Glossary of internet marketing terms

Backlink: A link that points to your website. This is important because the major search engines rate the importance of your website by how many sites find it valuable enough to link to.
Bid: Pay-per-click advertising is based on an auction system. In general, the search engines such as Google and Yahoo give the best positions on the page to those advertisers who pay the most for each click.
If you are an advertiser, then for each keyword that is relevant to your campaign, you tell the search engine how much you are willing to pay for each click you get when your advert is shown for that keyword. Typically, advertisers offer to pay the most per click for the keywords that are used by the most people and that provide the highest ROI.
Click: A click occurs when a visitor clicks on a link that appears on a search engine results page or on a content page. The person may click on an organic search result, or the person may click on a "sponsored result" from the pay-per-click campaigns.
Clickthrough rate: When advertising on the web, this is the percentage of visitors who click on your advert to get to your website. It is usually calculated as the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
Content page: Some websites choose to display adverts on their pages in order to earn extra money from search engines. These content pages earn money whenever a visitor clicks on an advert that is displayed on the page. For example, a website that features product reviews may choose to display adverts provided by a search engine. A person reading a review of a camera, for example, may see on the same page some relevant adverts from websites selling cameras.
Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors to your website who take the action you want them to take—perhaps it's making a purchase, or perhaps it's contacting you for more information.
Cost per click (CPC): When advertising on the web, this is how much you are charged each time a visitor clicks on your advert.
Directory: This is a website list whose entries are compiled by and reviewed by human editors. Usually directories are organized by subject category. The DMOZ Open Directory Project is the largest human-edited directory on the web.
HTML: This is the most common format for representing web pages. HTML stands for "HyperText Markup Language".
Impression: When advertising on the web, this is an occurrence of your advert being sent to a user's browser. Because users do not always see every advert that their browsers display, the number of impressions your advert has doesn't necessarily correspond to the number of times someone has seen your advert. Depending on the advertising program you've signed up for, impressions can appear in the " sponsored links" section of a search results page, or they can appear on content pages of other websites in the advertising program's network that have agreed to show advertisements.
Keyword: This is a word or phrase that a person types into a search engine in order to find something. Keywords are the foundation of search engine marketing. Your pay-per-click campaigns are based on getting your adverts to appear for the keywords you think your target audience is most likely to use. In addition, your search engine optimisation efforts will ensure that your website features the most important keywords for your business.
Meta tag: This is HTML code designed to describe the website to web robots. The most commonly used Meta tags are for the web page's title, description and keywords.
Natural (also called "organic") search engine optimisation: This means getting a website's pages to rank higher in the non-sponsored search engine results. It involves improving the text and HTML code of the website so that search engines understand that the pages are indeed relevant and important for the desired keywords. It also involves improving the factors (such as inlinks) that exist outside the web pages but that affect the pages' rankings in the free search engine results pages.
Organic result: This is a type of search result that a search engine displays as a result of a user typing in a certain keyword. Organic results (also called "free" results) have not been paid for and appear purely because the search engine thinks the pages are most likely to be relevant to what the user is looking for. In contrast, paid results are links that appear in the "sponsored links" or "sponsored results" section. For those links, the advertisers will pay the search engines each time a person clicks on the link.
Paid result: This is a type of search engine result that appears in the "sponsored links" or "sponsored results" section of the page after a user has performed a search by typing a keyword into a search engine. Advertisers are paying for their links to appear in this section. Usually they pay the search engines on a Pay-per-click basis, but they may also pay on a Pay-per-impression basis.
Pay-per-click (PPC): The type of web advertisement in which you are charged each time a visitor reaches your site by clicking on your advert. PPC adverts appear in the "sponsored link" or "sponsored results" section of the search engine results page.
Pay-per-impression (PPM): The type of web advertisement in which you are charged based on the number of times your advert is displayed on search engine results pages or on certain content pages. PPM adverts appear in the "sponsored link" or "sponsored results" section of the search engine results page.
Return on ad spend (ROAS): In the context of PPC advertising, this tell you how much revenue resulted from each Euro, Pound, or Dollar you spent on PPC advertising. ROAS is calculated by dividing the revenue from the PPC adverts by the amount spent on PPC.
Return on investment (ROI): In general, this means how much benefit a particular investment gives you. In the context of pay-per-click advertising, ROI is calculated by dividing the profit from the PPC adverts by the amount spent on PPC. That tells you how much profit you get from each Euro, Pound, or Dollar of PPC advertising.
Robot: This is an automated program that visits web sites on behalf of search engines in order to fill and update their databases.
Search engine marketing (SEM): This is a general term for several activities related to increasing users' ability to find a particular website. SEM includes search engine optimisation, directory submission and link development, managing pay-per-click advertising campaigns and managing trusted feed and other paid inclusion programs. Also called Search Marketing.
Search engine optimisation (SEO): This is the practice of getting a website to appear as high as possible in organic search engine result listings when users perform searches for particular keywords.
Search engine results page (SERP): This is the page that a search engine such as Google or Yahoo displays as the result of a user doing a search for a particular keyword.
Trusted feed: This allows certain (usually very large) websites to submit information about their content directly to search engines using an XML format.
Web analytics: This is the process of analysing a website's traffic in order to better understand who the site's visitors are and how they are using the site. Web analytics can help you understand how to make your website more effective at attracting and retaining visitors and at increasing your conversion rate.
Website evaluation: Coppervine can perform a comprehensive evaluation of your website in order to determine its strength and effectiveness in a number of areas that affect its ability to attract and retain visitors and to convert visitors into customers.
XML: This is a format for representing information found in web pages. XML offers more flexibility than HTML and stands for "Extensible markup language".