Here is the list of internet marketing terminologies/jargons. My original intention was to add as many frequently used internet-related words or internet business related words, especially different terms with the same meaning. I cannot forget when I received very helpful advice from an online marketing expert when I was brand new to the business years ago. He told me that I needed to come up with more emotional words and use them on my "headline" to attract readers. He explained it to me with a detailed step-by-step which I couldn't be more grateful.
The only trouble was, he mentioned many different terms to me - (1) "tagline", (2) "the title tag", (3) "your blog title", (4) "the heading" as well as (5) "headline". These 5 terms have all the same meaning - they refer to the title of your blog post. Being a complete newbie, you can imagine how awfully confused I was at the time. Then there was (6) URL and (7) domain name, (8) website title and (9) website tagline which simply means (10) subtitle of the website.
I still have this lengthy email from this selfless gentleman - he wanted me to learn as much as I could. I was so thankful for him but those simple jargons drove me crazy. I hope this list will help new internet marketers who work from home to find out such jargons at a glance. More terms will be added as and when.
A
A/B testing
Using an automation tool to test two versions of similar content. The tool will show each version randomly to the audience and decide which once proves to be successful. For example, the same webpage with different titles, different buttons, the same email but with different call-to-action ("Click HERE" or "Buy Now!"). More than two versions can be tested, and also called "Split testing".
Above the fold
The section of a webpage that is visible without scrolling.
Ad blocker
Software that prevents web advertisements from displaying on a browser.
Adsense
A content-based advertisement service by Google, targeted for users with certain interest or contexts. The earnings are generated on a CPC (cost per click) basis or CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis.
Advocacy Marketing
A marketing method where a brand highlights its existing customers' advocacy efforts, such as show support by talking highly about the brand, leave positive reviews).
Affiliate
The publisher in an affiliate marketing relationship. The person/business who promotes the advertiser to an audience.
Affiliate Manager
A representative of a merchant who looks after the affiliates by making contact regularly, giving advice on campaigns and keeping them up to date with the latest promotions, news, etc.
Affiliate Marketing
A revenue sharing model between a publisher (affiliate) and an advertiser (merchant). An affiliate promotes products/services on an advertiser's behalf through a website, email, social media, YouTube video or an app in exchange for a commission.
Affiliate Network
An affiliate intermediary platform where advertisers (merchants) and publishers (affiliates) can find each other and make a mutual affiliate relationship. Commission payments and tax information are taken care of by the network.
Algorithm
Formulas that search engines use to determine your web page rankings. Search engines send a spider to your website, crawl all the information and analyze the data. The data is referenced against the algorithm (formulas) and determine the position of the listings.
Alt text (Alt attribute, Alt tag)
Search engines can only distinguish text and are unable to view non-textual elements, typically graphics. So you need to add an ALT text (also called ALT attribute or ALT tag) to each image to make it readable by search engines.
Anchor Text
Words with a hyperlink which is clickable.
Autoresponder
Autoresponder is a program that sends a response to incoming emails. But in email marketing, the term is used to refer to a drip marketing.
B
B2B / B2C
Business To Business / Business To Consumers, respectively. It means whether a business sells products or services to other businesses or end-user consumers.
Backlink
A link placed in another website that's pointing to your webpage. It's also called an inbound link. Search engines determine the trustworthiness of your website from backlinks. How many backlinks you have (how many websites are referring your web content), and the quality of these sites are taken into consideration.
Baidu
Baidu is the second largest search engine in the world, holding a 76% market share in China's search engine market. Baidu offers several other internet services such as cloud storage solution, local and international news, mapping solution similar to Google Maps.
Bandwidth
Volume of data that can be transmitted, typically expressed in "megabits" per second, e.g. 100Mbps. An internet connection needs a larger bandwidth to send a large file such as a video.
Banner exchange
A network where website owners join and exchange their banner ads. They display another user's banner on their site for credits. The credit they've earned will then be used to have their banner displayed on another user's site. The method is oldfashioned and considered not fair because the participants' sites have a different number of visitors and the credits are often not distributed by impression.
Black Hat SEO
Series of old-fashioned methods to trick search engines in an attempt to get a website in better ranking position. Most of the "black hat" tactics will now be picked up by search engines only to return an adverse result. The website will get lower rankings, or banned from the search engine listings.
Brand bidding
Using the brand name of a third party, so your advertisement appears when a user search by the brand name. For example "The latest Macbook Pro Review" "Is Amazon.com Still The Best Online Store?" - in order to drive traffic to your own site on the brand term.
