Internet Marketing Terminology List

Are you often looking for Internet marketing terminology definitions or an Internet marketing terminology list?

I decided to compile a list of some of the common terms used in Internet marketing, and if you are into any sort of online marketing, this Internet marketing terminology list is one that you can refer back to time and time again.

Table of Contents

Actual CPC

This is the actual amount that you pay for each click when advertising through PPC advertising. Take into consideration the click-through rate and the performances of your competitor’s ads. In this way, you may get to pay less than you bid.

AdGroup

This is an organized group of keywords within a campaign. Keywords in the same Ad Group trigger the same ad text, or creative.

It’s best to group your keywords thematically so that you can target ads toward each theme, market, product, or service.

AdSense

AdSense is Google’s contextual ad program for website publishers.

Publishers place text ads provided by Google on their website and earn a portion of the click through revenue.

AdWords

Google’s contextual ad program for advertisers. Advertisers receive preferred placement (as Sponsored Links) for given keywords, based on a pay-per-click revenue model.

Affiliate Marketing

The art of selling other people’s products online and earning commissions.

Click here to learn more about affiliate marketing.

Algorithm

The detailed sequence of actions used by search engines to rank web pages. The most famous Search Engine Algorithm is PageRank which is Google’s indexing method that assigns different weights to multiple variables of a website, including keyword density, website authority, link popularity, etc.

Article

Writing and submitting optimized articles on the subject of your website content is an important and effective aspect of Search Engine Marketing. This worked a lot better five years ago than it does now, as a lot of the article directories have been deindexed on the search engines.

However, nothing stops you from writing many articles for your website or other websites as a guest blogger.

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

The latest craze. Now robots can write your articles for you.

Authenticity

This is the sense that something or someone is ‘real.’ Blogs enable people to publish content and engage in conversations that show their interests and values and also help to develop an authentic voice online.

Autoresponder

An autoresponder is a program that automatically sends an email message at a set time or in response to an action taken by a user. For example, when a visitor to your website requests information by sending you an email or clicking on a link, your autoresponder may automatically reply with a pre-determined email message.

You can set up your autoresponder to send out sales information, follow-up inquiries, letters, broadcasts, or notices. This saves marketers a lot of time allowing them to work on other aspects of their online business.

Average CPC

The average amount actual advertisers are paying for each click-through from their ad to their website.

AWeber

AWeber Communications develops and manages online opt-in email newsletters, follow-up automation, and email deliverability services for small business customers around the world. (see Autoresponder)

Banner

A banner is simply an advertisement displayed on your web page in a traditional banner shape. A banner can display virtually anything in any size, although in e-commerce it is primarily used as an advertising tool that acts as a link to an advertiser’s website.

If you publish a newsletter, you may choose to include banners that promote another company’s product or service.

Benefit

As an internet marketer, it is essential to understand the difference between ‘features’ and ‘benefits.’

Benefits is a marketing term that shifts the focus from product feature to how this feature will benefit the customer.

“What’s in it for me?” are the questions that most visitors are asking themselves when they visit your sales page. So unless your sales text is packed with benefit-oriented text, forget about the sale.

Bid

This is the amount an advertiser is willing to pay for AdWords traffic per click.

Billboard Side

The billboard side of the postcard is the ‘draw’ or the attention-getter.

It will be seen by most recipients. Make sure it is used wisely with a graphic and a headline that screams ‘read me’ to your target market.

Blacklist

A blacklist is a list of known or suspected senders of spam. Blacklists are maintained by ISPs and spam-fighting organizations – and if your name gets blacklisted, it can be very difficult to have it removed.

Legitimate email marketers can stay out of trouble with blacklists by following these guidelines:

Send only materials that reflect the relationship you have established with the people on your list.
Include an unsubscribe link in every email you send.
Use a confirmed opt-in system for collecting email addresses.

Blog Reader

A platform for reading blogs, similar to Google Reader.

Blog

A frequently updated website involving reverse-chronological ‘posts’ or, short opinion news, or gossip updates, with a collaborative interface.

Websites with dated items of content in reverse chronological order, self-published by bloggers.

Posts or items may have keyword tags associated with them and they are usually available as feeds and in most cases allow commenting and engagement by their readers.

Body Copy

The body copy is the description of your offer and benefits or the main copy of your article.

