Lexicon

Here’s a glossary of terms relating to search marketing and Internet marketing in general.

advertising network: An advertising system managed centrally by one company that affiliates with a plethora of websites. These websites become a part of the network for a share of revenue generated by ads served on their site.
Ex: Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, Ask.com Sponsored Listings

behavioural targeting: The process of targeting ads to specific users based on past intentions and experiences. If someone always searches for horror movies, they may be targeted for horror novels if they are browsing a book retailer’s website.

buying cycle: The steps taken by consumers when making a sizable purchase. (Problem Discovery, Search, Evaluate, Decide, Purchase, Reevaluate).

call to action: The part of a website that encourages a visitor to take some sort of action. These can include buying a product, requesting for information, entering their email address, taking a survey, etc.

click through rate (CTR): The percentage of people that click on an ad. The CTR metric is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks on an ad by the total number of impressions (displays) of the ad.

content network: The collective group of websites that work in tandem with an advertising network in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by the ads served.
Ex: Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Microsoft adCenter

contextual advertising: Advertising that is targeted to particular webpages based on the page’s content, keywords, or category. Ads displayed in most content networks are targeted contextually for relevance.

cost per action (CPA): An advertising model where earnings are dependent upon an action that a visitor performs as a result of the ad. This action could be anything from subscribing to a newsletter to making a purchase. An advertiser pays a set rate to the publisher based on the number of visitors who have taken action.

cost per click (CPC): An advertising model where the advertiser pays a set rate for each click on an ad. Most text ads sold today by search engines are billed under this model. CPC is sometimes referred to as PPC for "pay per click".

cost per thousand (CPM): The cost per thousand impressions charged to advertisers for displays of an ad. The rate is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). The CPM format is generally used for display advertising such as banner ads.

dayparting: Strategically adjusting ad campaign bid prices to get the most value in reaching the right market segments.

geo-targeting: The targeting of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting enables advertisers to efficiently spend ad dollars based on the searcher’s location, allowing more localized and personalized results.

inbound link: A hyperlink to a particular website from an outside site, that is, one with a different domain name.

integrated marketing: Implementing two or more marketing systems simultaneously.

key performance indicator: A critical measurement of a campaign’s success. This can be anything from conversions to ROI.

keyword: A word or phrase of interest that is entered into a search engine to find information.

link bait: A method of accumulating a large number of inbound links and traffic through unique sensational editorial content or tools, posted on a webpage and submitted to social media sites in hopes of building inbound links from other sites - especially blogs.

link building: The process of getting other websites to link to yours to improve search engine rankings and increase overall traffic. Link building techniques may include reciprocal linking, directly buying links, and link baiting as mentioned above.

link longevity: A term coined by SEP that describes the amount of time a backlink exists.

meta tags: Information placed in the HTML header of a webpage that provides information to search engines regarding the content of a webpage. Meta tags are intended to help search engines better understand a page, and usually include title, description, and keyword tags.

pay per click (PPC): See "cost per click" (CPC).

quality score: An advertisement score established by an ad network that is based on factors such as an ad’s click through rate (CTR), relevance of its landing page, and historical keyword performance. Quality scores allow higher quality websites to advertise cheaper through lower bid requirements.

return on investment (ROI): The amount of money in the form of a percentage that is earned from an advertisement, compared to the amount of money that was spent on the ad.

search advertising: The delivery of ads through organic search results sold by the PPC model, where advertisers bid for an ad spot based on keywords.

search engine marketing (SEM): Marketing a site through both organic and paid search listings. SEM encompasses both SEO and search advertising.

search engine optimization (SEO): The combination of both on-page and off-page techniques designed to make a website rank higher in the organic search results for particular keywords.

search engine results pages (SERPs): The page that is displayed after a query is made. SERPs show a listing of webpages that are the most relevant to the query made.

SEP: This blog, SearchEnginePanel.com.

social media: A network that thrives on member participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace and social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

spider: A search engine spider, also known as a "bot," is a program that visits and crawls website to find information to add to a search engine’s index. Google’s spider is called GoogleBot, and Yahoo’s spider is called Slurp.

universal search: Also known as blended search, universal search compiles more than just textual content. It can includes images, videos, maps, and even news stories that are relevant to a specific search.

user-generated content (UGC): Textual, audio, graphical, or video content whose publisher is actually an end-user.