Website Promotion Glossary
Adsense - Google Adwords that appear on websites. Website owners earn money by allowing Google to place its ads on their sites.
Advertising Revenue Model - The way most websites (that do not sell anything or do not sell memberships) make money. When they display ads on their site, they earn revenue. The more visitors they can get to their site, the more they earn.
Algorithm - the mysterious formula Google uses to decide where to place a web page in the search engine results. SEO professionals claim to know how to appeal to Google's algorithm.
Authority Site - A website that is seen by the Google algorithm as having more useful content than most sites. A site that has thousands of heavily visited pages will be an authority site more than a site composed of 8 pages.
Blog - basically, a date-oriented website ( a Journal) A blog is the sum of all the blog posts. Think of a blog as a newsletter on Steroids.
Blog Post - an individual page on a blog. Posts are part of a blog.
Blogosphere - the blogging community in an Industry. A list of all the bloggers who write about accounting software are a blogosphere.
Click Through Ratio (CTR) - The percentage of clicks an ad receives compared to the number of times the ad is displayed. A poorly written ad will have a low CTR. An effective ad with have a higher CTR.
Database - basically, a list - more specifically - a set of tables that contain lists
Database table - A list of colleges with city, state and enrollment numbers would be stored in a Database table.
Header Tags - Headlines using standard codes to display the headline. Words that look like headlines to the human eye,but do not use header tags are not effective for SEO. Header tags help the Google robot understand the flow of your article.
Interactive Website / Database-driven Website - the opposite of a simple website that a graphic designer builds. An interactive website will dynamically create web pages "on the fly" using data that is stored in a database. You usually need a web development company to create an Interactive Website from scratch.
Internet Footprint - Your company's overall presence on the web. The sum of all your news releases, company web pages and content on other sites (such as Yahoo) comprise your footprint. Analyzing search engine results for your brand name is a good way to measure footprint.
Keywords - A company that sells a product will usually have its product category as its main site keyword. A site has a keyword. Individual web pages can also have keywords.
Lead generation site - A website such as 2020AccountingSoftware.com - which assures its website is shown at the top of the search engine rankings for both organic results and Sponsored Listings. The site collects "sales leads" and sells access to these leads to companies.
Link / Hyperlink - Clickable text. You want other websites to add a "link" on their site that points to your site. Simply adding your domain name that is not clickable does not help.
Meta Description Tag - a short summary of what is on a page. A Meta Description Tag is not seen by visitors on your website. It is seen in the search engine results and serves the same purpose as an ad.
Organic Listings / Organic Results / Earned Results - the position in the search engine results that are earned by being useful to surfers. Companies do not pay Google to appear in the Organic results.
Page Title Tag - The words at the absolute top of your browser. Each web page on your site needs a Page Title tag - which should describe what is on the page or the purpose of the page. "Welcome" is a horrible Page Title Tag and a sign of a company which needs to have its website reviewed by a professional.
Pay Per Lead - paying for access to a sales lead generated by another website.
Pay Per Click Ads / Sponsored Listings / Google Ads / Search Engine Marketing
Record - a single entry into a database table. The information about "University of Texas" would be a single record in a table.
ROI - Return on Investment - dividing your advertising cost by the sales revenue you receive. ROI is calculated for each campaign or for each ad that is run.
Sales Lead - the email address or name of a qualified potential buyer.
Search Engine Rankings / Search Engine Results - The page of 10 results that are shown when a person types a keyword into Google.
SEO - Search engine optimization - a procedure for attempting to improve a website's organic rankings in the search engine results. Poor quality "hack" firms (especially foreign firms) use "SEO" as a buzzword to confuse corporate buyers and sell useless services. Different consultants define sell SEO services of varying quality.
Subheadings / Subheadlines - A subheading breaks up long blocks of text into similar paragraphs. They are crucial to long articles because people skim, read only parts of articles and do not read an entire article.
UGC / UGV - User Generated Content / User Generated Video - Content that is added by visitors of a website. Website owners do not pay for UGC.
URL / Website Address - the long address that begins with "http:" that you can copy and paste into an internet browser's address bar. This page's URL is: http://www.seanashbrook.com/website-promotion/glossary.html
User Registration - when a person registers on your site or buys a membership.
Viral / Going Viral - When a lot of people (usually bored office workers) voluntarily promote something you made by showing their friends.
Web Host / Server / Domain Name - When you purchase a domain name, you need to locate a Web Host to rent a server from. You place your website on the Web Host's server in exchange for a monthly or yearly fee. You do not have a website if you only buy a domain name.
Website Worth or Website Footprint - Summary of the age, reputation (as seen by the Google algorithm, not a person), update history, number of pages, and number of inbound links pointing to your site. When you change your domain name, you lose all the Good will and worth your site has built up.
Whitelist Email Provider - Email delivery services such as iContact, which have special relationships with ISPs to assure your bulk email messages get delivered.
Writing for Keywords - The opposite of writing in AP style. Assuring that your product category (vs. your brand name) appear in website text a reasonable number of times. However, writing for keywords should not produce jibberish. Bad writers include keywords too much, which makes the text on your site unreadable by humans.
