Key Terms in Internet Marketing and Advertising

This compilation is initially intended for personal use only. However, as the list grows longer, I deem it necessary to be posted to help newcomers understand online marketing. We already know that coming up a quality, evergreen content is king; however, ignoring to market your article or hub may mean failure to monetize them. Certainly, penning a good content is just half of the way to earning revenue from your writings.

This hub can be used as a primer for your study of internet marketing and advertising. As such, you can refer this hub from time to time or have this printed for easy access and availability.

The terms are not arranged in an alphabetical order but rather in a logical manner to facilitate fast and better understanding.

Internet Marketing – the marketing of products or services over the Internet. It encompasses the following aspects: creation, development, promotion, and selling.

Affiliate Marketing – a strategy wherein products or services made by an entity is sold by another for some share in the profit.

Article Marketing – an advertising method in which businesses make short articles about their specific enterprise. These articles are then published and distributed in the marketplace.

Internet Article Marketing – an internet marketing strategy wherein products and services are advertized through online article directories. Most directories pick up a high volume of traffic and are regarded as authority sites by search engines, resulting in a generous, free traffic being enjoyed by the submitted articles.

Article Spinning – the process of making several variations of an article either manually or using a software.

Directories – a type of search engine where listings are obtained manually rather than Web crawling.

Web Crawling – the process of surfing the World Wide Web in a systematic, automated fashion or in an organized manner. This is primarily used to make a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to facilitate fast searches.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – an internet marketing strategy geared at making your website or web pages “search engine friendly.” It is the process of enhancing the exposure of a website or web page in search engines through the unpaid or organic search results.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) – the web pages showed by any search engine for a given search terms.

Anchor Text – the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. It ordinarily provides the user related description or information about the content of the link’s target. It is weighted highly by search engines since the linked text is often relevant to the landing page. Otherwise, it is considered a spam.

Keywords – terms inputted by people in search engines to look for specific content.

Tag – keywords and phrases defining your hub. These are vital elements used by search engines to locate contents on specific topics for people searching online. They alert the search engines that you have a relevant material on the topic described by the tag. You should try to include about 12 tags per hub.

Backlink – incoming links to a website or web page from another web node. The number of backlinks has a strong influence on a web page’s popularity or importance (ranking) in search engines.

Organic Backlinks – backlinks that come naturally and gradually over time.

Hub - a rich web page or article that you write and design on a single, fairly specific topic. You have the capability to add text, pictures, videos, maps, polls, quizzes, links, and more to your hubs.

Blog – a blending of the term “web log.” It is a type of website or part of a website where readers are allowed to leave comments in an interactive format.

Forum – a place on the Internet where people with common interests or backgrounds come together to look for information and exchange ideas among themselves.

Evergreen Content – content that never ages over time because people find it still useful and relevant though time passes by.

Niche Topic – a topic that is specific and which one has interest and expertise in. If too broad, hubs tend to get lost in millions of other results.

Page View – gained each time a visitor requests any page within the site. A visitor will always yield at least one page view (the main page) but could bring in many more. On the World Wide Web, a page request comes by when a web surfer clicks on a link from another page pointing to the target page.

Impression – this comes about whenever an ad appears on a hub. After you’ve joined any or all of the affiliate programs Google Adsense, Kontera, Amazon, and ebay, ads from them appear on your hubs. Revenue is generated, for instance, whenever a visitor clicks through Google ads or make an actual purchase with Amazon or ebay.

Hit – a request to a web server for a file. The page itself is considered a file, but images are also files. Thus, a page with five images could generate six hits.

Cost Per Click (CPC) – a customary way of paying online advertisements. In this method, the advertiser pays the site every time an ad is clicked by a visitor. The cost depends on the competitors’ bids. The Google Keyword Tool is a free service for advertisers to find out the estimated average CPC value for keywords.

Click Through Rate (CTR) – this rate tells you how many times people are actually clicking on your ad out of the number of times your ad is shown.

CTR = Number of Clicks / Number of Impressions

Revenue Per Thousand Impressions (RPM) –used by Google Adsense to estimate your earnings for every 1000 impressions you receive. It is calculated using the formula below:

RPM = (Estimated Earnings ÷ Number of Page Views) × 1000

Google Analytics – a free service offered by Google that provides detailed statistics for website owners, helping them track down which pages perform well and what methods are effective in carrying out their ad campaigns.

Web Traffic – the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit.

Long-Tail Traffic – basically means that the search term is highly specific and probably has a lower volume. Most long-tail terms are made up of only three words or a little longer.

PageRank (PR) – a trademark of Google. It indicates Google’s view of the significance of web pages. Those receiving a greater rank value or PR are more possibly to show up at the top of the search results. To install such a plug in, visit www.quirk.co.za/searchstatus and follow the instructions.

Nofollow – an attribute value specified for hyperlinks with rel=“nofollow” nullifying its ability to influence the ranking calculation of the link’s target. This is not in any way meant to prevent access to content or for blocking content to be indexed by search engines. See the example below:

<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">discount drugs</a>

Spam - the use of electronic messaging systems, including most show media, digital delivery systems, to transfer unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. An article or hub created with a heavy repetition of search terms, especially in a row, may be considered a spam by search engines. Some types of spam are as follows:

• E-mail spam –also known as “junk e-mail” or “unsolicited bulk e-mail,” is a subgroup of spam involving closely identical messages sent to various recipients via e-mail.

• Forum spam – the making of messages that are advertisements, abusive, or otherwise unwanted on Internet forums. Text substance is usually minimal, frequently looking harmless and impertinent to the topic discussed in the forum.

• Blog spam – the process of mechanically placing random comments or endorsing commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other online discussions open to the public.

• Spamdexing – also known as “search spam,” “search engine spam,” or “web spam,” comprises several tactics, such as duplicating unrelated phrases, to game the pertinence or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine in a way that is conflicting with the intent of the indexing system.