Internet marketing has evolved in the past several years to a force in the marketing world.  Internet marketing has grown at a faster rate than has traditional marketing methods. Search Engine Marketing or SEM is a form of internet marketing that is used to promote websites. This is accomplished by increasing their visibility in SERPs or search engine results pages. SEM uses things like search engine optimization, SEO, paid placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion. There was over $13.5 billion spent in 2008 in North America alone on search engine marketing. The largest vendors of SEM are Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

During the late 1990’s the number of websites increased dramatically. This when search engines began to appear as a method of helping people find information on the Internet easier. Business models started to appear in order to finance these services. Pay per click programs is an example of such a program.  Pay Per Click advertising is when someone searches for a particular term they will receive a list of natural search results. There will also be a list of pay per click, PPC, ads. Advertisers do not pay for each time the ad is displayed. They pay each time someone clicks on the ad and is taken to the destination url.  The cost per click is usually very minimal but the conversion rates are high. By 2007, pay per click programs became the primary money makers for search engines.

Here is a list of terms that are associated with search engine marketing:

Actual Cost Per Click – This is the actual cost that an advertiser pays per click on their ads.

Acquisition – This is the point at which a potential client performs some type of conversion. This data is used to determine cost per conversion or cost per acquisition.

As Status – This term varies from search engine to search engine. The definitions for each are as follows:

Google – Active ads are those showing on Google. Deleted ads have been deleted from the ad group. Paused ads have been paused within an ad group. Disapproved ads have been disapproved because they do not meet Google’s editorial and policy guidelines.

Yahoo Search Marketing – Online ads are the active listings in your account. Offline ads are all listings that you have decided to take offline. Pending listings are those that are pending approval or in the process of being checked. Declined listings have not met editorial standards. Low click Index Listings are not receiving enough click throughs and are in danger of being removed. Removed listings have been removed within the past 90 days.

Ad Text – This is the copy that describes the product or service being advertised.

Adsense – Adsense is the term used for the branch of Google advertising for website publishers. This program allows website owners to receive compensation for Google ads that appear on their websites. The website owner is compensated based on any click throughs the ads receive.

AdWords – This is a name for the ads that appear on the right and above natural results for searches conducted by internet users. These words can also appear across Google’s network of Adsense publishers.

Algorithm – Algorithms are a set of rules used by Google to rank the results of any search query.

Anchor Text – This is the text displayed as the backlink to your site. This is also used by search engines, most notably Google, as an off-page factor in determining a site’s ranking.

Averaged Cost Per Click (AvCPC) – This is the average click cost for an ad campaign or group.

Backlinks – Backlinks are links from other pages that refer back to your page or site. The quality of these links are taken into account as an off-page factor in ranking your website’s natural search results in the search engines for any give search.

Black Hat / White Hat SEO – These are terms uses to describe those who work within the search engine guidelines, White Hat,  and those who do not, Black Hat. These guidelines change on a regular basis so that something that was considered White Hat a few years ago may not be considered “Grey Hat” or even “Black Hat”.

Clicks (click-throughs) – A click is registered each time a user clicks on an advertiser’s ad and is taken to the advertiser’s website.

Click Through Rate (CTR) – The rate at which users actually click on ads per ad impression. This is expressed as a percentage.

Content Match and Search Match – Pay per click ads display both in search engine results and also via Google and Yahoo networks. Search match ads are the ads displayed along with the natural search results on a search results page. Content match ads are contextual text ads that are placed within relevant content on websites. This may include text, images or videos.

Conversion – This is the specific action that an advertiser desires for a user to perform on their website.  A conversion can be a sale, lead, sign-up, or page view. A piece of code is placed on the conversion page to track the action.

Conversion Rate – The conversion rate is the rate that visits convert into a specified action. This rate is expressed as a percentage.

Conversion Tracking – The ability to track Return On Investment (ROI) is strength of pay per click ad campaigns.

Cost Per Click (CPC) – The cost per click is the cost for each click on pay per click ads. This is automatically calculated based on the maximum cost per click, the daily budget and what the competitors are bidding on a particular search term.

