I Do Web Marketing » Internet Marketing

Small Business Marketing Trends for 2010

Justin McGill — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:15:12 +0000

Small businesses need to make the most of every advertising dollar. Understanding what marketing trends will be most successful in 2010 can help your business soar above the competition, while ignoring those trends could leave you floundering.

Search engine optimization (SEO) continues to head the list of online marketing strategies. New aspects in 2010 include personalization and greater relevance. As you develop your SEO strategy this year, dedicate some of your resources to developing content that targets niche audiences. You’ll also want to keep your web content up to date since search engines will begin factoring publication dates, geo-locations, and social media content into their relevancy algorithms.

Social network marketing will continue to rise in popularity in 2010, but you’ll need to fine tune your strategy in order to use it to best advantage. It will no longer be sufficient to maintain a Facebook or Twitter page. You’ll need to take the next step and use it as a vibrant forum in which to engage current and potential customers in meaningful conversations.

Mobile marketing has exploded and continues to rise in popularity. More people now have access to cell phones than to cable TV or home computers. Small businesses need to take advantage of this burgeoning market by creating mobile apps and by instituting location-based marketing techniques.

Video blogs are the blogging method of choice in 2010. Millions of web users view online videos each day, and while video blogging may not replace the text version, still, companies can expect an increase in the number of viewers who want more than pages of text about their products. Videos are highly shareable, and are more interactive than text; consequently, they have the potential to attract more loyal groups of followers than the more traditional written blogs.

Building your web presence should be a key leg of your online marketing platform in 2010. It’s no longer sufficient to maintain your website, Facebook page, and Twitter page. You’ll want to make your website visible in as many venues as possible including blogs, Youtube, Yelp profiles, and email newsletters. For instance, videos that appear on your website but nowhere else online will fail to reach a large portion of your target audience due to the web user’s tendency to search one centralized site such as Youtube for any videos on a given topic. If your video doesn’t appear on Youtube, then for that viewer it may as well not exist.

Online marketing trends in 2010 will expand on the succession of new marketing outlets that appeared in 2009. Using your advertising dollars effectively means putting them towards the venues that will produce the most return on your investment rather than continuing to invest in trends that may be dying out.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients.

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An Introduction to Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

Justin McGill — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:00:34 +0000

In the early days of the internet, search engines ranked websites based upon simple keyword density. Sites that contained higher percentages of a given keyword appeared higher on the search engine rankings than sites that had fewer incidences of that word. The problem with this method, however, was that it allowed website builders to stuff their sites with keywords in order to achieve a high ranking while providing low quality content. Internet users were the victims in this scenario since they would have to search through many links before finding one that provided the content they were looking for.

In order to combat this problem, new algorithms were developed that allowed search engines to search websites for content quality rather than just looking for specific words or phrases. This method of searching, known as latent semantic indexing, allows sites with quality content that use keywords in a more natural way to rank higher than sites that stuff articles with keywords but provide poor quality content. In other words, search engines now evaluate articles by considering the quality of the content rather than simply the incidence of keywords, more as a human would.

For the average website owner, this means you should build your site around a particular theme rather than simply trying to achieve a specific keyword density. You should use not only that specific phrase, but also similar phrases arranged in a natural format. Search engines rank your site by comparing it to other sites on similar topics and analyzing the related words in order to determine how helpful the content on a particular website is likely to be. If you use only one keyword or phrase, the search engine will have a more difficult time determining what the topic of your website is and you’ll be less likely to receive a high search ranking. There are obviously a ton of other factors involved when giving their rankings, but you want as many things going in your favor as possible!

Understanding latent semantic indexing allows you to provide content for your site that seems natural to you while at the same time making sure you can be found on the web. It’s still a good idea to determine a keyword for each article on your site. However, rather than trying to work the keyword in wherever possible, you can write in a natural style while still keeping your overall theme in mind.

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Developing a Basic Social Media Strategy

Justin McGill — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:13:33 +0000

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn—these are names that have become buzzwords not only among consumers but also among business marketers. In today’s online marketing environment, companies that have not developed a viable social marketing strategy fall leagues behind their social media savvy competitors. Now is the time to develop and implement a social media marketing strategy that will put your name in front of audiences and help increase not only brand recognition and loyalty, but also trust.

