|
Google's advertisement and link auction network.
Most of Google's ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost per click basis in an auction which factors in ad clickthrough rate as well as max bid.
AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing programs allows merchants to expand their market reach and mindshare by paying independent agents on a cost per action (CPA) basis. Affiliates only get paid if visitors complete an action.
Typically niche affiliate sites make more per unit effort than overtly broad ones because they are easier to focus (and thus have a higher conversion rate).
Analytics:
Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpreting your log files or through including a JavaScript tracking code in each page of your website.
Ad networks are a game of margins. Marketers who track user action will have a distinct advantage over those who do not.
Blog:
A periodically updated journal, typically formatted in reverse chronological order. Many blogs not only archive and categorize information, but also provide a feed and allow simple user interaction like leaving comments on the posts. Blogs can be professional or personal in nature and work amazingly well in a business sense.
Boolean Search:
Many search engines allow you to perform searches that contain mathematical formulas such as AND, OR, or NOT. By default most search engines include AND with your query, requiring results to be relevant for all the words in your query.
Brand:
The emotional response associated with your company and/or products.
A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher margin value based pricing.
Branded Keywords:
Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically branded keywords occur late in the buying cycle, and are some of the highest value and highest converting keywords.
Some affiliate marketing programs prevent affiliates from bidding on the core brand related keywords, while others actively encourage it. Either way can work depending on your business model and marketing savvy, but it is important to ensure there is synergy between internal marketing and affiliate marketing programs.
Buying Cycle:
Before making large purchases consumers typically research what brands and products fit their needs and wants. Keyword based search marketing allows you to reach consumers at any point in the buying cycle. In many markets branded keywords tend to have high search volumes and high conversion rates.
The buying cycle may consist of the following stages
- Problem Discovery: prospect discovers a need or want.
- Search: after discovering a problem look for ways to solve the need or want. These searches may contain words which revolve around the core problem the prospect is trying to solve or words associated with their identity.
- Evaluate: may do comparison searches to compare different models, and also search for negative information like product sucks, etc.
- Decide: look for information which reinforces your view of product or service you decided upon
- Purchase: may search for shipping related information or other price related searches. purchases may also occur offline
- Reevaluate: some people leave feedback on their purchases. If a person is enthusiastic about your brand they may cut your marketing costs by providing free highly trusted word of mouth marketing.
Cache:
Copy of a web page stored by a search engine. When you search the web you are not actively searching the whole web, but are searching files in the search engine index.
Some search engines provide links to cached versions of pages in their search results, and allow you to strip some of the formatting from cached copies of pages.
CMS:
Content Management System. The CMS software (CMS Websites) provides authoring (and other) tools designed to allow users with little or no knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease of use. Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, and/or artifacts that might be needed by the system.
Conversion:
Many forms of online advertising are easy to track. A conversion is reached when a desired goal is completed.
Most offline ads are generally much harder to track than online ads. This can be achieved by a custom phone number or coupon code to tie offline activity to online marketing.
Here are a few common example desired goals
- a product sale
- completing a lead form
- a phone call
- capturing an email
- filling out a survey
- getting a person to pay attention to you
- getting feedback
- having a site visitor share your website with a friend
- having a site visitor link at your site
Copyright:
The legal rights to publish and reproduce a particular piece of work.
CPA:
Cost per action. The effectiveness of many other forms of online advertising have their effectiveness measured on a cost per action basis. Many affiliate marketing programs and contextual ads are structured on a cost per action basis. An action may be anything from an ad click, to filling out a lead form, to buying a product.
CPC:
Cost per click. Many search ads and contextually targeted ads are sold in auctions where the advertiser is charged a certain price per click.
See also:
- Google AdWords - Google's pay per click ad program which allows you to buy search and contextual ads.
- Google AdSense - Google's contextual ad program.
- Microsoft AdCenter - Microsoft's pay per click ad platform.
CPM:
Cost per thousand ad impressions.
Many people use CPM as a measure of how profitable a website is or has the potential of becoming.
Demographics:
Statistical data or characteristics which define segments of a population.
Mailout / Delivery programmes and some internet marketing platforms, such as AdCenter and AdWords, allow you to target ads at websites or searchers who fit amongst a specific demographic. Some common demographic data points are gender, age, income, education, location, etc.
The best marketing plans will include demographically targeted advertising programes, providing a far better ROI (Return on Investment)
Flash:
Flash Animations
Vector graphics-based animation software which makes it easier to make websites look rich and interactive in nature.
Search engines tend to struggle indexing and ranking websites that are built purely out of flash because flash typically contains so little relevant content.
Design Firm Pty Ltd have mastered the means of using flash for rich and interactive websites, in a way that will not limit search engine optimisation / optimization or rankings, a rare industry skill.