C
ccTLD
A ccTLDs is a "country code" top level domain, for example ".co.uk" for websites targeted the UK audience, .es for websites targeted Spanish audience and so on. A website with ccTLD tends to be prioritized by the local search engines. A ".co.uk" site will be ranked higher by Google.co.uk than by Google.com, for instance.
CDN (content delivery network)
A CDN transfers website information to a network of geographically dispersed servers. It means when a user requests a webpage, the CDN will redirect the request to the server that's nearest to the user. It means that a web hosting company that is equipped with CDN can deliver faster-loading speed.
CPC (Cost per click)
"PPC" is an abbreviation for "pay per click". When the advertising company offers you a pay-per-click model, you'll pay a certain amount every time a user clicks your ad. And that is CPC (cost per click). For example you run a PPC advertising campaign on Google, and the CPC is $0.60.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
The percentage of visitors to your specific webpage who have clicked a link to visit another page. If 100 people visit your page and 20 of them click the link, then the CTR is 20%.
Cross-selling
Cross-selling is where a seller offers related products/services to the initial sale. Typically an extended warranty of electrical goods (e.g. 3 years instead of a default 12-month warranty period), or various accessories when someone buys a computer. See also: Upselling, Downselling
D
DoFollow link
A "DoFollow" link is a link that instructs search engines to pass the link juice. If an authority site places a link to your webpage, then search engines will recognize it and consider your page is worthy. While NoFollow link instructs search engines to ignore the linking relationship between two sites.
Downselling
Downselling is a marketing technique where a seller offers a similar but cheaper product to the product that's initially on offer. When a customer visits the sales page but decides not to buy it (e.g. tries to close the browser page), another page will pop up, offering a cheaper alternative. See also: Cross-selling, Upselling
Drip marketing
Email automation system that sends out a set of messages at a certain interval between each message ("drips") to subscribers over time. Often referred to as an "autoresponder".
E
E-commerce
A website with a shopping card facility. In other words, an online store.
F
Favicon
A small icon associated with a website, displayed in the browser tab or the address bar. Also displayed in a user's list of bookmarks.
Favicon
G
Geo-targeting
The practice of targeting the audience (potential customers, subscribers) at a specific location(s).
H
Hyperlink
A link that's placed on a text or image, allowing you to navigate to another location on the web by clicking. Hyperlinked text (anchor text) is often blue and underlined.
I
Inbound link
A link from another website to your website. A backlink.
Impressions
The number of times a web page is visited by users. The term is often used for paid advertisements. For example, if you place a banner in a webpage and the cost is "$0.01 per impression", it means you'll pay $0.01 every time someone visits that webpage, whether that person actually sees your banner or not.
J
Javascript
A programming language developed by Netscape. It adds enhanced functionality and creates extra interactivity to websites.
K
Keyword research
The search for the most relevant keywords to the webpage content. The popularity and competitiveness of the word will be a major factor to determine the search engine ranking position, therefore the keyword search is considered to be one of the most vital SEO techniques.
L
Landing page
A webpage that users "land on" after clicking through a link. It's usually your main page where your business is explained, but it really is the first page that a user sees when they're redirected from an advantage. For example, a sales page of a specific product is also a landing page.
Link-building
Process of increasing the number of backlinks to a website, in order to improve the search engine ranking position.
Link juice
Also called "link equity", refers to the quality of links (internal and external), determined by search engines. The quality is measured by whether the linking site is authoritative or not, where in the webpage the link is placed, the relevance of the link.
M
Meta description
Meta description is a summary of the webpage, and it should include the keywords. It should contain around 150 characters. If you use WordPress, you're advised to install an SEO plugin that allows you to enter the description.
However the description may not always be picked up by search engines. As long as the keywords appear within the first paragraph (or the first few paragraphs), Google will rank your page accordingly. It means entering a meta description is not considered absolutely essential.
Meta tags
Whereas Meta tags are tags to describe the page content. In the old days, specifying meta tags separately within the <head> section of each web page was one of the essential SEO techniques, which is no longer the case. Instead, the meta description of a page and the title header (page title) are generally referred to as meta tags.
MLM (Multi-level marketing)
An MLM is an affiliate program that offers a multi-level commission structure, purely focused on recruiting others to the program. You'll be paid a commission when someone you refer buys a product from the program. And you'll also be paid (a lesser amount of commission) if that person gets someone else to buy it.
The criticism is that you only know the people you directly referred to. It means no matter how deceitfully any of the referrals down the line may be selling the product to others, it is not your concern. Not to be confused with a Pyramid Scheme.