Your primary goal when developing a social marketing strategy should be to establish conversation parameters. You cannot possibly control the direction of every conversation, nor should you try to, but you can be available to answer questions and provide honest and helpful input wherever possible. People visit social networking sites because they want to have conversations that don’t involve sales pitches. In order to gain trust, you’ll need to create an environment in which potential customers feel free to express opinion without fear of being censored, but also in which you can provide responses to negative comments that help viewers understand the reasons behind your company’s actions in any particular area. When appropriate, you can point readers toward your product, but in such a way that they feel you are providing useful information rather than pitching your company.

Facebook and Twitter provide the logical starting place for your social media strategy. If you don’t have accounts at these two sites, create them as soon as possible. By doing so, you’ll reserve your company username and gain instant access to millions of viewers. Evaluate the presence of your competitors and begin building a platform from which you can provide information about your company to your target audience. The next step in your social media strategy should be to create a company blog. Determine what issues are likely to be important to your target audience and blog about them. Creative content and excellent writing will help you build a loyal audience that will share your blog posts with friends and attract more readers to your site.

LinkedIn offers business networking with millions of users. If you’re not a member, sign up immediately to begin building a network of contacts that can help you promote your business. Work toward receiving recommendations from customers and colleagues on your LinkedIn account, since these can help you gain credibility and increase your search result ranking. LinkedIn is especially beneficial for those who are B2B.

Once you’ve built the base for your social media strategy by creating the accounts above, it’s important that you become active in other venues around the web. Participate in other people’s blogs and keep an eye out for mentions of your company or service at other sites. Set up Google alerts for your company and/or your name and respond to comments that are made about your company or product. By maintaining an active presence on the web, you can build customer loyalty and trust while gaining a greater audience for your company’s services and products.

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How Many Keywords Should You Optimize For?

Justin McGill — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:00:26 +0000

This post was written over at Noble Samurai and touches on a topic that I am asked regularly. With their permission, I am re-posting this here as it is a very relevant topic in today’s web marketing world.

There is a common misconception that in order to develop a successful online business you need to be targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords.

This perception often causes a great deal of confusion and can lead to ‘Analysis Paralysis’ as people spend months analyzing keywords looking for the perfect opportunity. As a result they never follow through to create a complete and profitable business.

Last week, a group of us were discussing this problem and came to the conclusion that the reason this misconception is still so prevalent is that in the past, focusing on quantity versus quality DID actually work.

In the early days of Internet marketing, if you placed a large number of related keywords on a page or included them in Meta and Alt tags you could often get rankings that led to traffic.

Similarly, in the early days of Google Adwords, it was possible to load your account with thousands of keywords and generate a steady stream of traffic to your site.

However, while this may have been the case in 2003, it is very important to realize that THINGS HAVE CHANGED.

The old approach was a ‘shotgun strategy’ in which you targeted a large number of keywords, took a shot and hoped for the best.

With the continuous improvements in search engine algorithms and the development of quality metrics such as Google’s Quality score, this approach is no longer effective.

The mantra of “The more keywords the better” is a thing of the past.

The alternative to the old shotgun strategy is a new ‘laser like’ approach in which you explore your market carefully and then zero in on a small subset of specific keywords.

To understand why this laser focused approach is so important we need to examine something we call the ‘Iceberg Principle’.

According to the Iceberg Principle, finding a good keyword is just the tip of the Iceberg.

In order to transform a keyword into a genuine asset for your business, you need to undertake a range of tasks that most people unfortunately never get around to.

These tasks include:

On-page optimisation

Off-page optimisation

Obtaining high quality backlinks

Writing articles

Conducting targeted PPC campaigns

Etc.

The truth is that every one of these activities requires time and effort. Clearly, if you are trying to target thousands of keywords, following through on these activities becomes virtually impossible.

So, instead of generating lists containing thousands of semantically related keywords, here is the laser focused strategy that we recommend in today’s SEO environment.

To get started, use Market Samurai to generate a sample of keywords in your niche and then continually refine and filter these keywords until you find 5-10 keywords that have the following characteristics:

(1) They are highly relevant to your niche

(2) They have reasonable levels of traffic eg. 100 visitors per day

(3) They have acceptable levels of competition eg. Less than 30000 competing web pages

(4) They have low strength of competition ie. The top 10 sites in Google are not well optimized

Once you have identified and selected your target keywords, redirect your focus to the on-page and off-page SEO tasks necessary to transform your keywords into genuine traffic-generating assets for your business.

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Google Provides More Ways to Search

Justin McGill — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:04:47 +0000

In May, Google added the Show Options feature to it’s search results pages. It wasn’t until earlier this month that Google launched more ways to utilize it’s search engine. Services like Facebook and Twitter offer real-time search capabilities, which poses a threat to Google’s results.