Cost Per Conversion – The cost per conversion is the cost that is required to deliver a conversion. Each ad campaign has its own unique cost per conversion. This is calculated by dividing the total click cost by the total conversions.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – The cost per thousand is the cost for 1,000 ad impressions. This is the traditional model for pricing online ads. Search ads use cost per click while content network ads may be priced using CPM rates.

Crawler (Spider) – These are robots or programs that are used by search engines to crawl the web following hyperlinks from one page to another in order to index pages for the search engine database.

Daily Budget – The daily budget is the maximum amount that an advertiser is willing to pay per day.

Destination URL – The destination URL is the specific URL that a user is sent to when they click on an ad. The page that the user arrives on is the landing page.

Display URL – The display URL is the URL that is displayed in the ad.

Google Bombing (Link Bombing) – Google bombing is the practice of getting enough links to particular site using a particular anchor text. The goal is to have the page rank higher in the search engines for that particular term.

Image Ads – Image ads combine the niche targeting of search marketing with the branding power of banner ads.

Impressions – Impressions are the number of times an ad is displayed.

Maximum Cost Per Click (Max Bid) – The Max Bid is the maximum price an advertiser is willing to pay per click.

Natural Search Results (Organic Listings) – Natural Search Results are the non-sponsored results delivered by the search engine when a user enters a search term. This is determined by search engines looking at off-page and on-page factors. These results can be increased by the use of the process called search engine optimization or SEO.

Nofollow Tag- A Nofollow tag is an HTML tag that is added so that a link does not “leak” or pass on page rank to the linked to site. This is what a normal link would look like:

<a href=”http://www.example.com”>Example Link</a>

This is what a link looks like when you add the “nofollow” tag:

<a href=”http://www.example.com” rel=”nofollow”>Example Link</a>

Off-Page Factors – Off-Page Factors are factors that are external to a website that are used in calculating its ranking in search engine’s natural search results. These factors include the quality and quantity of backlinks as well as the anchor text included in these backlinks.

On-Page Factors – All aspects of a website that are in the actual code, of the site, that contribute to the website’s ranking. These were traditionally the only factors that search engines used in determining a site’s ranking. These factors include things like, meta-tags, page titles and keyword density.

PageRank – PageRank is the system used by Google to rank a page’s natural search results. Both on-page and off-page factors are used to calculate this number.

Pay-Per-Call (PPCall) Advertising – Pay Per Call Advertising is a new variant of pay per click advertising. Pay per call provides a toll free phone number that consumers can call rather than a link to click on.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or “Paid Search Advertising – Pay Per Click Advertising is a form of advertising that provides results in addition to the natural results provided by search engines.  These results are targeted in nature. The advertiser does not pay for the number of impressions but for the number of times a consumer clicks on the ad and is taken to the destination URL.

Ranking – Ranking is simply the position of a site in a search engine’s natural results. Ad rank is the position of an ad within the sponsored listings.

Reciprocal Link (Link Swap) – A reciprocal link is a link offered to one site in return for a link to your site. This does not always increase site ranking and may even have a negative effect.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Search Engine Marketing is the practice of making your site visible to search engines. This is all about delivering traffic to your website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search Engine Optimization is a system that is used to enhance your website’s ranking in search engine’s natural results. This means you are actively optimizing on-page factors. These factors are constantly changing as the algorithms are being adjusted. What is important today may not be as important or may even be irrelevant tomorrow.

Search Terms (Queries) – Search terms are the keywords or phrases that a user types into a search engine’s search box to find the information they are looking for. This also refers to the search terms a website owner wants their site to rank well in. This can be in both natural and paid results.

Spamdexing – Spamdexing is the search engine practice that search engines consider to have an adverse affect on search results. This can be a grey area since different search engines have different standards. This is a specific type of Google Bomb. This involves the deliberate and dishonest attempt to influence the search engine results. This involves the use of spam.

Sharon Denise Talbot

www.sharondenisetalbot.com

Originally posted 2010-09-08 09:18:46.