Use only short sentences that are precise, persuasive, and written in a conversational tone.

The decision on whether or not to continue to read your post happens with every line your visitor reads, so make sure that every word is attention-grabbing and provocative.

Bonus

An additional benefit above the basic benefit.

Bookmarking

In an internet marketing terminology list, a bookmark is to save the address of a website or item of content, either in your browser or on a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us. If you add tags, others can easily use your research too.

Bounces

Email sent that fails to reach the intended destination will bounce back to you.

Hard bounces are caused by invalid email addresses and soft bounces are due to temporary conditions, such as overloaded inboxes.

Break-Even Point

The point at which the costs of producing a product equal the revenue made from selling the product.

Broad Match

This is the default match option. When you include keyword phrases in your keyword list, your ads will appear when users search for any word in these phrases, in any order – and possibly along with other terms.

Broadcasting

Simultaneously emailing the same message to multiple recipients.

Browser

A tool used to view websites, and access all the content available there on screen or by downloading. Browsers may also be used to upload or otherwise contribute content to a blog or other website. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari are some of the most popular browsers.

Bulletin Boards

The early vehicles for online collaboration, where users connected with a central computer to post and read email-like messages. They were the electronic equivalent of public notice boards. The term is still used for forums.

Call-To-Action

This is telling your prospect what to do next.

Campaign

Defines the daily budget, language, geographic scope, and the networks where ads are displayed.

Chat

Interaction on a website, with several people adding text items one after the other into the same space at almost the same time. Unlike a forum, conversations happen in real-time like they do face-to-face.

Churn

A measure of a campaign’s success.

Circulation

The number of copies of a publication sold or distributed each issue.

Classified Ad

A brief listing appearing in a periodical of items for sale and/or services offered usually arranged by category.

Click

The action of clicking on an advertisement or other graphical or textual element, which triggers the user to visit an advertiser’s website.

Click-Through

A click-through occurs when a user responds to an online advertisement by clicking on a link that takes them to the advertiser’s website.

Counting click-throughs gives advertisers a better measurement of website traffic than recording hits (also called ‘pageviews’). Although click-throughs are an important measurement of the success of an online promotion, they do not reflect the quality of site visitors, like how long they stay and which pages they view.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate is a measurement of the success of an online promotion.

It expresses the percentage of viewers of a web page who click through to an advertiser’s site.

Currently, the advertising industry average is about 0.5% which means that out of every 200 people who view an ad, one viewer can be expected to take action by visiting the advertiser’s site.

Click-Through-Tracking

This internet marketing terminology phrase is the process of tracking how many recipients clicked on a particular link in an email message. This is commonly done to measure the success of email marketing campaigns.

Closed Subscription

A subscription where the list owner must approve all new subscribers before they are added to the list.

Collaboration

Social media tools from email lists to virtual worlds offer enormous scope for collaboration. Low-risk activities like social bookmarking, chatting, commenting and blogging help develop the trust necessary for collaboration.

Commitment

The ‘social’ aspect of social media means that tools are most useful when other people commit to using them too. Commitment will depend on people’s degree of interest in a subject, capability online, preparedness to share with others, usability of the site or tool and degree of comfort in a new place.

Communities

Groups of people communicate mainly through the Internet.

They may simply have a shared interest to talk about or more formally learn from each other and find solutions as a community of Practice.

Online communities may use email lists or forums, where content is centralized.

Communities may also emerge from conversations around or between bloggers.

Competitive Analysis

Assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of a business as compared to its competitors.

Competitive Intelligence

This piece of internet marketing terminology means understanding and learning wht’s happening in the world outside your business so you can be as competitive as possible.

You need to learn as much as possible about your industry and your competitors.

Confirmation

This is where a subscriber to an email list mus authenticate the subsription request before more emails can be sent.

Confirmed Opt-In

You get a single confirmed opt-in and a double confirmed opt-in. This is to protect. yourself from accusations of sending spam.

For a single opt-in, visitors enter their name and email address and will in turn receive their information.

For a double opt-in, visitors receive an email asking for permission to receive email and they will need to click on a confirmation link.

Consumer List

When you’re targeting people, your list is considered a consumer list.

Content (Website Content)

Writing for websites involves incorporating target keywords that tell the search engines what a specific web page is about.