Google has proven time and again though, they don’t just sit on their hands. So, they are introducing ways in which they can enhance their results. This is done with new search features that give you the ability to search for results in the past hour, by date range, previously visited pages, not yet visited, and by Google’s Book, Blog, and News search tools.

How to Access The Google Search Options

Another cool feature that came out earlier this month is the integration of Google Trends into natural search results. The following screen capture will be displayed at the bottom of SERP’s, when you search for a trendy topic:

Google Trends integrated into natural search results.

This Google Trends integration is only for users in Japan and the US. Google Trends and the new search options are just the latest updates to Google’s search engine, but we’re sure to see many more enhancements in the coming months.

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Questions You Should Ask Your Prospective SEO Provider

Justin McGill — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:25:18 +0000

It seems I am running into more and more people who have been burned by bad SEO firms. Now, as I previously discussed, there are certainly plenty of bad SEO people to watch out for. However, you can do yourself a huge favor by preparing some questions for your prospective SEO providers. This will allow you to gauge how knowledgeable they truly are on the subject, and give you a better feel for what to expect.

Before engaging in ANY discussion with an SEO provider, you should have done your research first. Ask yourself, how did you find this prospective SEO provider? Was it through a search engine? Was it through a social media platform such as LinkedIn? If you found them there, chances are they have an idea of what they are doing. Pull some analytics on their website. Run their website through HubSpot’s website grader and see some information about their website. There are other analytical snapshots you can review as well such as www.quarkbase.com to get some quick information. This will give you an idea of who you are engaging. If an SEO firm cannot represent that they are ranked highly themselves, then what makes you think they can do it for you?

Now, once you have done your due diligence, these are the questions you should be asking:

How long have you been in business?
You should know the answer to this provided that you have done your due diligence. Now it is just a matter of them being honest with you.

What keywords have you attained ranks for?
This is important, because you want to know that the keyword campaigns they build are legitimate. An eight word keyword phrase is not difficult to rank for, so pay close attention to this.

What keywords do you feel my site should be ranking for?
If this is your first conversation with them, then a respectable SEO firm should have to get back to you after they do some preliminary research. They might be able to quickly go through your site and give you some keyword ideas off the top of their head. Match whatever they give you up to the research you have already done.

What is your SEO process?
Shady SEO people will dance around this question. Or they may even claim that it is a trade secret. This should throw up caution signs. Respectable SEO’s should never have a problem explaining their process to you.

Is my industry competitive?
You should have an idea on this before you engage in discussions with an SEO provider. There are a ton of factors into determining an industry’s competitiveness. A general rule of thumb is to look up a keyword query in Google and look at the number of results. You will see a number on the top right that says 1 of 10 of X, where X is the total number of pages that are relevant to the search query. Now, this isn’t always 100% accurate of a term’s competitiveness nature, but it gives you an idea. If your primary keyword has less than 500,000 results, and the SEO firm tries to tell you it is a very competitive industry – then you will want to proceed with caution.

Are you working with anyone in my industry?
This is important, because you don’t want your SEO firm to be targeting the same keywords with you as they would with someone else. Most SEO companies will not offer industry exclusivity without charging higher prices for it. You should be able to provide an SEO Firm a list of your competitors that they agree not to work with while under contract with you.

Do you require changes to my site?
If they answer “no” to this question, then this should throw up caution flags. On page optimization is absolutely necessary and is the second step of a campaign (after the research). Some SEO firms require that you make their recommended changes. Respectable SEO firms will handle this themselves and make the necessary behind the scenes changes. They should not be changing your website design unless you have a specific agreement in place with them to do so.

What will you be doing besides working directly on my site?
Again, if they answer “no” to this question, there is cause for concern. The on page optimization is only PART of the SEO process. If they are not building links for you, then you are not gaining credibility in the eyes of search engines. All SEO campaigns should include a link building process.

How long will it take to see results?
An SEO firm that tells you it will happen in days, is one that is most likely using very shady tactics. These shady tactics could result in having your website removed from Google’s index. The truth is, no one knows for sure. It isn’t up to SEO firms to dictate this, search engines do. Usually you will need to wait 2 to 3 months to have an idea. If absolutely no improvement is made by 90 days, then you will want to investigate this a little further.

Can I speak to references?
Some SEO firms do not provide this information. They should always be able to show you something and allow you to speak with someone regarding the work they have performed.