Fresh Content:
Content which is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website.
We often talk up fresh content, this does not mean re-editing old content. It more often refers to creating new content. The primary advantages to fresh content are:
- Maintain and grow mindshare: If you keep giving people a reason to pay attention to you more and more people will pay attention to you, and link to your site.
- Faster idea spreading: If many people pay attention to your site, when you come out with good ideas they will spread quickly.
- Growing archives: If you are a content producer then owning more content means you have more chances to rank. If you keep building additional fresh content eventually that gives you a large catalog of relevant content.
- Frequent crawling: Frequently updated websites are more likely to be crawled frequently by search engines (thus increasing your website rankings).
FTP:
File Transfer Protocol is a protocol for transferring data between computers and / or servers that host websites. Design Firm uses FTP programs for launching, updating and editing clients websites. Although our CMS Websites (Content Management System Websites) include FTP capabilities.
Google:
The world's leading search engine in terms of reach. Google pioneered search by analyzing linkage data via PageRank. Google was created by Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
GoogleBot:
Google's search engine spider.
Google has a shared crawl cache between their various spiders, including vertical search spiders and spiders associated with ad targeting.
HITS:
Link based algorithm which ranks relevancy scores based on citations from topical authorities.
HTML:
HyperText Markup Language is the language in which pages on the World Wide Web are written / created.
Information Architecture:
Designing, categorizing, organizing, and structuring content in a useful and meaningful way.
Good information architecture considers both how humans and search spiders access a website.
Information architecture suggestions:
- focus each page on a specific topic
- use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions which describe the content of the page
- use clean (few or no variables) descriptive file names and folder names
- use headings to help break up text and semantically structure a document
- use breadcrumb navigation to show page relationships
- use descriptive link anchor text
- link to related information from within the content area of your web pages
- improve conversion rates by making it easy for people to take desired actions
- avoid feeding search engines duplicate or near-duplicate content
IP Address:
Internet Protocol Address. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. Some websites and servers have unique IP addresses, but most web hosts host multiple websites on a single host.
ISP:
Internet Service Providers sell end users access to the web. Some of these companies also sell usage data to web analytics companies.
JavaScript:
A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features.
Keyword:
A word or phrase which implies a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for.
Long tail and brand related keywords are typically worth more than shorter and vague keywords because they typically occur later in the buying cycle and are associated with a greater level of implied intent.
Keyword Density:
A measure of search engine relevancy based on how prominent keywords appeared within the content of a page.
Keyword Funnel:
The relationship between various related keywords that searchers search for. Some searches are particularly well aligned with others due to spelling errors, poor search relevancy, density, and automated or manual query refinement.
Keyword Research:
The process of discovering relevant keywords and keyword phrases to focus your SEO and PPC marketing campaigns on.
Landing Page:
The page on which a visitor arrives after clicking on a link or advertisement.
Link:
A citation from one web document to another web document or another position in the same document.
Link Building:
The process of building high quality linkage data that search engines will evaluate to trust your website is authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy.
A few general link building tips:
- build conceptually unique linkworthy high quality content
- create viral marketing ideas that want to spread and make people talk about you
- mix your anchor text
- get deep links
- try to build at least a few quality links before actively obtaining any low quality links
- register your site in relevant high quality directories such as DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
- when possible try to focus your efforts mainly on getting high quality editorial links
- try to get bloggers to mention you on their blogs
- It takes a while to catch up with the competition, but if you work at it long enough and hard enough eventually you can enjoy a self-reinforcing market position
Link Equity:
A measure of how strong a site is based on its inbound link popularity and the authority of the sites providing those links.
Link Popularity:
The number of links pointing at a website.
Link Reputation:
The combination of your link equity and anchor text.
Meta Description:
The meta description tag is typically a sentence or two of content which describes the content of the page.
A good meta description tag should:
- be relevant and unique to the page;
- reinforce the page title; and
- focus on including offers and secondary keywords and phrases to help add context to the page title.
- Relevant meta description tags may appear in search results as part of the page description below the page title.
The code for a meta description tag looks like this
Meta Keywords:
The meta keywords tag is a tag which can be used to highlight keywords and keyword phrases which the page is targeting.
The code for a meta keyword tag looks like this
Meta Tags:
A Meta Tag is the combination of the page title, meta descriptions and meta keywords.
Niche:
A topic or subject which a business or website is focused on.
Organic Search Results:
Most major search engines have results that consist of paid ads and unpaid listings. The unpaid / algorithmic listings are called the organic search results. Organic search results are organized by relevancy, which is largely determined based on linkage data, page content, usage data, and historical domain and trust related data.