Effective content achieves two goals. The first goal is that it creates persuasive, informative content for the website visitor.

The second goal is that it maintains an optimum keyword count for the search engines to index.

Content Network

These are content-driven ads displayed on non-Google sites through the Google AdSense affiliate network.

Contextual Advertising

Displaying ads that match the nearby text on a web page. For example, if a user is viewing a website about downloading music, the ads displayed might be for a music program like Limewire or iTunes.

Conversion

This is when a visitor to a website completes a desired action.

Types of conversion include signing up for a newsletter, registering to receive more information, buying a service or a product, joining an email list etc.

Copyright

Sharing through social media is enhanced by attaching a Creative Commons license specifying, for example, that content may be re-used with attribution, provided that a similar license is then attached by the new author.

Cost-Per-Click(CPC)

The estimated amount you will pay, calculated by the search engine, for each click-through from an ad to your website.

CPA

Cost per Acquisition.

CPC

Cost per Click.

CPM

Cost per Thousand.

Creative Commons

A way to license your content so that people can share it.

Crowd-Sourcing

This is harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are prepared to volunteer their time contributing content and solving problems.

Culture

Social media only works well in a culture of openness, where people are prepared to share. For that reason, commitment and attitude are as important as tools.

Database

This is a sort of electronic filing system that lets you store and organize information.

Customer information stored in a database is often organized into separate fields according to name, email address, types of products purchased, and so on.

You can search for specific information in a database by using queries, and then organize the information to create powerful, targeted marketing campaigns.

For example, if you were planning an online promotion, you could target specific customers by searching your database for all the customers who have bought one product but not another, who live in a certain geographic area, or who have not made a purchase for more than three months, etc.

Demographics

Statistics regarding factors such as age, income, occupation, education, lifestyle, and interests.

You will need to define your target market in terms of demographics.

Direct Mail

A form of advertising often employed by businesses to reach targeted groups of potential customers by mail.

Direct Marketing or Direct Response Advertising

A direct communication to a customer or business that is designed to generate a response in the form of an order, a request for further information, or a visit to a store or other place of business.

Your level of direct response is based on your sales message. You can measure the effectiveness of your advertising based on the response rate.

Display Ad

An advertisement that uses graphics as opposed to a classified ad, which uses only text.

Domain Name

This describes one or more IP addresses.

Domain names are used in URLs to identify specific web pages for example https://www.yourdomain.com/info.

yourdomain.com is the domain name.

Every domain name is followed by a period, and then with a suffix that indicates which top-level domain it belongs to.

Top-level domains used on the internet include .gov (government agencies), .edu (educational institutions), .com (commercial businesses), .net (network organizations), .ca (Canada), .co.za (South Africa), .mil (Military). There are of course many others.

Double Opt-In

The recommended procedure for subscribing email recipients to an email list or newsletter.

Once a person requests to subscribe to a list, a confirmation email message is automatically sent to the supplied email address asking the person to verify that he has requested to be included in future mailings.

Download

When you download a file, you transfer the file from another computer to your own.

While there are several ways you can do this on the internet, FTP and email attachments are the most common.

When you view a web page in your browser, you are essentially downloading the page from the server that it is hosted on.

eBook

An eBook is an electronic book that it can be downloaded to your computer.

Depending on the format of an eBook, you can either read the content on your computer or print a portable hard copy.

eBooks are becoming very popular because they are easy and affordable to publish and distribute.

Email Blast

An advertising or marketing message sent in bulk via email.

Email Harvesting

An automated process of collecting addresses through a robot program.

Email Header

The section of an email message that contains the sender’s and recipient’s email addresses as well as the routing information.

Email List

Your email list could be your most valued possession. Having a list enables you to mail out offers and promotions as well as valuable information. They are your subscribers and hopefully your customers.

Email Marketing

This is the art of using your email list to plan and deliver permission-based marketing campaigns.

Emotion

Emotion is the magic ingredient that makes your prospects want to buy your product or service.

Logic alone will not sell, but using a strong sales copy that triggers an emotional response will do it for you.

Exact Match

This is a keyword option by which you set your ad to be displayed only when the search phrase you define and that of the internet user match exactly.

Ezine

This is an electronic magazine that is emailed to a list of subscribers or posted on a website.

