denning e-solutions - Glossary of E-Marketing Terms, Search Engine Terms Defined

We have developed the following list of definitions to help our users better understand the terms that are a part of the Internet marketing language. This list will be updated regularly to include new terms and modify existing definitions as needed.

There are also several other glossaries available at other locations online; you can access some of those by clicking here. Also, there is a new glossary available at SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization).

To view a definition, click on one of the following words.

ALT tags - stands for alternative representation and originated as a way for users to read what an image is supposed to be in the event that the image is not viewable. These are the words that appear as you mouse over an image. Please mouse over our logo in the upper left-hand corner of the page for an example of how these work. Search engines include ALT tags as relevant data when cataloging web sites in their databases.

AdSense (by Google) - Program offered by Google that allows web site owners to place Google PPC ads on their web site and earn money for each click. Link to AdSense.

CPM - Cost per thousand impressions. This is a pricing structure used for various types of Internet advertising. As the site owner, you would pay the agreed amount each time your ad is viewed (not necessarily clicked) 1000 times.

Directory or Search Engine - What is the difference? While they are all commonly referred to as search engines, they are not all the same. Knowing the difference is important because it dictates the way in which you approach them in getting your site properly listed.

Directories, important examples include Yahoo! and Open Directory Project, are human-edited lists of links broken down into a . . . well . . . directory. They present main categories on their home pages and then organize all the data under those headings, allowing the user to drill down further and further to the specific category that is relevant to their search. When you submit to directories, you begin by finding the appropriate category for your site and then suggest the site from that page. It is then reviewed by a real person (as opposed to being crawled by an electronic spider) and added or not.

Search engines, on the other hand, use electronic spiders (catchy word for software programs) to crawl the web and gather information. These spiders go to specific web sites (if submitted by the site owner) and catalog the contents. They may also find your site if it is linked to from other sites that they visit. They crawl the web by going link to link to link. Because they are not human, they do not see the images or design of a site; they are only interested in what is in the code. Specifically, they are interested in the tags (title, alt, meta - see separate discussions of those) and the content (text) of the site. It is for this reason that you must develop your site with the spider in mind and not just what the end user will see. Make it easy for the spider to navigate your site, include tons of keyword-laden content and you will be off to a good start.

Distribution List - This is a collection of email addresses set up in your email client (Outlook, Eudora etc.) grouped by some common element such as friends, clients, family. You can add and delete members to/from the list as needed. Creating such a list allows you to send the same message to all the members with just one action. Distribution lists can be a great (that is easy and free) way to inform client/customers about new services or products, giving value to the client and generating traffic to your site.

Doorway Page - This is the name given to a page within your site that is created solely for the purpose of improving your search engine positioning. I disagree with this positioning tactic as it offers no additional content or information of use or interest to your visitors. What's more, most search engines will penalize, or worse, ban your site for trying to use this method.

Google - The most important search engine, it ranks first (as of March 2005) in audience reach (with Yahoo, MSN and AOL following respectively). Google scores first in both average minutes spent searching and total search hours. A good ranking on this search engine is critical to any search engine positioning efforts. Link to this search engine: www.google.com.

IYP - IYP stands for Internet Yellow Pages, these are the online versions of the directories that have been around for ever, organizing local businesses by product or service. The major IYP players include SuperPages.com, AOL Yellow Pages, SwitchBoard.com, CitySearch.com, YellowPages.com, Dexonline.com, RealPages.com, SmartPages.com, and YellowBook.com. Listings in these directories, particularly if the directories are placing well in the organic results for your keyword phrases can be an effective component to your Internet marketing plan. Many of these directories offer video ads and other innovative online advertising tactics.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) - A system used by search engines to try to replicate artificial intelligence in generating more relevant search results. It is the process of creating order out of the entire content of a web page by examining the interconnectedness of the text. It goes beyond just the cataloging of keywords and tries to "understand" what a page is about. LSI will have an increasingly more important role in SEO and underlines the importance of good, quality content, not just a list of keyword phrases.

