SEO & SEM Terminology
Confused with the amount of acronyms and terminology used in search marketing? Brush up on your knowledge on some commonly used terms with out list below.
- AdSense - Google advertising platform for publishers (website owners) who earn money per click for allowing advertising on their websites. The ads come from the Google Adwords platform.
- AdWords - Google advertising platform for advertisers who pay per click to show advertisements on the Google search network and/or the AdSense publishers network (known as the content network).
- Backlink - A link pointing to your site from an external site.
- Black Hat - SEO and SEM techniques that are frowned upon by the majority of the search community including the search engines. Black hat strategies often attempt to deceive the users and search engines in order to gain an unfair advantage in search engine rankings.
- Click Through Rate (CTR%) - A percentage figure usually used in the paid search sector to measure the success of a particular advertising creative. CTR for ad creatives are compared to determine which ad will lead to the most clicks, however the ad with the highest CTR may not always have the best conversion rate.
- Cloaking - Differentiating between search engines and real users and providing different content to each. A Black Hat technique used to show search engine spiders keyword stuffed pages to manipulate search engine rankings but show real users the real page.
- Conversion Rate - A statistical figure (typically a percentage) which measures the amount of people that carry out an action on a page or website. Conversion rates can be calculated on various levels such as page level, keyword level, site level etc. A simple example of a conversion would be a sale of a product, thus if 100 people visit a page and 10 people purchase a product then the conversion rate is 10%.
- Grey Hat - SEO and SEM techniques that are borderline Black Hat but have more of an even divide of experts for and against the techniques.
- Inbound Link - A link from an external website to your website.
- IP Delivery - Customising content shown to visitors depending on their location which is determined by their IP address. Typically used for international sites that have region specific information to serve such as local contact details.
- Keyword Density - The frequency of a keyword on a page, expressed as a percentage of the total number of words on that page.
- One Way Link - A link where the site receiving the link does not link back to the site providing the link.
- Outbound Link - A link from your website to an external website.
- Page Rank - A Google indicator used to measure the importance of a page.
- Reciprocal Link - A type of link where two sites link to each other.
- Redirect - Typically used when a website has changed domain names or a page has changed location. The user is automatically redirected to the new page. When implemented correctly, all the link value from the previous URL is passed onto the new URL.
- Sitemap - A HTML page or XML document that is used to provide a list of all the pages of a website which can assist search engines in discovering all the pages of your website.
- Viral Marketing - Content which encourages people to send to their friends and work colleagues. Usually material that is either funny, unique, or has shock value are great candidates for a viral marketing campaign.
- Viral Traffic - Traffic that comes to a website as a result of users forwarding viral marketing material, typically through e-mail or social networking sites.
- White Hat - SEO and SEM techniques that are accepted as ethical and legitimate by the search community and search engines.