Internet Marketing Glossary

Confused by all the tech talk? We're developing this glossary of Internet marketing definitions to help you understand the concepts behind the services ClickScience offers. The opinions expressed are our own, and were arrived at through years of observation, experimentation, and search engine research. If there's a subject you'd like to see covered that isn't, please contact us and we'll add an entry on the topic.

A/B (Split) Testing 

Above the Fold

Affiliate

Anchor Text 

Authority Page: An authority page is a page that, in the eyes of the search engines, is authoritative on its subject. A topic-relevant link from an authority page is generally more valuable than many links from non-authoritative pages, so these are the types of links you should seek out. Your website can also come to be considered an authority page by the search engines, and this can have a dramatic impact on your rankings and traffic...

Backlink: A backlink is simply a link from one website to another. For example, if website X links to your website, your site would be said to have a backlink from site X. Backlinks are also known as incoming links or inbound links. Backlinks are the major foundation of all modern search engine algorithms. The more you have, the better off you will be, as long as they come from good link neighborhoods. Conversely, lots of backlinks...

Below the Fold

Bounce Rate

Clickfraud

Content: Content doesn't really need a definition, does it? It's whatever you put on your website for the use of your visitors, be it video, blog posts, articles, images, games, applets, etc. Obviously, your website's content offerings should not be limited to your sales pages and should provide something of value to your visitors. It's also important to note...

Cost-Per-Action (CPA) 

Geo-Analysis

Geo-Targeting 

Hub-Authority Model

Hub Page: A hub page can refer to either of two things: 1) A page on a website that serves to express examples of a particular type and connect related content. 2) 2) A page on a specific topic that links out to a set of other pages that are also about the same topic, and which is also linked back to by a majority of those pages...

Key Performance Indicators (KPI): Key Performance Indicators (KPI) refer to periodic measurements that can be taken of specific factors that indicate the health (or quality of performance) of a website, how well it is meeting its goals, and in which areas it is underperforming. Typical website KPIs include...

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) 

Linkbait: Linkbait is content created with the intention of attracting more links and by extension, better rankings in the search engines for specific keywords. Linkbait can be any kind of content, and your visitors must find it fun, informative, or useful if you expect to get results. Examples of linkbait include free online tools, articles, games, entertaining blog posts...

Link Neighborhood: A link neighborhood refers to a set of websites that search engines believe are related (and therefore likely to be similar in various ways) because of their pattern of interlinking. Every website is "located" in a link neighborhood by virtue of the sites to which it links and which link to it. If you link to a website in a "bad" link neighborhood, you are telling the search engines...

Long Tail: The Long Tail refers to a frequency distribution that has a "long tail" when graphed. As a marketing concept, the long tail refers to the profit possibilities of items that are not individually popular, but which together form a profit center rivaling that of the top selling items... For search engine marketing purposes, we speak of long tail keywords. These are the keywords in a given subject/market area that are less popular than other terms but which are more specific and less competitive...

Off Page Factors: Off page factors are those factors which impact your website's search engine rankings, but over which you do not have direct control. They include, but are not limited to, the following (which are not in any particular order): relevance of anchor text in the link to you, relevance of text surrounding the anchor text, placement of the link on the page, rate of new inbound links to your website over time...

On Page Factors: On page factors are those factors under the control of the website operator that search engine ranking algorithms use to calculate rankings. On page factors have declined in importance in recent years because they are easy for webmasters to manipulate. Off page factors are now generally more important, but on page factors still require careful consideration...

Organic Traffic: Organic traffic refers to traffic that comes to a website via unpaid links from other sites such as search engines, directories, and third party websites. Organic traffic tends to build over time in direct correlation to the amount of topical content on the website and its number of backlinks from authoritative sites. The term "organic traffic" is often used to refer to all traffic that is not directly paid for...

PageRank: PageRank is a system for ranking web pages by popularity that was originally developed by Google's founders. PageRank is also a number, commonly expressed as an integer between 0 and 10, assigned to each web page as a measure of that web page's relative importance amongst all pages on the entire web... The basic idea behind PageRank is to measure the popularity of a web page...

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Reciprocal Link 

Sandbox Filter

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Management (SEM)

Semantic Theme: For Internet marketing purposes, a website's semantic theme is what the search engines perceive its main subject to be. Search engines use this information to help determine your rankings for keywords that fit your semantic theme. Factors that help the search engines determine your website's semantic theme include: keywords on your pages, and the text surrounding them, relevancy of content on pages on other websites that link to yours...

Semantic Web

Spam

TrustRank : TrustRank is a system for ranking web pages based on the "trustworthiness" of the various sources of links to those pages. TrustRank is also the numeric measure of this trustworthiness, used in search engine ranking and spam-detection algorithms. TrustRank has come to be viewed as the successor to PageRank, or at least a major refinement of it. It allows search engines to automatically gauge the probability that a particular page is legitimate, and to...

Visitor Segmentation

Web Analytics: Web analytics involves the capture and analysis of information about visitors to your website and their behavior in using your site. A web analytics solution is required in order to capture information about where your visitors come from, how they use your website, and how successful your site is in converting visitors to customers. After installing and properly configuring web analytics,...