Internet Marketing - Terms Explained

Below is a selection most used Internet Marketing terms. Please Get In Touch with any comments.

A-B Split Testing - The process where two ads are tested against each other to compare results. After a test period the ad with the highest CPC is usually chosen for PPC purposes. It is crucial to fine tune your ads and constantly perform tests during your internet marketing PPC campaigns to maintain your CTR and also your creditability with the search engines.

Affiliate - Often used to describe a website or internet marketing campaign that drives traffic to another website in exchange for a percentage of any sales proceeds generated from the 'driven traffic'.

Anchor Text - This is the practice of using actual keywords in your hyper-links as opposed to unrelated text or graphics.

Auto Bidding - A facility where your bids for a particular keyword phrase are adjusted to be 1 cent more than any competition.

Backlink - A link found on another website that points back to your own site.

Bid Gap - In PPC, this is the difference in bid prices between two subsequent ads for the same keyword phrase.

Blog - A shortened term for a Web Log. An often overlooked tool in Internet marketing. Basically, a Blog is a website where entries are written and displayed in chronological order. Blogs are used to provide regular updates on a particular subject. Many people of the internet use blogs as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The interactive format of a blog is excellent for internet marketing as the search engines love regularly updated content.

Broad Match - This phrase was originally a Google term, but now is used commonly to refer to the results from a keyword search PPC. e.g. If a user searches for mlm leads and your PPC ad is set up as broad match (ie. mlm leads with no quotes or delimiters around it), the user will see the results that include not just mlm leads but those for any phrase containing the keywords mlm and leads. See also Phrase Match and Exact Match.

Click Fraud - This is were there is consistent deliberate clicking on a PPC advert with no intention of investigating or purchasing the product being offered, but with the sole intention of reducing the PPC advertiser's account balance. Not really relevant to internet marketing.

CPC (Cost Per Click) - The amount (you can set the currency used in your PPC campaigns) you pay for each ad that is clicked on by a 'surfer'. A crucial factor in your Internet Marketing success.

CTR (Click-through Rate) - The percentage of your ads displayed that get clicked on in a PPC ad campaign ie. The number of clicks your ad receives divided by the total number of impressions. The higher your CTR, the more relevant and useful Google will regard your ad. They will therefore advertise it more and place it in higher positions for you automatically WITHOUT any extra cost.

Contextual Ads - Advertising that is geared towards content. To catch the interest of a reader of the web page, your product or service must be highly related to the content that the searcher is looking for. This ads are usually found in content rich sights such as information sites, news sites etc.

Conversion Rate - The percentage of visitors to your website that become buyers/subscribers. The percentage = (Number of buyers/Number of click throughs)*100

CPM - A term used in PPC which is the cost for 1,000 impressions (view exposures) of your ad. on the internet.

Downline - A multilevel marketing term. The distributors recruited by a given distributor who receives commissions on their sales and the sales of the distributors they recruit.

Exact Match - A Google term which describes how you want a keyword search to be performed. An exact match is specified by the use of delimiters e.g. [mlm leads]. In a PPC campaign the only searches that would be exposed to your ad would be those who typed in exactly mlm leads into their search bar, no other phrase or combination of words.

Fixed Bid - This is where you specify an exact price (in your PPC campaign) at which you are willing to pay for a specific keyword (or keyword phrase) to generate an ad display. Other 'settings' of bid prices include auto and manually-adjusted bidding.

Gateway Page - See Landing Page

Geo-Targeting - A option on Google adwords (and many others) where you can specify certain countries that you wish your PPC ads to be displayed in, and no others.

Hits - The number of times a website is visited.

Internet Marketing - The means of promoting your online or off-line business by using the tools of the internet to attract more traffic and customers.

Impressions - This is when an ad is viewed in a user's browser (whether or not they actually click on the ad).

Keyword - What the user enters into the search box of a search engine when looking for a website or some information. As an online marketer it is your business to 'target' the keywords that people are searching for in your 'niche' business. This is the principle behind SEO and PPC.

Keyword Bid - The is the maximum cost that you are prepared to pay for a click on your ad in PPC.

Keyword Matching - The term for how your ad campaign should decide when to display your ad. The 3 terms, Broad, Phrase and Exact Match explain this.