N
Natural listings
Network marketing
A business model that builds the business by "networking" - the participants reach out to others personally and recruit them. They are usually required to pay a monthly usage fee for the product or service that's offered by the network. But they're also offered a commission upon successfully recruiting others. Many (or most of) network businesses are also multi-level marketing in nature.
NoFollow link
A "NoFollow" link instructs search engines not to pass the link juice. Typically any affiliate links should be made NoFollow because buying/selling links that pass link juice is against search engines' policies. Also your internal link to a page that's not directly related to the site content should be NoFollow, for example privacy policy, legal disclaimer and contact pages.
O
Organic search results
Non-advertised listings in search engines, web pages that are ranked "organically" based on the relevance, quality and authority (trustworthiness) of the contents. Also referred to as "natural listings".
Opt-in (or "Optin")
In internet marketing, or email marketing, to opt-in is to sign up (with a newsletter, for example), to be added to a list of subscribers. Also used as a noun - "46% opt-in rate" means 4.6 out of 10 people who visit the page signs up.
P
PPC (Pay per click)
Advertising payment model in which payment is based on the number of clicks. You pay a certain amount every time a user clicks your ad, that's CPC (cost per click). For example you run a PPC advertising campaign on Google, and the CPC is $0.60.
Pyramid Scheme
See MLM (Multi-level marketing). The idea is the same but there is a thin line between MLM and Pyramid Scheme. While an MLM offers products or services, a Pyramid Scheme does not, which is considered illegal in many countries. For example, a membership scheme where there is no objective other than to discuss recruiting more people and growing the network for more revenue. (Which is illegal.)
However many MLMs use a product/service as a loophole. For example, the users are required to purchase overpriced household consumables every month, but the main discussions are focused on recruiting more people.
Q
R
ROI (Return on investment)
A ratio between the net profit or loss and the amount invested. ROI is a measurement to evaluate performance. If you spend $100 on advertisements and made the total sales of $120, then your net profit is $20. The ROI is 20/100 = 20%.
S
SEO (Search engine optimization)
A practice to "optimize" (improve) a webpage in order to rank well in search engines. It involves using the right keywords, improving the page speed, compress the images within the page to smaller in file size, add ALT text to each image as well as providing quality content.
Spider
A "spider" is a program that's used by search engines to crawl through all the linked pages of a website, and to determine each page's ranking on various search terms.
Stealth marketing
Stealth marketing is often considered unethical, when an advertiser uses its insider to pretend to be a user from the general public and recommend its target product.
Sub domain
A subdomain is a secondary domain, usually an extra word is added at the beginning of a domain name. For example, if I were to open an online store within this very site, I would name it https://store.cybercashworldwide.com, and that's a subdomain.
Many web hosting companies offer users to create a website using their subdomain for free. It gives the users an opportunity to build their first test site and play around with it. The drawback is that subdomains are always considered secondary by search engines and tend not to rank well.
T
Tagline
A tagline simply means a catchphrase or slogan, so when someone's mentioned the word on its own to you, you might need to ask them to clarify what exactly they're referring to. It can mean the slogan of your whole website, but it can also mean your blog post title, or subtitle if you've used it at the beginning of your post.
Tier 1 Countries
In digital marketing, the majority of traffic providers, advertisers and networks consider the following 5 x English speaking countries as "Tier 1"; USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, where the most responsive audience can be found. See: List of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 Countries in Digital Marketing
TLD (Top Level Domain)
Top level domain is whatever comes at the end of a domain name (after dot) - .com, org, .net, .co and so on.
U
Upselling
Marketing technique where a seller tries to encourage customers to buy a more expensive product. Upsell products often appear immediately after a customer has completed their first purchase. They'll be directed to a "thank you for your purchase" page, where more products (upsells) are introduced. See also: Cross-selling, Downselling
URL
Abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator. It's the address of a specific web page. This page's URL is; https://cybercashworldwide.com/internet-marketing-terminology-list.
V
Viral marketing
Viral marketing is where your campaign is considered useful by users and passed on from one to another by re-sharing, usually across social media.
Vlog
A blog (weblog) that mainly publishes video content.
W
Web hosting service
A business that owns internet servers, where your website is "hosted". The server stores all your necessary files for the website and makes the site accessible via the world wide web.
X
XML
Extensive Markup Language - XML is used to transport data between the application and the database and stores data in plain text format.
Y
Yandex
A search engine that mainly serves Russia and former Soviet Union countries, offers many other services including e-commerce platform, transportation, mobile applications and online advertising.