And just for fun…What kind of a relationship do you have with Google?
Absolutely NO ONE has any special relationship with Google. Those that tell you that they do are full of it and you should end the phone conversation immediately and never consider their services.

I hope these questions help business owners from making a bad decision. You can avoid putting your business in jeopardy by doing your homework beforehand. If you have other questions, share them in the comments!

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Top 10 SEO Scams and How to Avoid Them

Justin McGill — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:54:56 +0000

I broached this topic a long time ago, but with so many so called SEO Experts popping up, I felt the need to revisit the topic. To preface this, lets first discuss why there are suddenly so many “internet marketing gurus” out there. When you consider the economy, and how many have lost their jobs it is understandable to see why people have looked for new sources of income. Many have turned to the internet as a way to try and build a business. With some of the claims around the internet on how easy everything is, it is natural for people who want to make money without putting in the effort. So, people buy into different programs, are desperate to build their client base, and therefore offer outrageous claims as to their service ability. Now, this is not why ALL SEO scams exist, but it is certainly playing a role as to why we are seeing an increase in them.

There are a growing number of unethical SEO Consultants and SEO Companies that take advantage of naive website owners. The best defense against falling prey to one of these scams, is to become educated on SEO yourself. You can run some tests on your own. I always like to refer people to Hubspot’s www.websitegrader.com. You can run your website through some preliminary analytics to see how well it fares. You will see this blog has a score of 98. Last time I checked the company website (www.novelconceptstudio.com) was a 95 or 96. I would suggest not only reviewing your website through this tool, but also that of any prospective SEO provider you might be considering. If they can’t optimize their own website, what makes you think they will be able to optimize yours? There is no greater defense against SEO scams then to become a little more educated on the topic yourself. Now let’s take a look at some of the more prevalent red flags in the SEO Industry.

#1. Guaranteed Rankings
This is a big one and plays off the desires of customers who want guarantees. Google themselves have come out and said that any SEO Firm offering guaranteed rankings should throw up a red flag. You can read more about this here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Pay close attention to the line that says, “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings.” This is straight from Google. Now, if you have reviewed my company website you will see we offer a Guarantee. However, this guarantee has nothing to do with page 1 rankings and results. The guarantee is that we will improve your current positioning.

Page 1 Guarantees can be dicey because that also could mean that companies get desperate to attain those rankings and will do so by any means necessary. This includes blackhat techniques, which may result in having your website eventually removed from Google’s index entirely!

#2. Submitting Your Site to Thousands of Search Engines.
Who cares? Google, MSN, and Yahoo are nearly 94% of all searches with Google being 2/3 itsself. In fact, most of the other search engines will piggy back the main search engines when determining their search results. So, focus in on Google, MSN, and Yahoo. If you’re really pressed for time and resources, then just worry about Google!

#3. They know someone at Google, or have a partnership with Google.
Simply put, no they don’t. Google employees are under strict NDA’s and if you read the link to Google Support referenced above you will see Google tells you they have no special partnerships.

#4. Their methodologies are trade secrets.
Obviously, each respectable company will have some proprietary things they use. But if they can’t explain things like their link building practices, what areas of the website they will be updating, etc then this should throw up a red flag.

#5. They know Google’s algorithm.
People within Google don’t even necessarily know this. There are hundreds of variables involved, and they are CONSTANTLY changing. Google’s whole existence is based on them being able to deliver the search results you need and to do this, they are always tinkering with their algorithm. People know pieces, but not the entire thing.

#6. Free Trial Services.
With proper SEO, there are so many steps involved in the very beginning that any self respecting SEO would never offer such a trial. Anyone that offers this, is not truly offering SEO.

#7. Under Priced Services
You get what you pay for, and truer words could not be spoken in the SEO realm. If you cannot afford to properly invest into your SEO strategy, then buy some books and do it yourself. You will most likely do a better job than paying some of the outrageously cheap prices some “SEO gurus” charge.

#8. Front Page Within 48 Hours.
Here is another that seems to be coming on strong lately. In almost all instances it is actually referring to pay per click.

#9. Companies or Experts Who Don’t Answer Your Questions or Take Several Days to Respond.
This should throw up a red flag immediately. If they beat around the bush and can’t answer a direct question, this is major cause for concern. Likewise, if they take several days or weeks to respond to an inquiry then obviously you or not of any importance to them.

#10. Firms that take Ownership of Content.
All property should belong to the client. Read the fine print of any service agreement to ensure you are not dealing with a firm that plans on holding your content hostage.