Many ezines offer advertising space that is both highly targeted and affordable.

Publishing your own Ezine is an excellent way to establish your credibility as an expert in your field, and to win the trust and business of your readers.

Feeds

How you can read, view, or listen to items from blogs and other RSS-enabled sites without visiting the site.

Feeds contain the content of an item and any associated tags without the design or structure of a web page.

Field

This is a space in a web form where a user is required to enter information.

A good example of this is the opt-in form for a free newsletter where the user has to fill out his email and name in the two fields provided.

Firewall

A firewall is a program that protects a computer or network from unauthorized access through the Internet.

if you are not using firewall software, web surfers may be able to access (through your internet connection) information that is stored on your computer.

Most companies that do business on the Internet install firewall software to prevent outsiders from accessing private company data.

FTP

FTP stands for File Transfer protocol, which is a method of uploading and downloading files through the internet.

FTP used to be the only method available, but now there are simpler methods like email attachments, PDF files, and HTML files.

Forums

Forums are discussion areas on websites, where people can post messages or comment on existing messages asynchronously. This is independent of time or place.

Geographies

In direct marketing, it is important to consider your target market’s geographical location.

Geo-Targeting

Geographical targeting. This describes the distribution of your ad to internet users in different countries, states, cities, and regions.

GIF Files

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) files are mostly used for image files. These files are compressed so that they take up a minimum amount of space and can therefore be downloaded much faster than other graphic files.

GIF files are limited to 256 colors but can be animated or set transparent to blend with the background of a website.

GIF files are mainly used in web pages as backgrounds, banners, advertisements, and buttons.

Gigabyte

A gigabyte is a unit that describes the storage capacity of a computer’s memory.

One gigabyte of information is the equivalent of about one billion text characters (i.e., letters or numbers).

Google

This is currently the most popular search engine with the largest database and arguably the most accurate search results.

Google pioneered the PageRank algorithm as a means of indexing websites and other web documents.

Graphics

Graphics are pictures and can come in the form of illustrations, graphs, or photographs. They are effective in internet marketing as they allow you to deliver a lot of information in a relatively small space.

Photographs are normally more convincing than illustrations and they can increase your response rate by over 50%.

Groups

This is a collection of individuals with some sense of unity through their activities, interests, or values.

Hard Bounces

Email messages that cannot be delivered to the recipient because of a permanent error, such as an invalid or non-existing email address.

Hit

Traffic to a website can be measured in hits, which describes the number of times a file is downloaded from the web server.

However, counting hits is a poor way to measure web traffic, because if your web page has five graphics you will count six hits every time someone views the page.

Therefore, when someone claims that his web page has received over 1000 hits, it may have received 100 actual visitors, if not less.

Counting click-throughs provides advertisers with a far more accurate measurement of the effectiveness of a campaign.

Headline

In advertising, the headline should convey the single most important benefit of your product or service, because five times as many people read the headline as read the rest of the content that follows.

So as a rule, make your headlines as strong as possible.

HTML

HyperText Markup language is the code that browsers read and translate into a viewable webpage.

HTML tells the browser where to put text, graphics, forms, tables, sound, video, color and more.

To see the HTML code behind any webpage on the internet, simply open your web browser and select ‘view source’ under the view menu tab.

Hyperlink

A hyperlink is a piece of text or a graphic that is linked to a web page or to a specific location on a web page.

When you click on a hyperlink, you are automatically transferred to its target page or location.

Hyperlinks used to always be blue in color and underlined, but now they can be in any form, for example, click here.

Impression

The number of times a banner ad is downloaded from a server and possibly viewed is referred to as the number of impressions it receives.

Banner advertising is normally sold on a cost-per-thousand basis. Advertisers use impressions to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, but like hits, impressions give a relatively inaccurate measurement of how many times a downloaded ad has been viewed.

Viewers may be viewing the web page in a text-only browser, or they may not scroll far enough down the page to see the banner.

IP Address

IP (Internet Protocol) address appears as a set of four numbers separated by periods (e.g. 30.148.15.135) and acts as a unique identifier of your computer when you are connected to a network or the internet.

IP addresses are unique sets of registered numbers and are often referred to as internet addresses.

The InterNIC Registration Service assigns Internet addresses that identify a particular network and a particular web host on that network.

Your web host then provides you with an IP address that is linked to your domain name.

