AFFILIATE = An e-commerce affiliate is a person with a website which links back to a third party e-commerce site. When a visitor clicks on an affiliate link, they are connected to this third party site. If they then make a purchase the owner of the original site will receive either a payment usually a percentage of the money the customer spends.

ALGORITHM = (NO, not Al Gore Rythm!)  A procedure or formula which is used by search engines to rank the pages they find as they crawl the web.

BANNERS = are a form of advertising on the Web which entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract a web surfer to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. When the web surfer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website advertised in the banner, commonly referred to as ‘click-through’.

BIDDING =  real-time auction between you and your competitors for the top few positions on a search-engine’s home page.  The higher the position, the more ‘click-throughs’ you’ll get.

BLOGS = A weblog is an online journal (like this one). As with an online newsletter a blog can be tailored to match a specific image and composed to promote a product or service. The main difference between a blog and an online newsletter is that blogs are not emailed to subscribers but appear on search results as any normal website.  Blogs are often updated weekly or daily.  Some even several times a day.

BOUNCE = Bounce Rate’ is the percentage of web site visitors who arrive at site, then leave without getting any deeper into the site.  This term is also used to describe the return of an e-mail because of an error in the delivery.

BROWSER = A web browser is a piece of software that gives a user access to the World Wide Web. Web browsers provide a graphical interface that lets users to view and navigate web pages.  Internet Explorer is probably the best known, but browsers such as Firefox and Chrome are becoming increasing used by more tech-savvy users.

COST PER CLICK = An alternative form of advertising; the advertiser pays the site displaying the ad for the number of times a visitor clicks through, rather than just viewing it.

DIRECTORY =A human-edited list of products and/or services.  Similar to a Yellow Pages directory.  Well worth getting your site listed in as many of these as possible.

DOMAIN = A unique address linked to an area of a hosting-server.  The hosting server can change, but the domain will remain the same, regardless of the host.

E-ZINE = Is an electronic magazine.

HTML = Hypertext Markup Language is a formatting language used for documents that are posted on the World Wide Web. HTML files are plain text files with Codes that tell browsers such as the Chrome or Firefox how to display text, position graphics etc. and how to display links to other pages.  XHTML is similar but is called Exstensible Hypertext Markup Language and conforms to XML syntax also.

INDEX = The information that a search-engine has located and put into a quickly and easily accessible table.

JOINT VENTURE = Also known as a JV, this is where internet-marketers get together and share their email lists and products.  Often, one will have the list and the other will have the product.

KEYWORD = A Keyword is a word or phrase - typically a phrase of two or three words - which has been identified as one which potential customers use when they are searching the internet.  Long-tail keywords simply have more words.

LINKS = A clickable word or image that contains a web address (or URL). Clicking on the link causes a web browser to go to that address on the Internet.

NEWSFEEDS = Newsfeeds are a means of providing users with frequently updated content from your website. They allow subscribers to the feed to see when new content has been added to a site, and to read the new headlines without visiting the actual site. RSS or, Really Simple Synication, is an example of a newsfeed.

OPENING RATE = Email-marketing terms, the ‘opening rate’ is the ratio of people who read an email versus the total number of emails sent. Usually expressed as a percentage.

ORGANIC RESULTS = Organic or natural results are produced by the search engine crawling the web and finding sites to show you. These can change at any time and the web site owner has no direct input into how high these web sites are presented.

PAY-PER-CLICK = Otherwise know as PPC, this is where you pay a search-engine company (like Google) to have your website shown on a search-results page. They appear in a different place to normal search-results - normally at the top of results or on the right hand side of the screen. Usually, they are identified with the words ’sponsored link’.

PERMISSION MARKETING = Permission marketing or ‘opt-in marketing’ is a form of marketing specifically centered around obtaining customer consent to receive information from a company (such as yours!). This allows you to legally (and ethically) email them, perhaps with offers.

SEARCH-ENGINE = Anything like Google……….nuff said!

SEARCH-ENGINE SUBMISSION = A waste of your time! Any search-engine worth it’s salt WILL find your website.  If you have to submit to it, it’s not a good search-engine.

SEARCH TERM = Same as a keyword, keyword-phrase, long-tailed keyword…..in other words, what people type into a search-engine to find information on a topic.

URL = Or Uniform Resource Locator, is the address of a page on the Internet. The most common protocol type is ‘http’ (hypertext transport protocol), which gives the Internet address of a world wide web page.

WEB ANALYTICS = Analyzing what people do once they are on your website.