Internet marketing terms

Welcome to Searchology 101's internet marketing terms page. Searchology 101 is dedicated to offering the best online marketing data and information. If you see a internet marketing definition you believe is incorrect, please contact us to request a clarification.

If you have additional website questions, comments, new words, or would like clarification feel free to contact us. All terms below have been researched and\or defined by Alton J. Duderstadt II with reference to SeoBook and marketingterms.com/dictionary .

Internet Marketing Terms 101
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of online advertising program in which website owners with services or products can rely on hundreds or thousands of other websites to promote their brands and services. Affiliate marketers display banner ads, product feeds, and text links to promote other sites. Affiliate partners share a portion of each sale in commission form or revenue sharing basis.

Arbitrage
Arbitrage is "black hat" practice of buying keywords at a lower cost and driving the traffic to a page filled with Ad Sense ads. This is one form of arbitrage, there are others, essentially, it is a way to cheat the paid search system and make money. This is not recommended at all by Searchology 101.

Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral targeting is complex and a little controversial. Website visitors and visitors who have clicked on ads are tracked with cookies or unique identifiers. When the website visitors type in or search for similar terms ads are then re-targeted to them in display or text ads. 

Bidding War
Bidding wars may occur when two or more online advertisers bid for top position or keywords. This is a rare occurrence but it does happen.

Black Hat
Black Hat usually refers to search engine optimization but may be applied to pay per click,  and arbitrage tactics. A clear case of a black hat search engine optimization specialist or company would say, "I can get you to the top of the search engines in a month." Avoid this type of company and individual at all cost.

Blog(s)
Blogs are online journals which can be protected from mass consumption or marketed much like a website.

Bounce Rate
The time a website visitor stays on your site versus "bouncing" off to another website.

Brand Interaction
The communication or interaction between proactive online website visitors and a companies social community created specifically for the purpose of closing the gap between a stagnant brand and a 'living, breathing, brand'.

Channel Attribution
The process and end decision on where a sale, lead, or conversion came from and what channel [pay per click, banner ads, cotent ads, etc.] was responsible for the sale, lead, etc.

Click Banks
Online locations which reward you with free advertising by clicking on ads placed by other websites.

Click Fraud
Click fraud occurs when searchers intentionally click [multiple times] on pay per click ads, banner ads, etc., with the intention to drive up cost  for the advertiser or create a bidding war.

Conversion(s)
A conversion can mean many things but typically conversions are a goal of some sort. This may be a visitor turning into a lead, sign up for a newsletter, coupon view, etc.

Contextual Advertising
Displaying text ads or banner ads on relevant content website. Contextual advertising is usually sold on a CPM basis.

CPA
Cost per acquisition. CPA may be associated with the cost per new lead or new customer. The average CPA depends on the type of business you are in and what your company is willing to pay for each new customer, lead, user, etc.

CPA #2
CPA can refer to cost per action. For example, a cost per incoming phone call.

CPC
Cost per click.

CPT
Cost per one thousand impressions. This was once referred to CPM. CPM is now referred to as cost per one million impressions.

CTR
Click through rate. The click through rate is determined by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. A good pay per click CTR is 2% or better. Usually, brand terms and company names (this depends on the popularity of the brand or company) have a much higher CTR.

Display Advertising
Also know as banner advertising.

Domain Names
The name of your website or URL.

Domain Squatting [squatters]
Individuals or companies who buy domain names and fill the content with banners or ads in order to generate income while waiting for a higher price point for the URL.

Email marketing
Marketing to individuals via email campaigns.

eCPM
Effective cost per million.

Links
Links are URLs placed on a website, directory, blog, or other type of online property which sends website visitor traffic from the link to it's destination. Links are a good thing to have and considered to be one of the bigger factors in your websites natural rank.

Link Exchange
A program by which website owners exchange links with other website owners.  For example, you put my link on your site and I'll put your link on my website.

Link Farm
Link farms are website locations in which there may be thousands of links which don't really leave the web or farm in which they have been created. Think; a whole farm of cows which will never go anywhere.

Natural Rank or Natural Results
Natural rank or natural results is how high your website ranks under certain keywords in the natural section of the search engines results pages.

One way Links
Links pointing to your website or a website with no link exchange needed or required.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)
The process of defending, cleaning up, or protecting a company or individual online reputation from\against negative blogs, complaint forums, and complaint website.

Search engine marketing (SEM)
Marketing a website by using, display advertising, pay per click advertising, social networking, search engine optimization, email marketing, mobile marketing, and iterations thereof.

Searchology [surch-ol-uh-je] - noun - orgin: 2005 ~ search + ology

1. the science that deals with marketing websites, landing pages and other World Wide Web wonders via natural means or paid placements (aka pay per click, content advertising, banner advertising, mobile advertising).
2. the study of human interaction and websites, display ads, text ads, video ads and other forms of continually emerging Internet technologies and online destinations.
3. the art form of creating high impact bright and shiny objects [online] which will propel the viewers to interact and take action based on messaging and creativity.
4. the analysis of collected data from human interaction and marketed websites without loosing ones mind.

origin ~ 2005 ~ search + ology
Searchologist [surch-ol-uh-jist]- noun

1. a person who specializes in searchology - origin: 2005 ~ search + ologist

SERP
Search engine results page.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Marketing a website on various social websites like Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The process of optimizing the content, structure, links, usability, keyword density, etc., for stronger natural search engine ranking.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)
The process of optimizing a websites presence for optimal social media presence.

Systemic Content
Content related to your keywords and subject matter.

User Generated Content
Content generated by website visitors by using forums, blog responses, or online social communities.

Cool Websites

Who has the biggest share of the Internet? Take a look at The Search Engine Market Share. This 'live' data keeps track of which search engines have what market share.

Search engine relationship chart shows the relationships between search engines.