ISP

Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is the company that provides you with access to the Internet.

This internet provider should be connected to the internet 24 hours a day whenever your computer is turned on.

Jaaxy Keyword Tool

I had to add this one in as it is my favorite keyword research tool. Having a Jaaxy account makes it so easy to see in a few minutes what the best keywords are to use in your marketing campaigns.

KEI Ratio

KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) is a way to measure how competitive a search phrase is in comparison to other search phrases. The higher the KEI, the better.

Keyphrase

A two or more-word phrase prospects type into the search query box to find products and services on the internet.

Keyword

By entering keywords or keyphrases into a search engine, you can locate websites or information related to those keywords.

For example, when searching for websites or information about cats, you may use keywords like cat, kitten, cat food, Siamese, and so on.

Keyword Combinations

Terms that contain a set of targeted keywords ordered in different sequences.

Keyword Count

How often a keyword or keyword phrase is used in a particular web page. This determins the keyword density for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is the ratio of the number of times a keyword appears within a web page’s text. Keyword Density measures the keyword density of all keywords on any page on any website.

The density analysis results include the occurrence, popularity, and density of keywords from the page title, links, headings, and page body text.

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty is used to analyze the competitive landscape of a particular search term or phrase.

Keyword difficulty is a percentage score that will help you determine how difficult it will be to rank for a particular term on the search engines.

Keyword Matching

A set of options that, when applied to the keywords in your AdWords account, allow you to control the distribution of your ad.

Through keyword matching, you tell the system how exactly to match your keywords with those of the people who make a search.

Keyword Popularity

Keyword popularity is equal to the number of times a keyword is queried in the search engine’s database, usually estimated from the actual search counts of the previous month.

Keyword Predict

The estimated daily search volume for any given keyword across all search engines provided by keyword tools and databases.

Keyword Relevance

A measure of the relevance of a website to a keyword (or set of keywords) used in a search query. Keyword Relevance is primarily measured by the use of keywords in the title tag, meta tags, alternative text, hyperlink text, or document text of a website.

Keyword Research

Discovery and analysis of keywords (or words) to target for a search engine marketing campaign.

Keyword Targeted Campaign

A campaign where the advertiser selects keywords that will trigger ads from the campaign.

Keyword-targeted ads can appear on search results pages, on content pages, and other properties on the Google network.

Keyword Theme

In Google terms, a theme is the subject matter or the topic of your website. Keyword themes make your your search engine and pay-per-click campaigns irresistible to the search engines for high rankings.

Keyword Tool

This can be a free or subscription-based tool that collects search term data from the search engines worldwide.

This is my subscription-based keyword tool of choice.

Keyword Variations

Keyword variations include singular/plural forms, capitalizations, relevant variants act of your keywords, and also phrases containing your keywords.

Landing Page

This is normally the first page of yours that someone views when you send them somewhere. Usually, a person will arrive at a landing page after following a link from some other site, rather than typing in the web address.

The landing page can be any one of your pages but is normally one that aims to get your reader to take action by either buying something or leaving his email address.

Lead Capture

This is how you capture a contact information (name and email) for your list. Your lead capture page is a website or form on a website that can be promoted through any method of marketing. A lead capture page can also be known as a splash page or a squeeze page.

Linked In

A social network centered around increasing your business contacts.

List Address

The address used to distribute a message to a list.

List Administrator

A person who manages or owns an email list.

List Broker

A company that sells or rents lists of email addresses. Some list brokers are not reputable and sell lists with unusable or unsubstantiated candidates. It is therefore better to build your internal list.

List Owner

The owner of the email list defines what subscribers will read. The list owner also sets the general rules that all subscribers must accept to be subscribed to the list.

List Selects

This is a list of terms that define your list eg. age, income level, address, interests, etc.

List Server

The internet server that controls the distribution of a specific list.

Long Tail

This is a term first used by Chris Anderson to describe the distribution of wealth on the internet. The long tail represents the millions of niche market audiences that drive the majority of website traffic.

Lurkers

These are people who read but don’t contribute or add comments to forums.

It’s believed that one percent of people contribute new content to an online community, another nine percent comment, and the rest lurk.

Mailing List

A mailing list is one of the most valuable components of your internet business as these are people who have subscribed by giving you their email addresses. Never give or sell your list to anyone.

