitter) or recommend information for others to find on the Internet (e.g. del.icio.us and Digg). The sites in this last grouping are also referred to as social bookmarking or social news sites.
Spam Can refer to unwanted data sent via email or put on a Web site to game a search engine. You're probably aware of spam in the classic email sense and hopefully also aware of the strict standards and penalties associated with the CAN-SPAM Act. Spam to a search engine is Web content that the search engine deems to be detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant, quality search results. Some search engines have written guidelines about what they consider to be spamming, but ultimately any activity a search engine deems harmful may be considered spam, whether or not there are published guidelines against. Examples of spam include the creation of nonsensical doorway pages designed to pleased search engine algorithms rather than human visitors, or heavy repetition of search terms within a page (i.e., the search terms are used tens or hundreds of times in a row). Spam derives its name from a popular Monty Python skit.
Spider - A noun and a verb, Search Engines have spiders crawl through all the linked pages of a Web site to gather information to include the site in their Natural Listings and also use to determine their ranking on various Search Terms.
Stickiness - How often people return to a Web site. Constant updates, news feeds, and exclusive content are all ways to make a site stickier.
Submission The act of submitting a URL for inclusion into a search engine's index. Unless done through paid inclusion, submission generally does not guarantee listing. In addition, submission does not help with rank improvement on crawler-based search engines unless search engine optimization efforts have been undertaken. Submission can be done manually (i.e., you can fill out an online form and submit) or automated, where a software program or online service may process the forms behind the scenes.
Targeting - Shaping internet marketing campaigns to attract certain specific groups of prospective clients. Examples of Targeting include women, gun owners, and Medicare recipients. Behavioral Targeting is a newer, specific type of focus for advertisers.
Text Ad - An online advertisement that contains only written copy. Paid listings found on the results pages of the main Search Engines are currently Text Ads, although this is starting to change. Soon you should expect to see video ads pop up here occasionally.
Tracking Code - Information typically included in the URL that allows an advertiser to track the effectiveness of various aspects of an advertisement. Commonly tracked items include Search Term and referring Search Engine. Direct Online Marketing™ relies heavily on tracking code because tracking results is the only way to determine how effective our internet marketing services are.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator. These are the letters and symbols that make up the address of specific Web pages. This page's URL is http://www.directom.com/online-marketing/internet-marketing.php.
Unique Value Proposition (UVP) - In essence, what it is that sets your product, service, or company apart from others and why potential clients should care enough to choose you.
Universal Search - The placement of multiple types of results within a general search so that a user receives images, videos, local search results, news articles, and more next to general Web pages. Also called blended search.
Usability - How easy it is for a user to navigate a Web site and find the information he or she is seeking.
Viral Marketing A newer method of internet marketing that attempts to make advertisements so interesting that viewers will pass them along to others free of charge to the advertisers.
Web 2.0 A trendy buzzword for the internet marketing services industry, but also a legitimate idea and movement: the internet as a platform. Wikis, MySpace, and user-edited search all operate under this premise.
Web Browser The program you use to access the internet. Common browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), Apple's Safari, and Mozilla Firefox.
Webinar - "Web Seminar". These virtual seminars allow people from anywhere in the world to attend via an internet connection. They offer tremendous opportunities for businesses to reach out to people over large geographic areas at low costs.
Web Metrics - See Analytics.
White Hat SEO - Used to describe certain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods, being "white hat" means using only SEO techniques that are completely above board and accepted by the Search Engines. Doing the opposite (Black Hat) can lead to your Web site seeing its rankings drop drastically - or being banned altogether - even if the search engine optimization tactics aren't currently banned by search engines.
Wiki A user-written, -controlled, and edited site. Anyone with web access can change information appearing on Wikis, which can be about broad or specific topics. Wikis are becoming increasingly popular Web sites as people search for quality and (hopefully) unbiased information. The best known example is Wikipedia.
XML – Extensible Markup Language. Content developers use this language with a variety of forms of content, including text, audio, and visual in order to allow users to define their own elements and pull the data at their pace. XML has played a huge part in the transformation of the Web towards Web 2.0.
Last updated December 11, 2009.
This internet marketing term glossary, like all other information on this Web site, is copyrighted. You may link to it from any site. If you would like to place these terms onto your site, you must receive express written approval. Contact us to learn more.
|
