Search Engine Marketing Terms

The Meaning of Common SEM Terms

Aggregator

An aggregator or news aggregator is a type of software that retrieves syndicated Web content that is supplied in the form of a web feed (RSS, Atom and other XML formats), and that is published by weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites

Anchor Text

This is the actual text part of a link that you click on to follow a hyperlink. Used by search engines as a ranking factor in their hypertext algorithm. For example, in the following link, the words "Anchor Text" are the anchor text.

Blacklist

Lists compiled by either search engines or vigilante users of search engine spammers. These lists may be used to ban spammers from search engines or to enforce boycotts of them.

Bid Management Tool

Software or an ASP service used to manage bids on pay-per-click search engines such as Overture.

Bidding

Placing a bid price that you are willing to pay as an advertiser on a pay-per-click search engine. The highest bid for a given keyword achieves the top spot in the pay-per-click search results. In Overture, the top three bids are "featured" on Overture's partners' sites, including AOL, Altavista, Infospace, and others. The minimum bid amount on Overture is 5 cents per click through

Blog

Also known as a "weblog", a blog is an online diary with entries made on a regular, if not daily, basis. Some blogs are maintained by an anonymous author who uses a nickname or handle instead of his or her real name.

Body Copy

The 'meaty' textual content of a web page. Body copy refers to text visible to users and does not include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden in the HTML source code

Cloaking

Serving different content to search engine spiders than to human visitors. Cloaking is basically a "bait and switch" tactic, where the web server feeds visiting spiders content that is keyword-rich, thus fooling the search engine into placing that page higher in the search results. Yet when the visitor clicks on the link they are given different content, which may be totally unrelated. Search engines frown upon this practice and some will penalize or ban sites that they catch doing it.

Conversion

The act of converting a web site visitor into a customer or at least taking that visitor a step closer to customer acquisition (such as convincing them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter)

Cost Per Action (CPA)

the cost incurred or price paid for a specific action, such as signing up for an email newsletter, entering a contest, registering on the site, completing a survey, downloading trial software, printing a coupon, etc.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

The cost incurred or price paid for a clickthrough to your landing page

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)

The cost incurred or price paid for a thousand impressions

Doorway Page

Also known as a "bridge page", a doorway page is any page created for the sole purpose of driving website traffic from the search engines and which is not a functional part of the website.

Forums

A supported Public Message Center where users can post messages in different forums, either to the group at large or to certain users. Since all postings can be seen by anyone else who has access to that forum, sensitive materials should be saved for private email. Forums are also threaded, which means a reply to a particular posting becomes part of the "thread" of that posting that can be followed to provide a cohesive progression through a particular topic.

Google Bombing

When a group of sites, such as blogs, join forces to link to an unflattering page about a company such that this page rises to the top of the search results in Google. Google bombing takes advantage of the power of hyperlink text and of PageRank. For example, if a group of sites with high PageRank all link to a page about XYZ Company's inappropriate behavior with hyperlink text of "XYZ Company sucks" then the linked page can shoot to the top of Google's search results for the term "XYZ Company."

Hallway Page

A page that serves as an index to a group of pages that you would like the search engine spiders to find. Once a search engine spider indexes the hallway page, it should also follow all the links on that hallway page and in turn index those pages as well. Note that a web page that has no links pointing to it will be at a severe disadvantage in regards to search engine rankings. A site map acts as a hallway page

Hits

A download of a file from a web server. Hits do not correlate with web page visits. Every graphic on a web page counts as a hit. Thus, a single access of a web page with 20 unique graphics on it register as 21 hits - 20 for the graphics and 1 for the HTML page. Web metrics guru Jim Sterne says hits "stand for How Idiots Track Success." People who talk in terms of hits are usually either ignorant or are trying to snow their boss into thinking the website is doing better than it really is.

Impression

A web visitor accessing a page or banner ad. Often used interchangeably with the term "pageview."

Invisible Web

A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that is not indexed by the search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.

Keyword Density

The number of occurrences that a given keyword appears on a web page. The more times that a given word appears on your page (within reason), the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search engine user. Keyword Density=Total number of keyword occurrences on a page/Total number of words. Most experts agree that 4-8% should be the maximum keyword density

Keyword Popularity

The number of occurrences of searches done by Internet users of a given keyword during a period of time. Both WordTracker.com and Overture's Search Term Popularity Tool (http://inventory.overture.com) provide keyword popularity numbers.

Keyword Stuffing

Placing excessive keywords into the page copy and the HTML in such a way that it detracts from the readability and usability of a given page in order to boost the page's rankings in the search engines. This includes hiding keywords on the page by making the text the same color as the background, hiding keywords in comment tags, overfilling alt tags with long strings of keywords, etc. Keyword stuffing is just another shady way of gaming the search engines and, as such, its use should be strongly discouraged

Meta tags

Meta-information (information about information) that is associated with a web page and placed in the HTML but not displayed on the page for the user to see. There are a range of meta tags, only a few of which are relevant to search engine spiders. Two of the most well-known meta tags are the meta description and meta keywords; unfortunately these are ignored by most major search engines, including Google.

Moblog

A Blog where posts are made via a mobile device e.g. blackberry, cell phone, pda, etc

PageRank

Google uses a weighted form of link popularity called PageRank^TM. Not all links are created equal. Google differentiates a link from an important site (such as CNN.com) as being better than a link from Jim-Bob's personal home page. The Google Toolbar (which is a free download from http://toolbar.google.com) has a PageRank meter built into it, to see which web pages are considered important by Google and which aren't. PageRank scoring ranges from 0 to 10, 10 being the best. PageRank scores get exponentially harder to achieve the closer to 10 they are. For example, increasing your own homepage's PageRank from a 2 to 3 is easy with not a lot of additional links, jumping from a 7 to an 8 is very difficult to achieve. The higher the PageRank of the page that's linking to you, the more your site's PageRank will benefit. The better your PageRank, the better you'll do in Google, all else being equal

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

A pay-for-performance pricing model where advertising (such as banners or paid search engine listings) is priced based on number of clickthroughs rather than impressions or other criteria. Overture is an example of a search engine which charges advertisers on a pay-per-click basis.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Strategies and tactics undertaken to increase the number and quality of leads generated by the search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Strategies and tactics undertaken to improve web pages so they gain a higher ranking in the search engines

Spamming

As in "spamming the search engines". Spamming is most commonly associated with the act of sending unsolicited commercial email, but in the context of search engine optimization, spamming refers to using disreputable tactics to achieve high search engine rankings. Such spamming tactics include bulk submitting spamglish-containing doorway pages.

SERP

An acronym for Search Engine Results Page.

Trackback

Trackback is a standard that can be used to automatically create a link between webpages, usually between webpages on different websites. To use trackbacks, both the author and respondent must use a technology that implements the standard, such as blog publishing software. When displayed under a blog entry, clicking a ‘Trackback' link will show a list of webpages that have linked to that entry (perhaps more clearly labeled: ‘Links to this entry ', ‘Pages linking to this entry' or ‘Remote comments').

Vlog

A vlog or video blog is a blog (short for weblog) which uses video as the primary content; the video is linked to within a videoblog post and usually accompanied by supporting text, image, and additional metadata to provide context. It has become a significant contributor to clip culture.

Webisode

A webisode is a web based episodic video show. It is similar in structure to a television series and usually new episodes are published on a periodic basis through a website or some other internet based medium. Typically shows have short runs (about 5 episodes) but some go on for much longer. Content varies greatly and sometimes the webisodes are just to push some other content (such as an upcoming film).

The above definitions are adapted from entries in www.seoglossary.com