Most clicks on search results are on the organic search results. Some studies have shown that 60 to 80% + of clicks are on the organic search results.
Outbound Link:
A link from one website pointing at another external website.
PDF:
Portable Document Format is a universal file format developed by Adobe Systems that allows files to be stored and viewed in the original printer friendly context.
Redirect:
A method of alerting browsers and search engines that a page location moved. 301 redirects are for permanent change of location and 302 redirects are used for a temporary change of location.
Relevancy:
A measure of how useful searchers find search results.
Many search engines may also bias organic search results to informational resources since commercial ads also show in the search results.
Reputation Management:
Ensuring your brand related keywords display results which reinforce your brand.
Resubmission:
Resubmitting a Website to a variety of Search Engines
ROI:
Return on Investment is a measure of how much return you receive from each marketing dollar.
Search Engine:
A tool or device used to find relevant information. Search engines consist of a spider, index, relevancy algorithms and search results.
SEM:
Search Engine Marketing. This is commonly referred to as Advertising on Search Engines.
SEO:
Search engine optimisation / optimization is the art and science of publishing information and marketing it in a manner that helps search engines understand your information is relevant to relevant search queries.
SEO consists largely of keyword research, SEO copywriting, information architecture, link building, brand building, building mindshare, reputation management, and viral marketing.
SEO Copywriting:
Writing and formatting copy in a way that will help make the documents appear relevant to a wide array of relevant search queries.
Search Marketing:
Marketing a website in search engines. Typically via SEO, buying pay per click ads, and paid inclusion.
Social Media:
Websites which allow users to create the valuable content. A few examples of social media sites are social bookmarking sites and social news sites. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Flickr are all Social Networking sites, and Design Firm has a wealth of experience in running campaigns on each of these.
Spam:
Unsolicited email messages.
Search engines also like to outsource their relevancy issues by calling low quality search results spam. They have vague ever changing guidelines which determine what marketing techniques are acceptable at any given time. Typically search engines try hard not to flag false positives as spam, so most algorithms are quite lenient, as long as you do not build lots of low quality links, host large quantities of duplicate content, or perform other actions that are considered widely outside of relevancy guidelines. If your site is banned from a search engine you may request reinclusion after fixing the problem.
Spamming:
The act of creating and distributing spam.
Spider:
Other than a small (or large) furry arachnid with 8 legs, a Spider is also a Search engine crawler which searches or "spiders" the web for pages to include in the index.
Many non-traditional search companies have different spiders which perform other applications. For example, TurnItInBot searches for plagiarism. Spiders should obey the robots.txt protocol.
Splash Page:
Feature rich or elegantly designed beautiful web page which typically then follows on to a HTML content rich website, as splash pages (most frequently designed in Flash) are low on the search quality. Implemented in conjunction with a HTML content rich website, Splash pages can have a high user rating effect that entices customers to proceed into the main website.
Static Content:
Content which does not change frequently. May also refer to content that does not have any social elements to it and does not use dynamic programming languages.
Many static sites do well, but the reasons fresh content works great for SEO are:
- If you keep building content every day you eventually build a huge archive of content
- By frequently updating your content you keep building mindshare, brand equity, and give people fresh content worth linking at
Submission:
The act of making search engines, information systems and related websites aware of your websites existance.
Term Frequency:
A measure of how frequently a keyword appears amongst a collection of documents.
Title:
The title element is used to describe the contents of a document. The title is one of the most important aspects to doing SEO on a web page.
Page titles appear in search results as the links searchers click on. In addition many people link to documents using the official document title as the link anchor text. Thus, by using a descriptive page title you are likely to gain descriptive anchor text and are more likely to have your listing clicked on.
TrustRank:
Search relevancy algorithm which places additional weighting on links from trusted seed websites that are controlled by major corporations, educational institutions, or governmental institutions.
Update - Search Engines
Search engines frequently update their algorithms and data sets to help keep their search results fresh and make their relevancy algorithms hard to update. Most major search engines are continuously updating both their relevancy algorithms and search index.
URL:
Uniform Resource Locator is the unique address of any web document.
Usability:
How easy it is for customers to perform the desired actions.
The structure and formatting of text and hyperlink based calls to action can drastically increase your website usability, and thus conversion rates.
Viral Marketing:
Self propagating marketing techniques. Common modes of transmission are email, blogging, and word of mouth marketing channels.
Many social news sites and social bookmarking sites also lead to secondary citations.
Wiki:
Software which allows information to be published using collaborative editing.
Wikipedia:
Free online collaborative encyclopedia using wiki software.
YouTube:
Feature rich amateur video upload and syndication website owned by Google. Highly popular for 'Social Media' advertising campaigns performed using a particular process rather than traditional advertisement productions.
|