Mail Server

Your mail server is your computer and the software that it uses that transmits, receives and stores your email messages. It is located at your email client and/or your ISP.

Maximum Cost Per Click

This is the maximum price that an advertiser is willing to pay for each click. Generally, he will pay less than his maximum bid. This bid goes into determining the ranking of an ad in the sponsored results for a search.

Meta Tag

This is an HTML tag that gives information about the content of a website. Meta tags are invisible text that help define your website for search engine spiders.

Misspelled Keywords

As it suggests, these are errors in spelling. The reason that marketers use these is that many people type their search engine phrases with misspellings, but these are still potential targeted traffic for the website.

MSN Search

Microsoft’s search engine at www.msn.com.

Natural Search Results or Organic Listings

The non-Sponsored results are delivered by a search engine when a user enters a search term. These results are displayed at the left of the search engine’s results page when somebody searches.

Negative Keywords

If you add a negative sign (-) before the keyword that you wish to use to prevent your ads from displaying. This can be used to eliminate certain searches that may be irrelevant to your website.

Networks

These are structures defined by nodes and the connections between them.

In social networks, the nodes are people, and the connections are the relationships that they have.

Networking is the process by which you develop and strengthen those relationships.

This is a set of articles or summaries of information delivered in a specific format.

Offer

The offer you make in a direct mail package needs to be carefully thought out and matched as closely as possible to the interests, needs, and motivations of the list. As a rule of thumb, the more specifically matched the offer and list, the higher the response rate will be.

Offline

Offline is the opposite of online. This means that you are not connected to the internet.

Open-up Rate

The percentage of recipients who opened their email messages. The open-up rate is often used to measure the success of an email marketing campaign.

Open-up Tracking

This is the process of tracking how many recipients opened their email messages as part of an email marketing campaign. Open-up taking is only possible using HTML mail.

Operating System

This is a program that manages all other programs in a computer such as Windows or Unix.

Optimization

Optimization is the process of improving a website for search engine visibility. This includes building link popularity, search engine compatibility, keyword density, and improving the website’s content.

Opt-In

When you opt into a mailing list, you give someone your email address, usually by entering it into a web form. By opting in, you give them permission to add you to their opt-in mailing list and send you an email, usually in the form of a newsletter or ezine.

Opt-in forms can also be used to enter competitions or to receive a free eBook.

Opt-Out

This is when a subscriber decides to stop receiving email from a certain marketer.

Organic Search Results (Organic Listings)

The non-sponsored results are delivered by a search engine when a user enters a search term. These results are displayed on the left side of the screen when you search. Every marketer aims to get to the top of these lists.

Overture

A search engine that returns results based on paid placement rather than algorithmic rankings. Overture is currently owned by Yahoo.

Page Rank

The algorithm is used to determine the hierarchy of pages and websites in the search engine index.

Page rank was originally devised by Google and is a measure of the quality and quantity of traffic, links, visitors, and keyword content of a website.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

This advertising payment model allows advertisers to bid on keywords and pay only when the ad is clicked, thus paying for actual traffic rather than page impressions.

The highest keyword bidders receive the highest rankings in search engine results pages and, therefore, the most traffic.

The PPC model was first introduced to search by Overture and made famous by the enormous profits generated by Google’s Adsense and Adwords programs.

PDF

Portable Document Format is like HTML or text and is a way of formatting a file.

PDF is promoted and marketed by Adobe Systems, and is widely used with eBooks, newsletters, ezines, and other versions of print publications.

Both Windows and Mac users can read PDF files using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Permission Marketing

Permission Marketing is a term used in email marketing where marketers will ask permission before they send advertisements to prospective customers. It requires that people first opt in, rather than allowing people to opt out only after the ads have been sent.

Personalization

The insertion of personal greetings in email messages automatically. Personalization requires sophisticated email list management software that allows for so-called mail merge operations.

Podcast

Audio or video content can be downloaded automatically through a subscription to a website so you can view or listen offline.

Positioning

The concept of positioning has been around for over 30 years. It is the process of placing your company’s image or identity foremost in the minds of your customers.

Press Release

This is a public relations announcement issued to the news media and other targeted publications to let the public know of an important event or piece of information about your company.

A press release is a great way to increase your search engine visibility since your company will be featured as current top news in your industry.

