Search Engine Marketing Glossary
Ready to bust some jargon? We know the search industry’s full of buzz words and TLA’s – all designed to disrupt advertisers’ sense of self worth and ability to discern brilliant ideas from UR. But don’t despair, here’s where we lay it all bare and show that internet advertising’s all very simple stuff… Well, sort of.
Show all answers Hide all answers- Actual Cost Per Click
- The actual cost that an advertiser pays for a click. Most PPC ad services offer the advertiser the minimum possible cost-per-click that will maintain their ad position. The actual cost-per-click will be less than or equal to the maximum cost-per-click (Max Bid). What you pay for a click is determined by the ad's previous performance (click-through rate), and what Max Bid competitors have set for that search term.
- Acquisition
- Describes the point at which a potential customer performs some kind of conversion, such as a sale, sign up, or lead. Compiling acquisition data allows you to calculate the cost per conversion, or cost per acquisition (CPA).
- Ad Status
- The current status of any pay-per-click ad. The terminology varies slightly between various search engines. Here are the major terms:
Google
Active - ads are showing on Google
Deleted - ads have been deleted from ad group
Paused - ads have been paused within the ad group
Disapproved - ads has been disapproved because they don't meet Google's editorial and policy guidelines
Yahoo Search Marketing
Online - the active listings (a keyword and ad combination) currently in your account
Offline - are all of the listings you have elected to make offline (account may be switched off, or that listing has manually been switched to the offline setting)
Pending Listings - listings that are pending approval and waiting to be checked before going online
Declined Listings - listings that have been declined because they have not met editorial guidelines
Low Click Index Listings - listings that are receiving a low click-through rate and likely to be removed
Removed Listings - listings that have been removed within the last 90 days - Ad Text
- Succinct, attractive ad copy is crucial for gaining a high click-through rate for an ad. By monitoring the click-through rate you can assess the effectiveness of each individual ad, and revamp the copy as needed. All the search engines have certain restrictions regarding grammar, superlatives and trade marks.
- AdSense
- Google AdSense is the branch of Google advertising for website publishers. It allows website owners to display Google ads on their websites, and receive money for any click-throughs the ads receive. Adsense offers a range of text, image, flash and video ads that are targeted to the content that is on the site where the ads are displayed.
- AdWords
- Google's pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system. When a search term is entered into the Google search bar, targeted PPC ads appear down the right hand side of the page. For popular search terms, up to three ads also appear above the natural results. There are many different tactics involved in managing a successful AdWords campaign, including choosing the best keywords, setting the right Max CPC, writing good ad text, and much more. Google's official AdWords site has more information. Adwords ads can also appear across Google's content network of Adsense publishers.
- Algorithm
- A set of rules that search engines use to rank the results of any search query. Google's original algorithm relied very heavily on their PageRank system, but in order to present the most relevant results to their users, search engines have turned to linguistic, heuristic, semantic, and predictive algorithms, combined with counting inbound links and other factors.
- Anchor Text
- The text that is displayed as the backlink to your site. Some search engines (most notably, Google) use anchor text as an off-page factor in determining a site's ranking, so it is best to have your desired search terms as anchor text if possible. If lots of people organise to link to a site using a particular anchor text you get Google bombing.
- Average Cost Per Click (AvCPC)
- Average click cost for an ad group or ad campaign. This can be measured over any specified period of time.
- Backlinks (Inbound Links)
- Links from other pages that refer back to your page. The quantity of backlinks can be taken into account as an off-page factor in ranking a website's natural search results for a particular search term. The quality of the backlink - that is, the referring page's own ranking - is also taken into account, as is the relevancy of the referring page.
- Black hat / white hat SEO
- "Black hat" and "white hate" are fairly ambiguous terms used to delineate those who stay within the search engines’ (particularly Google’s) guidelines and those who don’t. In reality the search engines change their algorithms frequently and update their guidelines so that what may have been a “white hat technique” at some stage is now “grey hat” or “black hat.” Probably a more useful way of delineating SEO techniques is those that work versus those that don’t.
- Clicks (click-throughs)
- One click is registered each time a user clicks their mouse on an advertiser's ad and is taken to their website. For PPC ads, an advertiser only pays when an actual click is registered, not each time the ad is displayed.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Rate at which users actually click on the ads. The CTR is simply the ratio of clicks per ad impression (i.e. clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage).
