Glossary


301 redirect: Sending a 301 or permanent status code it is a server setting that redirects traffic from one URL to another. Also called permanent redirect.
404 errors: An error returned by a web server when a request file cannot be found. A Alt Tag: Alternative - or Alt tag is a tag included into the source code of an image. It basically lists the image name without having to display the name everywhere.

Anchor text: HTML text that acts a link, which when clicked links to another location on the Internet. Above the fold: That part of the web page which is visible without scrolling.

Affiliate Marketing: Associating with a product or a merchant to market their stuff and earn commission for the same by the various PPC modules.

Affiliate Network: A third party to affiliates and merchants; that provide services like account management, tracking and synchronization, for affiliates and marketers.

Affiliate fraud: A bogus activity generated to earn illegitimate revenue by an affiliate.

Ad space: A space available on a website to publish banner ads.

Apache: An open source web server software.

Above the fold: A portion of the web page that is visible without scrolling.

Auto-responders - An automated response sent by the recipient's email software after he gets an email. Banner ad: A dynamic 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels tall box endorsing a product or business on a web page.

Blog: An online journal that initiates dialogue and posts various comments from people in a reverse chronology.

Button ad: A graphic ad on a Web page that's smaller than a banner.

Back links: Inbound links which link a click to a particular page. Links routing traffic to your site are back links which enumerate methods of higher web ranks.

Bid management software: Automated software used for management and reporting of paid search marketing across search engines these software use automated management and reporting of campaigns and track activities.

Black–hat SEO: Search engine optimisers who use unethical practices, trying to dodge search engine algorithms to attain higher rankings

Blog: A public platform which accommodates exchange of information and opinion when blogers post their opinions for all others to read.

Bounce rates: Proportion of visitors to a page or site that exit after visiting a single page only, which is usually expressed as a percentage.

Brand miss–spellings: A user mistypes a brand into the search box or into the URL address box. Best practice is to ensure the brand is visible. Click-through rate (CTR): It is the average number of clicks for an online ad per 100 ad impressions; a 2% click-through rate means for every 100 times the ad was seen, two people clicked on it.

Bounce Messages - Emails that are undelivered and sent back to the server from where they had originated.

Bulk - Messages sent by spammers, and usually considered as spam. Cookies: Files from a Website that are transferred to and stored on a visitor’s Website that provide information, such as what the visitor purchased and what site the visitor was on immediately preceding the visit, to the Website.

Contextual marketing: Placing merchandise near relevant content.

CPC: Cost Per Click.

CPL: Cost Per Lead.

CPM: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS): A website coding method that allows developer to control the styling of fonts and placement on content etc.

Cloaking: A unethical practice of dodging the content of the website from users and search engines at a given point of time. Camouflaging spammed text into the background colour to hide it from user’s eye.

Call to action - Words in an email that prompt recipients to take action. These are words or phrases that appeal to users, coaxing them into buying products.

Click-through - The action of clicking on a link mentioned in an email sent for marketing purposes.

Click-Through Rate - The ratio of click-through (on the link mentioned in the mail) to total emails sent.

Commercial Email - Mails sent to advertise a product or service, mainly for commercial purposes.

Cross-sell - It is the process of recommending additional products or services to customers who are planning to buy something from you.

Caching: In order to let user re-access information quickly Web files are stored for later re-use. Directories: A databank of various sites, categorised into different genre`s usually maintained by a human editor.

Doorway page: A page usually outside the navigational structure of the parent site. A link that spells a particular keyword but redirects you to an irrelevant page all-together.

Double opt-in - Many times, users subscribe to online services by giving their email addresses on a web page. Then, they also confirm their subscription after receiving an email in their mentioned address. This process authenticates the user's id for the mailing software of that website.

Double opt-out - It is the same as opt-in, but used for unsubscribing from mailers. This option is made impossible by a few spam operators who simply do not allow users to opt out of mailing processes. Eye balls: Slang for visitors on a web page.

Entry page: See landing page.

Email Blast - An explosion of email by virtue of being sent to multiple recipients. This is done to make users aware of alterations or to make special announcements, etc.

Express Consent - The action of a user agreeing to receive emails from a website by clicking on a particular link on a web page. False Positives - Refers to emails that are not spam, but categorised as spam by the email filters of the recipient.

Format - The basic appearance of an email - is possible in plain text, HTML or other formats offered by web explorers. Geo tracking: Carried out by PPC services, it helps advertisers to specify the geographical region their ad would run.

Geo navigation: Links which are displayed on every page of the website.

Graphical text: Text that is contained in image files such as JPEG’s and GIF’s

GYM : Abbreviation for Google, Yahoo and MSN. Hit: A communication made for a web browser to the server meaning an action taken on the lines of the element of a website. Which means each time a web pages is viewed, each separate item will log one hit on the server.

HTML: Hyper Text Mar-up Language a tag language that is written to develop web pages.

Hard Bounce - Emails that bounce back and never reach the targeted recipient due to non-existence of the email address or the domain. Impressions: A single act of viewing a web page or advertisement.

Inbound links: Links pointing to a website from another site which are hosted by other sites to one’s site.

Index: When a search engine crawls through a page to store its information in its directory to be accessed by users later on it is termed as a page was indexed. JavaScript: A scripting language developed by Netscape, it is used to create interactive Web Sites. Keyword: A word or a phrase that describes what one is searching for on a search engine. Usually what net surfers type in search boxes is termed as a keyword to a particular requirement.