Taking the time to learn a little more about the industry can help you to avoid the headaches and hassles of dealing with an SEO scam. Do your research on the company or expert you are engaged with. Ask them questions. Ideally, ask them questions YOU already know the answer to. Do this by running some initial analytics on your own website before engaging with an expert.

Have you come across other SEO scams not mentioned here? Share with the community to put shed some light on the topic!

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Internet Glossary of Terms

Justin McGill — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:05:44 +0000

The following terms have been discussed in various SEO and web related conversations. We use this in our in-house training, but felt others may find use in this compiled list as well. If you have additional things to add, please leave it in your comments!

Above the Fold – Historically this is the section on the front page of a newspaper on the upper half. It is also the area of preferred advertising space. The term has been extended and used in web development to refer the portions of a webpage that is visible without scrolling, ergo it is also known as “Above the Scroll”.

Add to Cart – A feature on ecommerce websites that allow you to add a product to your virtual shopping cart.

Add to Cart Rates – Some shopping cart systems will give you detailed analytics that allow you to see how often people add products to their shopping cart.

Alexa Traffic Rank – Where your website ranks in according to Alexa. Not always 100% accurate, but a great indication of how well your website is performing from a traffic standpoint.

Algorithm – A mathematical formula used by search engines to determine which web sites in their database to present in search results, in which order. While search engine algorithms change regularly, primary on-page factors include keyword density and source code optimization. The primary off-page factor is link popularity.

Alt Image Text – When visitors have their browser settings to disable image loading (for quicker load times), an image alt tag is displayed. This is assigned during the development of the web page and alerts the end user what the image is about.

Anchor Text – As an example this is: anchor text and is usually a link to another web page. Using a keyword/key phrase in your anchor text is a good SEO technique. The text should give an indication of what to expect when you click the link.

Articles – Articles should be viewed as a resource on services or an industry. The articles should be linked back to your website in the resource box when they are distributed to various article directories. This creates organic SEO and additional ways to be found in the search engines.

Banner Advertisement – An advertisement on a web site placed above, below, or on the sides of the sites main content and linked to the advertiser’s own web site.

Blog – Is a self-published, managed or maintained Web diary. Usually updated daily or weekly, blogs have historically been personal, but gained notoriety after the 2004 election as an influential media outlet. Companies now use blogs to extend their brand and improve their organic search visibility.

Body – The meat and potatoes of a webpage. This is the where the primary content of a page is displayed.

Bold Text Blocks – Font on a webpage that is bolded. This alerts search engines and your visitors that the words in bold are of significance.

Bookmarks – Internet bookmarks are stored Web page locations (URLs) that can be retrieved.

Bounce Rate – This is the rate of visitors that enter your site, and leave within the first 5 seconds (as calculated by Google Analytics) without viewing another page.

Browser – A software application used to locate and display web pages. The two most popular web browsers are Mozilla’s FireFox™ and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer™ (IE). Both are graphical browsers, meaning they can display graphics as well as text. In addition, most modern browsers can present multimedia information, including sound and video, though they require plug-ins (q.v.) for some formats.

Call to Action – This is a marketing message that directs visitors to act in some specific manner such as requesting a brochure.

Cart Abandonment Rate – Some shopping cart systems will give you detailed analytics that allow you to see how often people do not follow through with a purchase.

Checkout/Purchase Process – How a website flows through from product display and selection, to the end purchase.

Click – Every time a visitor clicks on an advertising banner to access the advertiser’s Web site, it is counted as a “click” or “click-through.”

Click Fraud - A type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.

Click Rate – The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click through. Calculated by dividing the number of clicks, by the number of impressions.

Click Through Rate (CTR) – The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who viewed the link or text ad.

Cloaking – A “black hat” technique of tricking the search engines into seeing something other than what is displayed to the human viewer; using this technique can get websites penalized or banned from search engines.

Competing Pages – How many pages of content are relevant to a specific search term, keyword, or key phrase. In Google the competing pages are found as the 1 of 10 of “X” number. You can go several more layers into this to determine true competing pages, but this is a general rule of thumb to give you an idea of how competitive a market might be.

Content Management System (CMS) – A software platform that aids in the management of content on a Web site.

Conversion - A site visitor completes a desired action. Generally a download, signup, purchase, etc.

Conversion Funnel - A series of steps or actions a user must take in order to complete the desired conversion action (i.e. eCommerce shopping cart).

Conversion Optimization – In internet marketing, conversion optimization is the science and art of creating an experience for a website visitor with the goal of converting the visitor into a customer.