- Content Match & Search Match
- Pay-per-click ads display both in search engine results, and also via the Google & Yahoo! content networks. Search match ads are the regular ads or "sponsored listings" displayed along with natural search results on a search results page. Content match ads are contextual text ads placed on relevant-content websites, and may now include image ads or video ads.
- Conversion
- A pre-specified action that an advertiser desires a user to perform on their website. Conversions can be sales, leads, sign-ups, page views (of important pages), or a default conversion (a unique action to a particular website). A piece code is placed on the conversion page (conversion point), in order to track conversions, and calculate the conversion rate.
- Conversion Rate
- Rate that clicks (website visits) actually convert into a specified action. The conversion rate is the ratio of conversions per click, (i.e. conversions divided by clicks, expressed as percentage).
- Conversion Tracking
- One of the key strengths of a pay-per-click ad campaign is the ability to accurately track Return on Investment (ROI). The number of times a conversion occurs (count) and the $ value (value) of each conversion can be tracked and reported back to the advertiser.
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
- The cost for each click on a pay-per-click ad. This is automatically calculated, based on the maximum cost-per click, the daily budget, and what competitors are bidding on a particular search term.
- Cost Per Conversion
- The click costs required to actually deliver a conversion, (i.e. total click cost divided by total conversions). Each keyword, ad group, campaign and conversion type (sale, lead, sign-up, page view etc) has its own unique cost per conversion. Separate conversions are known as Cost Per Sale, Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Sign-up, Cost Per Page View etc, or generally as Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).
- CPM (Cost Per Thousand)
- The cost for 1,000 ad impressions. This was the traditional pricing model for online ads. Now search ads are almost always priced on a cost-per-click basis, but Google content-network ads can be priced via CPM rates if the advertiser wishes.
- Crawler (Spider)
- Search engines use a crawler (also called a spider or robot) to crawl the web, following hyperlinks from one page to the next, in order to index web pages for their database. Some links use the "nofollow" tag to prevent a spider from passing on page rank from the link.
- Daily Budget
- The maximum budget an advertiser is willing to pay per day. This will go into determining the number of impressions that the ad receives.
- Destination URL
- The specific URL a user is sent to if they click on an ad. The page the user arrives on is also called the landing page. In a pay-per-click campaign you might want to display different ads that have different destination URLs depending on the search term entered. For example, if you have a website that sells vitamins and bodybuilding supplements, you might want people to click straight through to the multivitamin products catalogue rather than the homepage when they search for "multivitamins." When an ad links to a page other than the homepage it is called deep linking.
- Display URL
- The URL displayed in the ad. This may be a shortened version of the destination URL. The various pay-per-click providers have editorial guidelines regarding how long the display URL should be and what it should contain - it must have some sort of relationship to the destination URL.
- Google Bombing (Link Bombing)
- Google bombing involves getting enough links to a site using a particular anchor text so that the page will rank highly with that anchor text as the search term. Google has recently adjusted their algorithm to combat Google bombing. For example, one of the most famous Google bombs, where "miserable failure" would return the official white house biography of George W. Bush as the highest ranking page, now no longer works.
- Image Ads
- A relatively new development on the search marketing scene, image ads combine the niche targeting of search marketing with the branding power of banner ads. Unlike standard banner ads which are placed on one generic highly trafficed websites, targeted image ads use keyword matching technology to appear on content sites most relevant to your ad. They can average one tenth of the price of standard banner ads.
- Impressions
- A measure of the number of times an ad is displayed on the screen. Internet ads were traditionally charged on a per-thousand-impressions basis (CPM), but are now predominantly pay-per-click.
- Maximum Cost Per Click (Max Bid)
- The maximum price that an advertiser is willing to pay for each click. Generally the advertiser pays a smaller cost-per-click than their maximum bid. The Max Bid goes into determining the ranking of an ad in the sponsored results for a search term.
- Natural Search Results (Organic Listings)
- The non-sponsored results that are delivered by a search engine when a user enters a search term. Search engines use a number of off-page and on-page factors in determining where a web page ranks in the natural search results. The process of actively increasing your natural search ranking is called search engine optimisation.