Link Popularity - This is the term given to the number of other sites that link to yours. Search engines use this rating in determining your site's position within their search results. The logic is that if more sites link to yours than your competitor's, it must be of more value to the user. You can check your link popularity with several online tools (free). Try this one: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Log Files - These are the files that detail the footprints left by visitors to your site. They include information such as referring URL, search terms used if sent to your site from a search engine, length of stay at your site, entrance page etc. By analyzing and monitoring your site traffic in this way, you can gauge the effectiveness of your various e-marketing strategies and re-group as needed.

Increasingly, site traffic is monitored less by analyzing log files and more with embedded tracking scripts (snippets of code inserted into a site's pages that track the same data as log files).

KPI - An acronym for Key Performance Indicators. This is a term that refers to the metrics used to measure progress towards defined organizational goals. After a company has defined its mission and subsequent goals, the KPIs are metrics that measure the business' progress towards those goals. While this term is a broad business-level term, it is included here because often the goals that are being measured in today's business climate deal with web site performance. For example, a targeted number of site users over a period of time may be a KPI. Or, a user conversion percentage may be the KPI that ties in with an overall sales objective.

One of the factors that separates the Internet from traditional marketing and sales channels is its ability to be quantified. We can track rankings, site users, sales, and the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns in a way that simply isn't possible in offline advertising. We encourage you to include KPIs in your business planning for your online property. It requires you to set goals and by measuring your progress towards those goals, it maintains focus and momentum.

Meta Search Engines - One of the best known examples of this type of search engine is www.dogpile.com. Basically, these sites submit queries to a variety of other search engines and then return the compiled results to you, the user, from multiple sources. They do not maintain a database themselves; they provide the user a way to query many different search engines all at the same time. As a site owner, your rankings in these meta search engines depend on your rankings within the search engines that they use to provide results. There is no additional work that you can do to target or optimize your site for these meta search engines.

META tags - Because this topic is treated really well a lot of other places, I will include only a very brief description of what they are here and refer you to the external resources page for links to more information (there are even tag generating tools at some of the listed sites). The META tags are included in the <head> section of the html code that makes up a web page. They include both a description and a keywords variety. It is, in part, these tags that tell the search engine spiders what the site is about, helping them to categorize properly your site within their databases. If you are in the site development process, you will need to make sure that your developer is including these tags in the html code - it is not automatic. To view your html code and determine if you have META tags in place, simply right click on your web page and choose "View Source." This will open a separate window with the source code of that web page. The tags, if they are there, will be up at the top just under the <title> tag.

In terms of SEO, meta tags are much less important than they once were in determining your site's place in the SERPs. They are still a good idea for a number of reasons. One important reason to continue to use meta data to your advantage is that Google uses the META description tag as its description of the site site in the SERPs. If no description tag exists for a site, Google defaults to the first text it finds on the page. The first text on your page may or may not be the message you'd like to send to searchers as they evaluate which of the results links to choose.

Open Directory Project - This is how they describe themselves:

"The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors."

While their site itself is not used by a relatively large number of searchers, a listing there is still very important. They give their data to the other search engines (Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit), which use it to supplement their own search results. See the description above for how a directory works versus a search engine. Link to ODP: www.dmoz.com

Overture - Formerly GoTo.com, this engine offers PPC advertising to site owners at low per click rates (determined through a bidding process) and with a minimal start up cost (as low as $50 - all of which is applied to your click-throughs). Basically, you select keyword phrases related to your site, bid on those phrases, and then pay that bid amount each time a searcher clicks through to your site. Your Overture link is featured on other search engines (Yahoo!, MSN, InfoSpace, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, and Netscape) that include the Overture sites among their search results. Link to Overture.

Update: as of July 2003, Yahoo purchased Overture. They operated independently for a while, but recently Yahoo has integrated the Overture system into their own search marketing and call the service Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Pay Per Click (PPC) - This type of Internet advertising lists your site in designated "sponsored sites" area on the search results screen in response to a query using your pre-determined keywords. You then only pay when someone clicks on your link, taking them to your site. Two popular programs offering this type of online marketing are Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search. The benefit of this type of program is that you only pay for traffic that ends up at your site. Many other programs charge you if your ad is viewed whether or not you receive any traffic. Also, the cost and time to set up a program like this is quite minimal compared with other Internet marketing options.

