Website Resources

Search Engine Marketing Glossary

Automated submission
Submitting a web page or pages to multiple search engines using software to automate the process. Most search engines dislike auto submission as the process uses up valuable bandwidth. There are exceptions including when you have an agreed relationship with the search engine through a paid-inclusion or direct feed/trusted feed agreement.

Cache
The storing of a web page in the search engines index. Some search engine including Google and Yahoo include a feature that allows a user to view a web page as it was when last indexed. The disadvantage of allowing the search engine to Cache your web pages is that the Cached page in the search engine index may not be exactly the same as the web page on your site.

Cloaking
Providing the search engine index with one web page and the human visitor a different page.

Conversion
A key web site metric. Conversion rate is normally the number of visitors divided by the number of visitors who take an action of some kind. Conversions can include completing a form, purchasing a product, signing up for a news letter or even the number of visitors who see a certain page.

Crawl
Not swimming but the action a search engine’s automated robot/spider completes when following links from web page to web page on the www.

Cost per click (CPC)
For pay per click campaigns, this is the amount you pay per click. Remember that the pay per click fee is exactly that and will not always tie up with the visitor numbers reported to your web site via a paid campaign, this due to the fact that not all clicks will get to your campaign landing page.

Conversion rate
The number of purchases divided by the total number of visitors. This number/metric tells you how successfully your site is at turning visitors into sales or enquiries or any predefined action.

Cost per order (CPO)
The total cost of divided by the number of purchases or enquiries generated from your web site. The CPO metric measures the average cost to generate an action or sale at your web site.

Direct feed/Trusted feed
Fixed rate pay-per-click partnership program which some search engines offer. Your web site pages text is converted into an XML compliant data base, the data is then supplied direct into the search engine index. Direct feed/Trusted feed service is generally reserved for web sites with 500 pages or more and ideal for dynamically generated e-commerce site.

Doorway pages/Gateway pages
Web pages that are created for the purpose of ranking highly in the search engines and not generally designed for human visitors to see. Doorway pages/Gateway pages are not to be confused with Information Rich pages. IRP pages serve a similar purpose but include content and design aimed at humans.

Dynamic URL
Web pages that are normally created “on the fly” from text within a data base . Dynamic URLs normally contain query strings including ? , & and +, = etc, other tracking URLs can also be grouped with dynamic URLs including web site pages that use session tracking ID’s.
The search engine spiders/robots dislike dynamic URLs as they may end up in a loop which traps the spider/robot and may even cause the server to crash in addition dynamic urls can create duplicate content, which is another no no to a search engine index

Index
A database of web pages used by search engines.

Invisible text
A Web page that includes text which is the same or a very similar colour as the web pages background, the effect is that search engines see the text and human visitors don’t. All search engines consider invisible text as a spaming tactic.

Information rich pages
Web page or pages that contain highly themed and information focused content, rich in search terms but designed to supply human visitors with useful information and to gain high search engine listings.

Keyword density
The number of times a keyword or phrase appears within a web page in relation to the total number of words used on that page.

Keyword phrase
The search term words entered by a person when querying a search engine in order to find the information they need. A keyword phrase is the word/phrase that an SEO would optimise a web page for.

Keyword stuffing
Repeating keyword after keyword within a web page. All search engines consider this practice as spam.

Landing page
The first page seen after clicking a link from a search engine or other listing.

Link farms
Web sites designed with the sole purpose of linking member sites to each other and because the links are required, search engine place little value on the pages.

Link popularity
The number of web pages linked to a site. Link popularity and the quality of the linking pages is one of the criteria search engine use to rank a web page.

Machine-generated-pages
Automatically generated web pages stuffed with keywords in an attempt to win top search positions. All search engines ban such pages as they provide no useful purpose.

Manual submission
Visiting the search engine in person and clicking on the “Add URL” then completing the add url form.

Meta tags
HTML code that’s not visible to human visitors but intended for use by search engine to help classify a site. Two of the most important tags are META description and META keywords.

Mirror pages
Duplicated pages to gain extra search engine rankings. All the major search engine operate duplicate content filters so that only one page will be included in the search engine index.

Pay-per-click (PPC)
Paying a fee for each visitor to a website. You can have pay-per-click ads or an SEO may offer a pay-per-click fee system instead of fixed cost.

Ranking
The position a page is within the search results page for a specific search term.

Reciprocal linking
Exchanging a link from your web site for a link from another website.

Relevancy
The system search engines use to rank search results. Relevancy is based on a mathematically calculated formula known only by the search engine, the formula is also known as algorithm, over 70 factors can be included in the algorithm.

Revenue per click (RPC)
Total sales divided by number of visitors. Revenue per click is very useful for measuring the success of pay per click and other on-line campaigns.

Return on investment (ROI)
The amount of money made from a search engine marketing campaign less the investment or money spent on the campaign.

Return on advertising spend (ROAS)
The total revenue generated divided by the cost of your campaign. This is a very effective way of measuring the success of your campaign. In principle if the ROAS is below £1.00 your visitors failed to generate enough revenue to pay for the campaign, the ROAS amount needs to cover both your campaign costs and the cost of the goods sold.

Search engine marketing (SEM)
Internet marketing using paid for search engine ads and optimisation of your web pages/site (SEO), submission of optimised web pages to search engine and directories and link building services.

Search engine optimisation
The process of editing or creating a web page to win top search positions for a given set of search terms by making changes to the visible and invisible text.

SEO Copywriting
Writing web page copy/content utilising keyword search terms in order to improve visibility and placement within search engine indexes.

Spider
Not a 6 legs creepy crawly but the action a search engine’s automated robot/spider completes when following links from web page to web page on the www.

Submission
Announcing to search engines and directories the existence of a URL web site or page that you want the web page or site to be considered for inclusion. Can be achieved through visiting each search engine and entering the URL details on the site submission page.