Above The Fold
The content on your website that’s view-able without a visitor needing to scroll down the screen.
AdCenter
Microsoft’s pay per click advertising network.
AdSense
Google’s advertising partnership program for content publishers that pays them a share of the revenue generated from clicks on contextual ads.
AdWords
Google’s pay per click advertising network.
Affiliates
Affiliates promote products and services for other people and get paid if they get someone to complete a specified action (making a purchase, capturing an email address, filling out a form, etc.).
Analytics
A method of tracking user activity on your website. Data available includes where a visitor came from, how long they spent on your site and what pages they visited.
Anchor Text
The text that a web user clicks on to follow a link.
Blog
A type of platform that allows for easy publication of content on a website that needs to be regularly updated.
CMS (Content Management System)
A name for any type of platform (including blogs) that makes it easy to add to, and update, content on a website.
Contextual Advertising
Advertisements which are directly relevant to the content that they are displayed next to.
Conversion
When someone completes a desired action, such as making a purchase or giving their contact details.
Cookie
A file which automatically downloads onto a web user’s computer to track their online activity and personalise their online experience.
CPA (Cost Per Action)
A method of assessing the effectiveness of online advertising. It’s worked out by dividing the total spend on a form of advertising by the number of desired actions (purchases, leads, etc.) completed.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
The price an advertiser pays an advertising network every time someone clicks on one of their adverts and is directed through to their website.
CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)
The price an advertiser pays for one of their adverts to be displayed a thousand times.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
The percentage of people who click on an advert or link that’s displayed to them
Everflux
The constant changing and updating of the indexes of search engines.
Google Keyword Tool
A free tool that provides new keyword ideas based upon the keywords that you enter into it.
Header Tags (H1, H2, H3)
An important piece of HTML code that indicates to search engines what the pages on your website are about.
Home Page
The main, and arguably most important, page of your website. It’s the first page seen if you type your domain name directly into a web browser address bar.
.htaccess
A file on your website’s server through which a number of functions (access levels, redirects, etc.) can be set.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
The coding used to create your website.
Inbound Link
A link from another website that points to your website.
Internal Link
A link from one page on your website to another page on your website.
Information Architecture
The way in which the content on your website is categorised, organised and accessed.
IP (Internet Protocol) Address
The unique number assigned to a computer or server that is connected to the internet.
JavaScript
A piece of code that can be embedded into your website to add dynamic features to it.
Keywords / Keyword Phrases
The words or phrases that you want your website to show up for when people search online.
Keyword Density
The percentage of times that a specific keyword or keyword phrase is mentioned on a particular page.
Keyword Research
The process of choosing which keywords you want your website to target.
Landing Page
The specific page that a visitor is sent to when clicking on a link from a search engine or an advert.
Link Farm
A website that exists only for the purpose of linking to other websites.
Long Tail
A keyword phrase which is typically made of 4 or more words.
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing)
A process used by search engines to determine what a page is about by the types of words and phrases contained within it and the relationships between them.
Meta Description
A brief description of what a page is about which shows up in search results below the title of a page.
Meta Keywords
A piece of HTML code that indicates to search engines what a page is about.
Nofollow
An attribute that can be applied to links to prevent them passing authority to the page being linked to.
Organic Search Results
Results shown by search engines that are determined by their algorithm rather than by how much an advertiser has paid them.
Outbound Link
A link from your website that points to another website.
PageRank
A score of between 1 and 10 that Google gives to every webpage on the internet which estimates the importance of that page.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
An advertising pricing model in which advertisers only pay when someone clicks on an advert and is directed through to their website.
Referrer
A search engine or 3rd party website that sends a visitor to your website.
Reputation Management
The process of ensuring that when people search for information about your company online the results they find are as positive as they can be.
Robots.txt
A file on your website’s server that can be used to tell search engines what pages you want, or don’t want, to show up in their search results.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
The process of configuring, presenting and promoting your website to maximise the exposure that it receives.
SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
The listings, normally from 1 to 10, that search engines show in response to someone searching for a word or phrase.
Site Map
A page or file that helps search engines to navigate the pages on your website.
Spam
Unethical methods of promoting a website.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
The unique location of every page on the internet.
Whois
The ownership record of a domain name.
WordPress
The most widely used type of blog.
301 (Redirect)
A redirect (set-up in .htaccess) that tells search engines to transfer the authority, backlinks and rankings of one specific page of your web site to another specific page of your website.
404
An error page that’s displayed when someone follows a link to, or types in, a url on your website that doesn’t exist.