A PPC campaign can be a great compliment to a natural optimization campaign, bridging the gap between the SEO work and its results. It can also be a great way to boost visibility during seasonal sales periods. The key to any SEM campaign, but particularly a PPC campaign is establishing goals and parameters before hand. For example, what is a click to your site worth? Establishing a targeted ROI and making PPC decisions based on those guidelines will ensure that you get the most out of this potentially effective advertising outlet.

Paid Inclusion - Unlike Paid Submission, explained below, paid inclusion guarantees that your site will be included in the listings for the area that you pay for. Generally, the inclusion will be for a specified period of time.

Paid Submission - In this for-fee scenario, you are paying an up front fee for your site to be considered for inclusion - that is, just for the submission process. You are given no guarantee that it will be added to the directory or search engine. What you do get is the assurance that it will be reviewed and within a specific timeframe (generally something like seven (7) days). The Yahoo directory listings is a good example of this type of scenario (their fee is now $299.00).

Referring URL - This term generally surfaces when you are analyzing the traffic to your site. One of the pieces of information captured by your site's log files is the referring URL. It indicates the web site address (URL) that sent the traffic to your site. So, if you received X number of visitors from www.google.com/search, you know that your search engine positioning is successfully sending searchers from Google to your site.

Monitoring your referring URLs also provides you with meaningful feedback concerning your other paid advertising links; you can see precisely how many visitors (if any) were sent from the various sites on which you advertise, allowing you to make more informed decisions concerning the renewal of those advertising programs.

SERPs - An acronym for Search Engine Ranking Pages. This term is used to describe the list of web sites that are returned by the search engines in response to a query by a user. For example, you type "birmingham web design" into Google and hit Enter. The list of sites that you get back from Google is the set of SERPs. In the SEO process, a site owner seeks to be at the top or as near to the top as possible in the SERPs.

Search Engine - Software designed to crawl the web, jumping from link to link gathering information from sites. They then categorize that information into their databases. When you visit a search engine such as HotBot or Google, you are querying their database of site information. Each search engine has its own algorithms for determining which sites will rank high for particular keyword phrases - that is, which sites will be returned in what order in response to your query.

Criteria that will typically (each one is different and they change regularly) be used by search engines in determining search results include the presence and content of META tags, title tags, keyword frequency, keyword prominence, word count, and link popularity.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - This is the more general term that includes both organic search engine optimization techniques (see below) as well as paid options, such as Google AdWords, encompassing the overall online search engine marketing campaign.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - One name given to the process of trying to maximize a site's exposure in the various search engines and directories, targeting specific keywords and phrases. This process is also called web positioning. The process largely involves making changes to the site (page titles, keyword-rich content development, META data) itself to make it more attractive to the search engines.

Social Media - Wikipedia put it well when they defined social media as, "online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. The social media sites typically use tools like message boards, forums, podcasts, bookmarks, communities, wikis, and weblogs (or blogs)." Examples of various social media sites include Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Digg, LinkedIn etc. Having a presence in these various social media spheres is a great way to expand your reach and get your message further distributed online.

Spider - Synonymous with search engine, this is the software which follows links, scans web sites and adds them to the search engine's database.

Universal Search - Universal search is the term given to the new method (as of September 2007) Google is using in delivering search results. In the past, when a search term was entered into Google’s search field, it returned the web sites that best matched the query. Simple enough. A site owner competed only with the other web sites vying for placement with the same keywords. Now, however, Google delivers “universal” results. That is, they now deliver results that include other digital content such as video, images, news, books and blogs. So the competition for valuable real estate on the results page is steeper and includes not just other web sites but digital media of all types.

Yahoo - One of the most important of the search engines and one of the most visited Internet properties. In March of this year (2004), Yahoo launched its own crawler-based search engine, Yahoo Search. Before that, Yahoo's search results were pulled from a variety of other sources (including Google).

For a commercial site, a well placed listing in the Yahoo directory is critical to any SEO program. While not free anymore - sigh - it is still worth the $299.00 annual investment. It is important when submitting your site to Yahoo that you find the category that is the best fit for your site. Run sample searches using various keyword phrases related to your business. Narrow in on those categories that seem to yield results that include other businesses like yours, preferably your direct competitors - that is where you want to be. You then hit the "Suggest a Site" link from that location. Go to Yahoo to give it a try. d.e.s. handles the submission process to Yahoo as a part of our SEO services. Contact us for more information.