SEO / SEM Glossary of Terms

Ad Impressions

The number of times an internet ad is displayed in an open browser window. PPC Ads are displayed in the sponsored search results area of the results page when a relevant keyword is used by the visitor. CPM Ads are displayed on relevant websites as a part of their sponsored search results based on a match with relevant content on the page. PPC Ads cost the advertiser only when a visitor actually clicks on the ad (hence the term pay per click) and; CPM ads are billed to the advertiser for an agreed to cost for every 1 thousand ad impressions - whether or not the visitor clicked on the ad.

Customer

a person or business who bought your products or services, from you, during a specified time frame. This may seem obvious but, when you start to think about counting actual customers, you need to be careful who you count and how often you may be counting the same one.

For example, let's say you are a car manufacturer. Are people who buy your cars from used car dealers actually your customer? They may be customers for your car parts and service dept. - if you offer those products & services - but, they may never be on your list of customers for your new car products. They may only ever be customers of the used car dealer they bought the car from. That used car dealer may only ever be a customer for your car parts. If you only sell through dealerships, the dealerships are your customers; not the people who ultimately buy your new cars to drive.

You also have to make certain not to count the same customer twice. Let's say that you are a retail outlet. A person comes into your store on Monday and makes a purchase. They come back on Thursday and buy something else. That person is only one customer; a valuable one but still, only one customer.

Customer Lifetime Value

Now that you know how to define a customer, you will want to know how to place a vlaue on them. That's where Customer Lifetime Value comes in. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a dollar value associated with each customer. This dollar value is the calculated present value of the future cash flows attributable to the length of the customer relationship. For a great discussion of this concept and how to calculate it, we recommend you read: "Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master", from Wharton School Publishing; written by, P.Farris, N. Bendel, P. Pfeifer, & D. Reibstein. The value of knowing this information becomes apparent when trying to calculate and evaluate your website ROI and online marketing efforts. Many websites generate leads - not actual sales. If you need to calculate the website ROI of a lead generating website, you'll need to know your CLV and your lead to sales ratio.

Link Building Terms:

In-Bound Links (a.k.a. "in-coming links") - links pointing to your website from other websites.

Out-Bound Links (a.k.a. "external links") - links from your website to other websites.

Internal Links - links to and from all web pages associated with a single domain (your website).

Link Popularity - the number and quality of a website’s In-Bound Links.

Link Quality - According to the major search engines, Link Quality is based on the following factors:

1. The existing link popularity of the site that links to you
2. The hyperlink text and the text surrounding the link
3. Whether or not the site or page you are listed on relates to your business or keywords
4. The number of links on the page linking to your website and where your listing appears in that list. (top of a short list is best)

PageRank™ - this is Google’s™ proprietary name for their measure of link popularity. It is an important piece of the Google organic ranking algorithm used to determine your website’s location in the organic results for relevant searches. An explanation of PageRank™ can be found at the Google.com site: http://www.google.com/technology/. In-bound links from websites with higher PageRank™ will have a more positive influence on your website’s link popularity and therefore also on your website’s organic ranking. These pages have a higher link quality.

Deep Link - an in-bound link that links from the other website to an internal page (any page other than your home page) on your website.

One Way Link - a link that only points to your site from an outside website without a link on your website back to their website

Direct Link - a link that points from another site directly to any page on your site

Themed Link - a link that relates to the “theme” or category of your business.

Natural Link - any link that occurs without a link request on the part of your webmaster. Natural links occur when another webmaster links to any page of your website because your site offers unique content or a useful application that may be of interest or use to their site’s visitors. Natural Links are also referred to as “organic links”.

Contextual Link - a link to your website from within topical content of an external website. Most often contextual links occur in blogs or product review sites that have content related to your product or service.

Link Neighborhood - a grouping of the sites that relate to your site through links. It includes the sites that link to you and the sites you link out to. It also takes into account the link neighborhood of each of these sites. A good link neighborhood is one that relates to the theme of your site and also one that does not contain any shady websites.

Reciprocal Link or Link Trade - when two sites agree to link to each other and place a link on their website to the other one. While this type of link arrangement no longer adds to your website’s Link Popularity (and therefore will not help your organic rankings), there are still valid reasons for agreeing to them: increased traffic from a targeted source; value added resource for your visitors (make sure it is!). Additionally, you may get both of these benefits at little or no additional cost.

Link Bait - Any original content developed for your website visitors to use as a resource or tool. This could be a glossary of terms specific to your business; a current price list for commodities or; a calculator for monetary exchange rates. Any useful, high-quality content you add to your website that may be of interest to your target market can, and will, attract links from other websites.

Link Farm - a site that exists only to allow a webmaster to place a link to their site. These sites generally do not contain original content and will accept just about everyone who takes the time to fill out a form. These are also called, "Free For All", link pages or FFA link pages.

Link Ring - this is a site that allows you to join their ring by placing a snippet of code on your site. If you place the code for the ring on your site, your site’s links will be included in this rotation of links on all the sites in the ring. While this used to be a popular way for niche sites to reach each other's customers there are very few web rings that are still of high quality today.

Indirect Links - This is a link that points to your site from another site through an through a 3rd party tracking site. These generally do not count towards search engine link popularity

3-Way Links - A 3-way link is when a company essentially tries to hide a reciprocal link by using a 3rd party site to facilitate the trade. Not a recommended strategy.

Organic Search Results:

the listing of links to individual website pages that are returned in response to an inquiry for a particular search term or phrase. Organic search results appear in the center of the results page. Web pages appear in this listing based on the Search Engine's determination that they contain content relating to what the visitor is looking for. While there can be 1000s, often millions, of web pages returned in the organic search results for any given search term, visitors generally view the first 30 listings. View the 5 SEO Techniques that will help your website pages rank in the top positions of organic search results.

Natural Search Results:

see Organic Search Results

White Hat SEO Consultants

SEO Consultants who use generally accepted SEO techniques to optimize your website for improved organic rankings. Using "White Hat" SEO techniques will actually help your website ROI by improving the visitor experience. Integrating these SEO techniques force you to use more specific, plain language in your text instead of industry jargon and sales fluff. Additionally, White Hat SEO techniques will help your website maintain its organic rankings despite changes to the search engine algorithms because they implement valid instances of your relevant keywords.

The opposite of White Hat SEO is called: Black Hat SEO. They are spammy, backdoor techniques to optimize a website for improved organic rankings in the search engines. While "Black Hat" techniques may result in a short term boost to your organic rankings, they expose your website to being banned from organic search by providers like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Being banned from the organic search results means your website will not be returned in the organic results when your customers search for your relevant keywords. If this happens to your website, your only choice will be to rely on PPC Campaigns. Worse yet, if your visitors feel they have been duped into visiting your website when it does not offer what they are looking for, your brand image will suffer.

Website ROI

Expressed as a %, your Website ROI is the rate of return generated by your website for every dollar you invest in your website. This includes investment in website development, maintenance, advertising and hosting. For a complete explanation of how to calculate your website ROI, select one of these links that best describes want you want to do:
calculate website roi for a non-ecommerce website
calculate website roi for an ecommerce website