Glossary
Web Design and Online Marketing Definitions Dictionary
advertising network: a service whereby online advertising space can be purchased from a central source for distribution via a range of 3rd party web properties. The websites displaying purchased advertisements will receive a share of the revenue from the central source.
algorithm: a computational process, formula or set of rules used (in this context) by Search Engines to programatically define the relevance and importance of a page for a given search term.
alt text: a textual description applied to visual media on a web page, which is displayed when, for example, an image is unavailable or a non-visual browser (screen-reader) is used. Alt text is used to make websites accessible to visually impaired visitors and to 'describe' images to search engines.
analytics: the process of gathering and analysing web server logs so as to monitor metrics such as visitor numbers, page views, recency, loyalty and bounce rates.
anchor text: the textual element of a hyperlink which is clicked by the user in order to follow the link. Anchor text is used by Search Engines to infer the subject of the destination page.
authority site: a website seen by Search Engines as being trustworthy and influential. Typically, authority sites will have many incoming links (including from other authority sites, government and educational sites). Links from authority sites are typically given a high weighting by Search Engines.
B2B: the acronym for Business to Business - Businesses trading with other businesses.
B2C: the acronym for Business to Consumer - Businesses trading directly with private individuals (consumers).
blog: short for weblog - A website which, rather than pages, typically centres around articles, or posts which are typically displayed in a chronological order. The availability of blogging software and services has boosted the popularity of blogging exponentially, giving non-technical users the ability to product web content.
bounce rate: a measurement (percentage or ratio) of website visitors who visit just a single page in one browsing session.
click through rate (CTR): a measurement (percentage or ratio) of the rate at which users click on an advertisement versus the number of times that advertisement has been displayed (each time the advert is displayed is referred to as an impression).
content network: a collection of websites that display advertising via an advertising network. Publishers receive a share of advertising revenue, typically based on performance.
contextual advertising: in-line advertising that is automatically inserted into a web page based on the content of the page.
conversion rate: a measurement (percentage or ratio) of the rate at which a quantifiable goal (conversion) takes place. Conversions can include visits to a particular page, form submissions, sales etc.
cost per action (CPA): an advertising model, common in affiliate marketing, whereby a publisher (affiliate) is paid by an advertiser (merchant) based upon a quantifiable action being performed by a user as a result of a measurable, trackable interaction with an advert.
cost per click (CPC): also known as Pay per Click (PPC), an advertising model whereby an advertiser pays a publisher for every click they generate. Google AdWords is one of the most widely known PPC advertising networks.
cost per thousand (CPM): an advertising model whereby an advertiser pays a publisher for every thousand impressions of their advert, regardless of performance.
geo-targeting: the technology of using the IP address of a website visitor to tailor content to their geographic location - For example targeting advertising to particular countries, or directing users to localised translations.
impression: generally defines a single web page view, but can also refer to an individual element of a page such as an advertisement.
inbound link: a hyperlink from an external website which is believed to be used by Search Engines to measure a website's popularity.
keyword: a word or phrase which is of particular relevence to the content of a given web page. In the context of search engine optimisation a keyword is a search term entered by a user to perform a search engine query.
link bait: editorial content created (typically as a blog post) with the primary intention of generating multiple inbound links to a website, often by using social engineering techniques and sensational or controversial subject matter.
long tail: elongated search terms that add additional specific words to generic search terms - For example the generic search term "hotels" could be elongated to the geographic long tail search term "hotels london", or the even more specific "boutique hotels london W1" which, if optimised for, would likely generate fewer visitors, but higher conversion rates due to increased relevancy.
meta tags: data that describes other data - In this context data included in the html header of a web page to provide additional information about the page including encoding and content summaries. Search Engines may consider the 'title', 'description' and 'keywords' meta tags when deducing the subject of a web page.
pagerank (PR): named after Google Co-Founder Larry Page, PageRank is a numeric value of between 0 and 10 that Google's search engine algorithms assign to a web page to quantifiably indicate its popularity and 'importance'. Toolbar Pagerank gives an approximate indication of a web page's PR, but is infrequently updated and therefore purposely inaccurate.
quality score: the score assigned by Search Engines that reflects the relevance of a web page's content (amongst other historical and on-page factors). A high quality score results in higher rankings and lower bid requirements.
return on investment (ROI): the amount of money a business recoups versus the amount of money spent in order to generate the revenue. For example if a business invests £1000 in an advertising campaign which results in a revenue increase of £2000, the ROI is £1000.
search engine marketing (SEM): the practice of using Search Engine traffic as a primary source of visitors, through organic optimisation and paid advertising.
search engine optimization (SEO): a term for the various processes involved in making a website relevant and accessible to search engines and search engine users.
search engine results pages (SERPs): the page that a search engine user will be presented with when a search is performed. Results are displayed in order of relevance and may include additional result categories such as product results, local results and multimedia results as well as paid advertisements.
spider (crawler / bot): a software application that is programmed to follow hyperlinks around the World Wide Web, collecting information about the pages it visits for later processing. The most well known spiders are those used by Search Engines to index web pages, but spiders are used for a number of purposes, including unethical ones such as the collection of email addresses for the sending of SPAM.
stickiness: a measure of how compelling a website's content is to visitors. A 'sticky' website has low bounce rates - meaning that few users visit just a single page, long average session times and high visitor loyalty with users returning frequently.
title tag: widely held as the most important meta tag - the title tag should summarise a web page's content for both users and search engines.