Privacy Policy

This is an essential tool for every email marketer. It is a public statement declaring that you will never share, sell, or give away the email address that the people on your mailing list have entrusted with you.

Every email marketer should have one on their website. Here is an example.

[Company Name] supports the right to personal privacy and corporate security on the Internet. [Company Name] will never sell or market names, email addresses, or any other privileged information about our clients or subscribers.

Profiles

This is the information that you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site. This includes pictures, basic information, business interests, and a blurb about yourself, as well as tags that help people search for like-minded people.

Profit Signals

The profit signal informs you at a glance if a keyword is profitable. This makes it simpler to eliminate keywords that are likely to waste ad dollars.

R/S Ratio

Results-To-Searches Ratio is the ratio of the number of websites listed versus the number of times the keyword is searched for on the search engine. For the R/S Ratio, the lower the better.

Ranking

This indicates the position of your site in a search engine’s natural results when a user enters a particular search term/keyword.

The ranking or ad rank also refers to the position of a per-per-click ad in the sponsored listings as determined by the maximum bid and click-through rate.

Related Keywords

Closely related keywords and search phrases that are relevant to your website or business that you are not the obvious search terms.

Relevancy

The accuracy of the match between the keyword typed in the search box by an internet user and the results returned by the search engine.

ROI (Return on Investment)

This is the percentage of profit returned for the funds invested to produce it. In terms of search engine optimization, ROI refers to the sales directly attributed to an SEO or SEM campaign.

RSS

This is short for Really Simple Syndication. It allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you via a feed.

Sales Copy

These are the cleverly written words on your landing page or website that trigger desire and take away a visitor’s resistance.

Good sales copy is the most important part of your overall internet marketing strategy.

Search Engine

These are essential internet tools used to locate websites and information related to particular subjects.

When you visit a search engine website, you type in keywords or key phrases, and the search engine locates the websites that match your keywords.

Each search engine has different criteria by which it searches and lists websites, so you will get different results by searching for the same keyword combinations in different search engines.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

This is the process of marketing a website through search engines by driving traffic by improving page rank, inbound links or even paying for traffic.

Search Engine Market Share

This feature shows the percentage of a keyword’s searches performed on major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This differs from search engine marketing as this involves unpaid techniques to improve one’s search engine rankings. Both SEM and SEO are used to increase website traffic, conversions, page rank, and ROI.

Search Network

These are ads displayed on Google search results pages and their Search networks.

Search Query / Term

The keyword, keyphrase, or list of words that you type into the search engine to find relevant websites.

Search Spider (or Spyder)

A program that constantly scans the internet to collect information for search engines. They can follow internal and external links to create an index of all the documents on the internet. They are also known as crawlers.

Seasonal Search Trends

Seasonal trends can help you determine the ideal timing for marketing campaigns, to predict traffic levels during low peak periods like the holidays, or simply view the change in demand for a product or service throughout the year.

Secure Server

You will need access to a secure server if you conduct credit card transactions or collect personal information on your website.

A secure server encrypts personal information (converts it to secret code) to make sure it cannot be viewed by unauthorized users.

When you are on a secure page, you will normally see a picture of a lock or key to indicate the page is secure.

Segmenting Your List

Using several qualifiers, including specific demographic, geographic and lifestyle criteria to hone in on a select group of people that are most likely to respond to your offer.

Server

This is a computer dedicated to storing files. Web hosting companies store or host websites on their servers for a monthly or annual fee.

Site Targeted Campaign

Site targeting lets AdWords advertisers choose individual sites in the Google content network where they’d like their ads to appear.

You can select sites for your site-targeted campaign in two ways: Name the specific websites where you’d like to advertise or use a list of keywords that describe your site.

Social Media

These are platforms that people use to publish, converse, and share content online. They could include blogs, wikis, podcasts, and sites to share photos and bookmarks like FaceBook.

There are many social media platforms online with the most popular being Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Social Networking

Social networking sites are online places where users can create a profile for themselves, and then socialize with others using a range of social media tools including blogs, videos, images, tagging, lists of friends, forums, and messaging.

Soft Bounces

Email messages that cannot be delivered to the recipient because of a temporary error, such as a full mailbox.