Landing Page - This is usually (and ideally!) a single-paged website that you send your searchers to when they click your ad in your PPC campaigns. The purpose of the Landing page is usually to collect contact details from your searcher before providing them with the information that they are looking for. A decent efficient landing page is essential in Internet Marketing.

Link Exchange - This is where two website's agree to link to each other. This is effectively two 'Backlinks', one on each site.

Local Search - A facility where you can search for results by location. The 'depth' of locality varies from search engine to search engine, but it can go down to the level of zip or post code in some cases (see Geo-Targeting).

Minimum Bid - This is the minimum amount that is required by the PPC search engine for a specific keyword (or keyword phrase), or the minimum bid for any keyword (usually 1 cent).

Multilevel marketing (MLM) - Any marketing program in which participants purchase the right to recruit additional participants, sell products or services, and be compensated for the sales by people they recruit as well as for their own sales. This website is aimed at helping you to promote your MLM business via Internet Marketing.

Negative Keywords - A crucial part of your PPC campaign ! This stops the appearance of your ad if the search phrase entered includes any of your specified keywords. e.g. if you are offering a service to sell mlm leads, you may want to set the word free as a negative keyword as that searcher is not going to buy from you. Note: Having an ad displayed an not clicked on reduces your CTR, which can be harmful to your campaign's success. A CTR of at least 1.5% should be maintained in your PPC if possible.

Network marketing - Term that MLM companies prefer to describe themselves to avoid any confusion with a pyramid scheme.

On/Off-Page Optimizarion - These are the two main categories of SEO. Both are very important aspects of your internet marketing. On-Page SEO includes changes and additions made directly to a web-page in an attempt to achieve better ranking with the search engines (including your title, body text, anchor text links etc.). Off-Page SEO is where you improve your rankings with the search engines by doing things not on your website but providing in-bound links, directory listing etc.

Organic Listings - These are a set of regular results which show up on the user's browser when a particular keyword phrase is searched for. These can include links to pages on a website that has been submitted to the search engines or that the engine's spider has 'crawled'.

Page Views - The number of times that a website page has been viewed!

Paid Inclusion - Offered by a number of search engines, where the advertising website pays the search engine to ensure a ranking in that engine's search results - a last resort if your Internet Marketing is not working !

PPC (Pay-Per-Click Advertising) - An internet marketing method where you set up an advertising campaign with a search engine, where you specify a range of keyword phrases that you wish to target and display your ads on a user's browwer when they search for what you are advertising. (see Pay Per Click pages)

PPCSE - Pay-Per-Click Search Engine, the search engine that offers the PPC advertising facility.

Phrase Match - A Google keyword strategy that produces search results that only include your keyword phrase (set in your PPC) in the same order that you specified e.g. if you set "mlm leads" as a Phrase match keyword phrase, the search engine will display your ad if the user searches for buy mlm leads, yet it will not if they were to search for leads mlm buy.

Relevance - The degree to which a search result or a PPC ad matches the search phrase entered by the user. Relevance is an essential part of a PPC campaign not only for your visitors, but also for the search engines, who are becoming more and more intelligent at 'reading' relevance.

ROI (Return On Investment) - The bottom line. This is the amount of money that you make, compared to the amount of money that you invested. Remember, when working this out that your time is money, so factor that in when analysing your business).

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) - Definition:A family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

An analogy that makes sense is: "Imagine a Blog as a Newspaper and it gets delivered regularly to its recipients... RSS is the Paper Boy !! Once you register with an RSS you get that RSS feed from your 'paper boy' every time there is an update ... simple BUT EFFECTIVE ! !

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - A range of activites you perform on the internet to increase the ranking of your website with the search engines. This includes not only advertising, but also projects such as blogging, article posting, press reports etc.

SEO (Search Engline Optimisation) - Various techniques used in internet marketing where you change the content, keywords, meta tags, headers etc. of your website in order to enhance your search rankings.

Upline - A multilevel marketing term. Distributors who are above a given distributor in the MLM hierarchy and who receive commissions (overrides) from that distributor's sales. An immediate upline distributor is known as a 'sponsor'.

Web Log Also known as a Blog
A Blog can be generated by a website entry or in a Social Networking site it is often used as a diary service which is updated regularly in chronological order.

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