Conversion Rate – The relationship between visitors to a web site and actions considered to be a “conversion,” such as a sale or request to receive more information. This metric is often expressed as a percentage.

Conversion Form – A conversion form can be a newsletter signup, contact page, or quote request page. Typically the code to properly measure conversion would go on the “Thank You” page.

Directory – A type of search engine where listings are gathered or reviewed by humans, rather than by search engine crawlers. In directories, web sites are often reviewed, summarized in about 25 words and placed in a particular category. The largest and most popular directory site is Yahoo! D.M.O.Z. is another highly relevant directory site.

Domain Name – Used in URLs to identify particular web pages or sites located on the Internet. For example, the domain name nces.ed.gov represents the web site for the National Center for Education Statistics.

E-Commerce - Put simply, e-commerce means conducting business online. E-commerce software programs run the main functions of an e-commerce web site, including product display, online ordering, and inventory management. This software resides on a commerce server and works in conjunction with online payment systems to process payments.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - A standard Internet protocol for transferring files from one computer to another.

H1-H6 Headings – Heading tags give importance to the words that are contained within them. H1 tags contain larger, bolder font while you work your way down to H6 tags which are much smaller fonts. Search engines read these tags to determine relevance and importance.

Homepage – The homepage (often written as home page) is the URL or local file that automatically loads when a web browser starts or when the browser’s “home” button is pressed. One can turn this feature off and on, as well as specify a URL for the page to be loaded.

Host - To host is to provide the infrastructure for a computer service. For example, a company that hosts web servers may provide the content on the server (e.g., web site or other content), but another company may control communications lines required by the server.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) – A formatting language used to create web pages that specify how a page will appear on screen.

Image Optimization - This term is used to describe the process of image slicing and resolution reduction. This is done to make file sizes smaller so images will load faster.

Internet Security – When a computer connects to a network and begins communicating with others, it is taking a risk. Internet security involves the protection of a computer’s internet account and files from intrusion of an unknown user. Basic security measures involve protection by well selected passwords, change of file permissions and back up of computer’s data.

IP Address – An IP address is an identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. Networks using the TCP/IP protocol, route messages according to the destination IP address. Within a private network, IP addresses can be assigned at random as long as each one is unique. However, connecting a private network to the Internet requires using publicly registered IP addresses (called Internet addresses) to avoid duplicates.

ISP (Internet Service Provider) - An ISP is an entity that provides commercial access to the Internet. Service can range in size from dial-up access with a 56-Kbps ordinary telephone line and several dozens of customers to multiple pops (i.e., connection points) in multiple cities with substantial backbones and thousands, tens of thousands, or more customers. ISPs may also provide web hosting and other services.

Italic Text Blocks – Font on a webpage that is italicized. This alerts search engines and your visitors that the words in italics are of significance.

Keyword/Search Query – It is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document and is entered into a search engine to filter an expected result.

Keyword Analysis – Is the study of the most frequently used keywords entered into a search engine by the users.

Keyword Cloud – Is a search engine marketing (SEM) term that refers to a group of keywords that are relevant to a specific website. The term keyword in reference to SEM usually refers to a word or phrase (combination of words, such as ‘San Francisco weather map’) used to find relevant and useful web pages. Keyword clouds can be illustrated using web-based toolsas a group of keywords, displayed in different sizes to represent the frequency or weighting of each keyword within the cloud.

Keyword Density – is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. In the context of search engine optimization keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase.

Keyword Tracking – When there are numerous keywords/search terms, a continuous process of tracking the keywords is performed by an SEO expert in order to provide information about how a web site is performing in search results.

Landing Page – In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

Link Bait - Any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Google’s SEO expert Matt Cutts defines link bait as, “anything interesting enough to catch people’s attention.” Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature and can impact visibility in search results.

Link Building – Is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

Link Popularity – The number and quality of links pointing to your website. This is a very important factor in the search engine placement of your website.

Listing - The information that appears on a search engine’s results page in response to a search. See “Results Page.”

Local Search - Search engine results constrained by region/location, based on the searcher’s location or intent. With the addition of Web 2.0 capabilities, local search results may include business ratings, reviews, maps and driving directions.

Log-in – In computer security, login (logging or signing in, also log on) is the process by which individual access to a computer system is controlled by identification of the user using credentials provided by the user.

Long Tail - In relation to search engine marketing (SEM) the Long Tail refers to the keyword phrases that are highly detailed and specific and may generate low volumes of searches and traffic, but add up to generate a majority of traffic for sites with deep content or product SKUs.