Source Code

Source code is normally written in HTML and are program instructions that make up a webpage. You can view the source code of any webpage in Internet Explorer and/or Firefox by selecting ‘View Source’ from the ‘View Menu.’

Spam

This is an unsolicited commercial email.

You are considered to be ‘spamming’ people if you send emails to people who have not permitted you to do so.

If you send spam, be prepared for serious consequences.

Spam email messages are normally caught in spam filters, and your email could be blacklisted or even shut down by your ISP.

Target Marketing

A portion of a market that you’ve identified as having some special characteristic that is worth marketing to.

Your target should come naturally from your interests and experience. For example, if you have been a doctor for the last 7 years, you could market to people who are in the medical field because you are familiar with their mindset.

Targeting

This is the process of using demographics and related information in a customer database to select the most appropriate recipients for a specific campaign.

Terms of Service

The basis on which you agree to use a forum or other web-based place for creating or sharing content.

Check before using what rights the site owners may claim over your content.

Threads

These are strands of conversation.

On an email list or web forum, they will be defined by messages that use the same subject. On blogs, they emerge through comments and trackbacks.

Trackback

Some blogs provide a facility for other bloggers to leave a calling card automatically, instead of commenting. Blogger A may write on blog A about an item on blogger B’s site, and through the trackback facility leave a link on B’s site back to A.

The collection of comments and trackbacks on a site facilitates conversations.

Tracking

In an email marketing campaign, measuring behavioral activities such as click-throughs and open ups.

Traffic (Website Traffic)

The amount of visitors and visits a website receives. Website traffic is very important, as you can’t have conversions without visitors.

Twitter

Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets”.

Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but on November 7, 2017, this limit was doubled to 280 for all languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Unique Selling Position

A USP is the strongest benefit your business has over the competition. Your USP should show that by using your product or service, the prospect will get a particular benefit not available from anyone else.

Unique Visitor

Unique visitors are tracked by their unique IP addresses, which are much like online fingerprints.

Remember that counting unique visitors to measure the success of an online promotion can be misleading for several reasons and a single IP address may not necessarily reflect a single or truly ‘unique’ visitor.

Unsubscribe

To remove a subscriber from an email list.

Unsubscribe Link

Email marketers must include an unsubscribe link in the body of EVERY message. If recipients click on this link they wish to be removed from the marketers list.

If an email is sent without an unsubscribe link, the marketer could be accused of sending spam.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

The URL is the address of a website or webpage for example https://dancersforum.com.

Viral Marketing

This is a marketing strategy that encourages email recipients to pass along messages to others to generate additional exposure.

Visibility

Visibility is a measure of a website’s ranking in search engines or directories.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)

This enables users to use a computer or other internet device for phone calls with an additional charge.

Wealthy Affiliate university

A platform that allows you to build and host your websites, as well as a training ground for anybody wanting to learn how to sell products over the internet. Wealthy Affiliate has been around for many years and helped many people to make a full-time living off of the internet. You can read more about this here.

This is another must-have term for my internet marketing terminology list.

Web 2.0

This term was coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and other internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web1.0). Web 2.0 is associated with the idea of using the internet as a platform.

Web Form

This is an HTML form that contains fields for collection information.

Web Host

A web hosting company sells online space where websites are stored or hosted. A web hosts computers are ideally connected to the internet 24 hours a day so that web surfers around the world can access your page at any time.

Whitelist

A list of pre-authorized email addresses from which email messages can be delivered regardless of spam filters.

Wiki

A webpage or set of pages that can be edited collaboratively.

The best-known example is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created by thousands of contributors across the world.

Once people have the appropriate permissions set by the wiki owner, they can create pages and/or add to and alter existing pages.

WordPress

The best free blogging platform. Its free themes, plug-ins, user-friendly capabilities, and community features make it the most popular platform for bloggers and website owners worldwide.

WordPress is a platform that should be on every internet marketing terminology list.

Yahoo

A search engine that is great but not as huge as Google.

YouTube

One of many video-sharing sites.

It is currently the largest video-sharing site and is owned by Google. There are a host of video-sharing sites around niche topics and how to as well, but YouTube is the biggest by far.

I hope that this internet marketing terminology list of definitions has helped you to understand this new language that has slowly been creeping into our everyday lives. Please comment below if there are any important terms that I have left off of this internet marketing terminology list.