- 'Nofollow' Tag
- An HTML tag that's added to an anchor tag so that the link doesn't "leak" or pass on page rank to the linked-to site. The tag is endorsed by the major search engines (including Google, Yahoo! and MSN), and tells the spider not to pass on page rank (link juice) to the site being linked to. This means that people can't use your site to build up their own backlinks without your approval. The place you would use the "nofollow" tag is on any part of your website where users can add links (the most common example is a blog comments section). A normal hyperlink would look like this in the HTML code:
<a href="http://www.example.com">Example Site</a>
This is what it looks like when you add the "nofollow" tag:<a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">Example Site</a> - Off-Page Factors
- Any factor external to a website that is used in calculating its ranking in a search engine's natural search results. Off-page factors include the quantity and quality of backlinks, as well as the anchor text included in these backlinks.
- On-Page Factors
- All the aspects of the actual code that makes up a website, that contribute to a website's ranking each search term. Traditionally, on-page factors were all a search engine took into account when ranking websites, but after the success of Google's PageRank system, search engines now use a variety of off-page factors as well. On-page factors like keywords in meta-tags, are no longer as important in gaining a higher ranking, but other factors such as page titles and keyword density are important.
- PageRank
- Google's system of ranking pages in their natural search results. It is an example of the use of off-page factors in determining a website's ranking. According to their website, "Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, it's more than simply the number of votes that counts. Google also analyses the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.' The PageRank system is combined with text-matching techniques to deliver natural search results for any given search term.
- Pay-Per-Call (PPCall) Advertising
- A relatively new variant of pay-per-click advertising. Pay-per-call gives consumers a free phone number to call (or lets them enter their own number, so that the advertiser can call them), rather than a website link to click on. Pay-per-call has achieved some success in the US, and Sensis has now undertaken a trial of PPCall as part of their BidSmart service.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or "Paid Search" Advertising
- When a user searches for a particular search term, the search engine returns a list of natural search results, along with a list of targeted pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Advertisers don't pay each time the ad is displayed (i.e. for each impression), but only when a consumer clicks on the ad and is taken to the destination URL. For this reason, and also because the cost-per-click is usually fairly minimal, PPC advertising is gaining huge popularity. The consumers who click on PPC ads tend to be extremely targeted toward the product, since they entered a relevant search term, and so conversion rates can be very high.
- Ranking
- Ranking: The position of your site in a search engine's natural results, when a user enters a particular search term. The ranking is determined by a number of on-page and off-page factors. Ranking - or ad rank - also refers to the position a pay-per-click ad is placed in the sponsored listings, as determined by Max Bid, and click-through-rate. Within Google, a website's ranking can vary markedly when searching google.com or google.com.au for the same search term. (For an example see our blog.)
- Reciprocal Link (Link Swap)
- A link offered to another site on the condition that you gain one in return. For example, you might provide a link to Site X on your links page provided Site X has a link back to you. This may not always increase your site's ranking, in fact it may have a negative effect in some cases.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- The practice of getting your website visible on the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Essentially, SEM is about delivering traffic to your website. Two of the most successful SEM strategies are search engine optimisation, and pay-per-click advertising campaigns. The SEM industry is growing exponentially.
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- A system of methods used to enhance a website's ranking in search engines' natural search results. This includes optimising the on-page factors, such as using relevant keywords, making sites W3C compliant, and a whole range of other techniques. SEO strategies are constantly evolving as the search engines update their algorithms.
- Search Match
- See Content Match.
- Search Terms (Queries)
- The keyword(s) or phrase that a user types into a search engine's search box. Different search engines have various advanced search features in addition to the basic broad match queries. Also refers to the particular search terms that a website owner wants their site to rank well on, both in natural and paid search results.
- Spamdexing
- Refers to any search engine marketing practice that the search engine considers to adversely affect the relevancy of its search results. What is and is not spam is somewhat of a grey area, since the search engines have different standards and guidelines, but any practice that involves deliberately and dishonestly trying to influence search engines is usually described as spam. Excessive spamming is bad both for the search engines and their users, because a search engine's worth is completely contingent on the relevancy of its results for each search term. A specific type of spamdexing is Google bombing.
- White-Hat SEO
- See Black Hat / White hat SEO.