Definitions and Buzzwords for Web Marketing

Some quick web definitions and terms for the layman

Affiliate Markeing | Content | Email Marketing | Fresh Content | Local Search | Inbound Links | Keywords | Landing Pages | Natural Search | Niche Markets | Page Rank | PPC | Reciprocol Links | SEO | SEM | SERP | Stats | URL | Usability

Affiliate Marketing: A trackable system that you can sign up to sell other people's products or have others promote and sell your product for a percentage of sales.

Content: Marketing copy, written words, text on your website or even images.

Email Marketing: A broadcast email campaign that is sent to prospective leads or clients that generates interest in what you have to offer. Frequent email campaigns are one of the most effective ways to generate branding, call to action, and more clients.

Fresh Content: Content on your website that is updated frequently; Everyday, every week, or every month. Search engines eat this stuff up.

Local Search: Search engine results that are related to services or products rendered within a certain vincinity or territory. Example: City, County or Region.

Inbound Links: Links that come in from other websites to your site. These links help your popularity in the search engines and will typically bring your search results higher up in the search engines if they are subject related links that are similar to your sites subject..

Keywords: Keywords are words that have relevance in your industry. For example, using 'Home Painting' or 'Paint house' in a search request would typically yield results from websites that have these keywords in the title or content.

Landing Pages: Content created specifically for niche markets and or services.

Natural Search: Or organic search; SEO. When your URL address shows up in the body of results pages when someone searches for related keywords, terms or phrases.

Niche Markets: Specific or individual products or services that fullfil a need or want. An example is a custom T-shirt printer might print T-shirts however their specialty is printed hats for clothing lines; a painter may work on painting faux finishes for homes and or restaurants. Each one of their customers would have a different need for that service.

Page Rank (PR): A system used by Google. Although PR is not what it used to be, it still shows a site's popularity or votes from other sites that link to it. The highest level is a PR10. 0 is lowest. Keyword search in Google has shown that PR is not an effective method to achieve better results although it shouldn't be ignored all together.

PPC - Pay Per Click: Paid for search results; SEM. Marketing and ad campaigns created mainly on search engines. You don't pay for your link to be viewed in the paid sponsored area except when someone clicks on your advertisement.

Reciprocal Links: Links that go from your site to another site. That site would have a link back to your site. Good for traffic, if their site is visited often. Not so good for search engine optimization.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization: Creating your website with the search engines in mind so that they (Google, Yahoo and others) will index your site and give you higher ranking in their search results; Everything from creating the correct coding, keywords, title, content, image tags, page names, URL addresses, names, descriptions and more.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing: Very similar to SEO with the exception of being more pro-active on the search engines.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page: A search engines results that populate the page after you request a search. Both sponsored results and natural or organic results will show up. The websites that appear are a result of the search engines indexing your site or others for both relevance and popularity.

Stats: Statistics; knowing who has visited your website, where they came from, how long they were there, how many visitors also called analytics.

URL Address - Uniform Resource Locator: An Internet address such as http://www.ImagiumWeb.com

Usability: Creating a well thought out and easy to navigate interface for your website. Visitors don't have to think when they go to your site. Your website should be very intuitive. Information should never be more than four clicks away to access.