Loss Aversion/Sunk Cost Fallacy – Many people have strong misgivings about “wasting” resources. This is called “loss aversion“. In web terms this may involve the purchase of a non-refundable item like a movie ticket. Most people for example, would feel obliged to go to the movie despite perhaps not really wanting to, because doing otherwise would be wasting the ticket price; they feel they passed the point of no return. This is sometimes called the sunk cost fallacy.

Meta Description – Allows page authors to say how they would like their pages described when listed by search engines. Not all search engines use the tag.

Meta Keyword – Allows page authors to add relevant text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process.

Meta Tag – A command inserted in a document that specifies how the document, or a portion of the document, should be formatted. Tags are used by all format specifications that store documents as text files.

Migration – The act of moving data from one database to another, or to move a website from one server to another.

Niche – When your products or services cater to a specific, targeted audience.

Off-Page Optimization – The area of search engine optimization that applies to building back-links and website popularity.

On-Page Optimization – The area of search engine optimization that applies to the content and structure of the website itself.

One Way Links/Inbound Links – A text or graphical hyperlink from one site to another. Google and other search engines’ algorithms consider a site’s popularity based on the quality and quantity of inbound links from relevant third party sites to help determine search positioning. See “Link Popularity.”

Online Reputation Management (ORM) – This is the act of monitoring, addressing or mitigating undesirable search engine results or mentions in online media for a company or product. Techniques include generating new content and creating posts on existing content and building marketing campaigns around them.

Online Shopping Cart/Basket – The basket is simply a list of the items you have selected to buy, together with the necessary details (number selected, price of each item, etc).

Organic/Natural Listings – Refers to the area of search engine results and marketing that are a result of optimization (SEO), in contrast to paid inclusion and pay-per-click programs.

PageRank – Is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, and used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. 2. (AS DESCRIBED BY GOOGLE) PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

Page Title – The page title appears at the top of each webpage in your browser. Search engines tend to place heavier importance on the keywords included within page titles. Page titles also appear as the link for each entry in search engine results.

Page Views – The number of times a page (an analyst-definable unit of content) was viewed.

Pay Per Click – System where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for each click someone makes on a link leading to their web site. Also known as CPC (Cost Per Click) or paid listings.

Pop-Up Ads – Advertisements that appear in a separate browser window while a web site is being viewed.

Portal (a.k.a. web portal) – Refers to a web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and online shopping malls. The first web portals were online services, such as AOL, which provided access to the web; now most of the traditional search engines (e.g. Yahoo®, Google®, etc.) are web portals, modified to attract and keep a larger audience.

Press Release - A news release, media release, press release or press statement is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something claimed as having news value.

Product Removal Rate – Some shopping cart systems will give you detailed analytics that allow you to see how often people remove products from their shopping cart.

Rank – How well a particular web page or web site is listed in a search engine results. Generally, sites on the first page (or within the first 10 listings) generate significant visibility and traffic. Overall, saying a page is “listed” only means that it can be found within a search engine in response to a query, not that it necessarily ranks well for that query. “Rank” is also referred to as “position”.

Reciprocal Links – A mutually-agreed upon link exchange between two sites.

Regional (Geo Target) – Often used to describe web page requests that originated from a similar geographical area. This is measured by analyzing a server’s log files for requests from ISPs and then aggregating those requests by region according to the ISPs geographical location.

Repeat Visitors % – When viewing this statistic in your analytics, it gives you an idea of how often people come back to visit your website. Typically, the more often they return the more likely they are to convert to a sale or sales opportunity.

Return Policy – A document, or policy that explains a merchant’s policy regarding the return of products by customers. A clear and simple Return Policy is widely viewed as an important aspect in Conversion Optimization.

Reviews/Consumer Ratings – People are doing more and more research before making a purchase. Having product reviews can help strengthen the chances of someone making a purchase.

ROI – Historically associated with sales and marketing efforts; when applied to SEM efforts, refers to numerical, percentage or ratio of revenue generated over total cost of activities. ROI typically factors in paid placement and associated management costs, but a more detailed analysis may factor in profit (true cost). If ROI is measuring paid placement only, it is typically referred to as return on ad spend (ROAS).

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) – Real simple syndication (RSS) is a relatively new and easy way to distribute content via the Internet. For email marketers, it is a way to distribute messages while avoiding spam filters. Typical applications include email newsletters, blogs or even Web sites. Similar to newsgroups, RSS feeds require a special “reader” like Bloglines or NewsGator to view messages.