Keyword density: The number of times a keyword appears in a writ-up in order to optimise the same the UK finance market and the targeted audience. With all these factors in mind we re-designed their website and modelled them a brand. Landing Page: Entry pages or the landing pages are the few essentials when talking of search engine optimisation. Build on a common intent targeting the optimisation campaign these serve as destination of Search engine traffic.

Link validator: Software that checks the working status of links within a website.

Link ability: Perceived potential of web page’s to receive inbound links.

List Broker - An entity that resells lists of email addresses.

List Building - The most important part of email marketing services. It is the process in which marketers generate a list of email addresses that are to be targeted in their campaign.

List Host - The host or web service provider that manages large email address databases and deals with the distribution of emails in bulk.

List Manager - The operator of opt-in email databases. This can also refer to a software that maintains a mailing list. Meta description tag: Meta tags contained in an HTML document that describes the content of the particular web page.

Metrics: Measurements or methods of evaluation.

Metadata: Hidden comments that describe characteristics of a document like the file structure, author or keywords. These can further help determine the relevance of the rank. Niche directories: Both paid and unpaid directories that provide links to sites that focus on similar theme or that relate to the same industry. Off–page factors: Optimisation factors which are not contained in an organisation own web page. Factors such as quantity and quality of inbound links etc…

On–page factors: Optimisation factors that are contained within the realms of one’s website . Like web content, site design, meta tags and various such aspects which help build a web site.

Online marketing: Simply put, the method of advertising that utilise the internet as a platform to address its audiences.

Organic SEO: Optimisation efforts aim to optimise the site based on the requirement of the search engine rather than use paid methods to strategically place their links on top ranks.

Open Rate - The ratio of emails opened by a user to the number sent to the user. The popular calculation formula is - emails delivered (sent - hard bounces)/emails opened.

Opt-in - The action of subscribing to a mailing list for receiving emails from a company.

Opt-out - A mailing list which sends emails to users who are not subscribed recipients, and gives them the option of opting out from the list. Page Rank: Ranging from 0–10 with 10 being the highest, Google’s proprietary measurement of the credibility of a page is ranked.

Page view: The group of hits that make up a single viewing of a page.

Paid Inclusions: When a website pays to buy strategic location on a SERP to be indexed or re-crawled on a frequent basis.

PPC: A subset of the SEO activity that encompasses the setup and management of listings, it is a paid form of advertisement where the advertisers allot specific keywords to a link which appears on the SERP by virtue of the amount paid and not by optimisation.

Personalisation - Personalised emails sent in accordance with the preferences and choices of the recipient. This helps in building a connection with the user, who can eventually by prompted to buy a product.

Privacy - Usually refers to policies created by law and order agencies dealing with the Internet. It requires businesses to respect the private space and information of a web user, and also restricts them from sharing personal data with external sources. Robot: Also called spiders or crawlers ‘robot’ are Software used by search engines to travel the web and send content from various web pages, for indexing back to the search engine.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication, it’s a web format that supports web feed, mostly available on various news sites etc, which receive live updation of content from the source to the publisher.

Rental List - An emailing list that is meant for use only once. The list is rented for a particular period of time on the payment of a fee. SEM: Search engine marketing; the entire process of marketing your product service or brand online.

Spamming: An abusive or deceptive online practice of sending unsolicited ads, emails, posting non-sensical comments on blogs etc in order to maximise the visibility of a site.

Spider: See robot.

SERP: Search engine result page

Sniffer: Software that monitors activities over the network. It can be used for practices such as filtering suspicious traffic or determining the speed of user’s web connection.

Scraping: A method of stealing content, which copies content from one website to another.

SEO : Search engine optimisation.

Search query: A keyword entered into a search engine.
Segmentation - Sending mails to a particular email addresses from an available list, in order to reach out to a targeted customer base.

Soft Bounce - An email which bounces back after failing to enter the recipient's mail box despite passing through his mail server. Unavailability of space in the recipient's inbox is the most common reason behind a soft bounce. However, these emails can be delivered in the future by the network administrators.

Spam - Also known as Unsolicited Bulk Email, it is a form of bulk mail delivered by companies that specialise in list building for email marketing. Recipients usually throw such mails in their 'junk mail' folder, and do not even go through them. However, there is a very small fraction of recipients who actually open such mails and respond to them.

SEM: Search engine marketing; the entire process of marketing your product service or brand online.

Spam Filter - Software used by email websites to filter out unsolicited mails from the genuine ones. The filter stops spam mails from entering the user's inbox.

Subject Line - The subject of an email sent for marketing purposes. The more attractive a subject line, the better are chances of the email being opened by the recipient. Topical community: Also called topical neighbourhood, a group of website that share a common subject matter.

Tracking - The process of keeping a track on the result of your email marketing campaign. This includes reporting of CTR, bounce mails, etc.

Trigger-based Messaging - Messages that are triggered by the users themselves, especially to seek further information in relation to a previous message. Unique visitor : During a given period of time each individual who visits a website. While this technique has a loophole for two people using the same computer are logged in as a single unique visit or while.

Usability: The factors that overhaul a site with regard to its user friendliness.

Unique Click - Even though a visitor might click on a link several times during a particular period of time, it is actually counted as only one unique click.

Unsolicited Commercial Email - Spam mails sent for commercial and advertising purposes, mostly without permission from the recipient. It is considered a crime in many countries, according to prevailing cyber laws. Visible text : Text which is visible to a site visitor using a standard browser.

Vblog: Short hand of video blog.