Sales Volume – The quantity or number of goods (or services) sold in a specified period of time.

Search Engine – is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing information overload.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings (search engine optimization), purchasing paid listings (PPC management) or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities (i.e. affiliate programs, shopping feeds or link development).

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – The act of altering a web site so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. In the past, has also been used as a term for any type of search engine marketing activity, though now the term search engine marketing is more commonly used as an umbrella term.

SES (Search Engine Submissions) – The act of submitting specific URLs to popular search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo! to ensure the web page gets “spidered” and “indexed”.

Search Index – The collection of information (contained in a large database) a search engine has that searchers can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the web pages they have found from “crawling” the web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all web sites that have been categorized.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – The page that is displayed after a search phrase is typed into a search engine.

Search Volume – How many times in a month a search term is typed in a search engine.

Shipping – The document or form used to approve, track, and process outbound shipments. A MAJOR cause of visitor “cart abandonment” occurs when shopping online if the shipping policy is not both clear and cost friendly.

Site Complacency – Search engines love fresh content, so having a static or complacent website over time can eventually affect your search rankings in a negative way.

Sitemap – A sitemap (or site map) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) – A unique number assigned to each style/size combination of a product. One item may have many SKUs for the differing sizes, colors or materials, etc.

Social Bookmarking – Is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags. Examples include Delicious, Digg, & Reddit.

Source Code – Source code is instructions to the computer in their original form. Initially, a programmer writes a program in a particular programming language called the source code. To execute the program, the programmer must translate the code into “machine language,” the only language a computer understands. Source code is the only format readable by humans.

Spam - Refers to electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. In addition to being a nuisance, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Because the Internet is a public network, little can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, the use of software filters in e-mail programs can be used to remove most spam sent through e-mail.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) – Is a protocol for transmitting private documents via the Internet, using a public key to encrypt data and transfer it.

SSL Certificate – An SSL certificate is used for the server authentication, data encryption, and message integrity checks. With a valid SSL certificate, your Internet communications are transmitted in encrypted form. Information you send can be trusted to arrive privately and unaltered to the server you specify (and no other).

Target Audience – A target audience, or target group is the primary group of people that something is appealing to. A target audience can be people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc. (ex: teenagers, females, single people, etc.) A certain combination, like men from twenty to thirty is often referred to as a target audience.

Tracking Numbers – Numbers that are assigned to by a call center or shipping service to track the current location of an ordered product for customer inquires about the status of a delivery.

Traffic – The number of times a website is viewed within a stipulated time.

Unique Selling Point (USP) – The unique product benefit that the competition can not claim.

Unique Visitor – Is a visitor that interacts with a site. They may interact more than once, but within analytics reporting, they are only counted one time.

Universal Search - Google’s process of blending listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages.

URL (Universal Resource Locator) – a World Wide Web address composed of several parts including the protocol, the server where the “resource” (e.g., web page) resides, the path, and the file name of the resource. URL is often referred to as a “domain”.

Viral Marketing - A marketing technique that induces websites or users to pass on a marketing message to others. This creates a potentially exponential growth in the message’s visibility and effect.

Visitor Session - Interaction by a site visitor. The session ends when the visitor leaves the site.

Web 2.0 – The use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, and blogs.

Web Analytics The study of user activity on a web site or web application to understand how well it fulfills its objectives.

Web Accessibility – refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities.

Web Browser – is a software application that, on a user’s prompt, retrieves and collects information resources and arranges and displays the resources on the user’s computer screen.

Webcasting – A process where by sound and/or video is broadcast online. The process can deliver live or prerecorded information. Often advertisements are inserted at the beginning of the broadcast.

Website Clutter – Often happens when a website is too busy. Visitors can lose focus and not know where they are supposed to go or what they are supposed to do on your site. Too much clutter can cloud your call to action and minimize your conversion rate.

Web Crawlers/Spiders/Bots – A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. This exercise helps determine your keyword relevancy and is a big reason websites get ranked where they do (be it good or bad).

Website Metrics – The foundation and analytics used to measure a website’s effectiveness.

White Papers - Technical documents used primarily to generate leads for business-to-business technology companies. The technical papers typically include industry research, statistics and deep technical information. Download Anvil’s SEO White Paper for an example of how it’s done correctly.

Website Usability – The ease in which visitors are able to use and maneuver within a website.

The following terms and definitions are relative to SEO, Internet Marketing, Conversion, and websites in general. It is laid out in alphabetical format and compiled here for your convenience.