To accompany our internet marketing guide for the bewildered, here is a glossary of common terms, technical words and general jargon which will hopefully clarify many things for you as you embark on your internet marketing journey to riches and global domination.
Affiliate – a member of an affiliate marketing program.
Affiliate Program – a marketing system whereby affiliates send traffic to a site and get paid a commission for sales resulting from that traffic. Amazon.com runs a popular affiliate program.
AJAX – an extension to javascript which allows web page content and database updates without the need to reload the page each time.
AWS – amazon web services, the “cloud” services system offered by Amazon.com
Backlinks – these are links on other sites which link back to your site and thus help drive your site up the ranks in Google. This of course makes them extremely important for an internet marketer (unless PPC is your thing).
Backup – you need one. Keep a copy of your data, preferably tracking changes, in a secure alternative location. Try this one for free!
Blog – a simple website or “web log” typically with posts appearing in chronological order.
Cache – makes sites load faster by storing pre-created pages or frequently accessed content to minimize processing and database access.
Captcha – those annoying graphics showing some random characters you need to type in on many web site registration forms to prove you are human.
CDN – content distribution network, makes sites load faster by caching files around the world where they are closer to the end user.
Cloud – a buzzword referring to doing things, such as storing data, online using a cloud service. In web hosting terms this is similar to a VPS but with billing usually by the hour and the ability to start and stop multiple instances as required.
CMS – content management system, a web application which makes it easy to build and manage a dynamic web site such as a blog.
Coupon – in internet marketing you will typically be interested in Adwords coupons, Facebook coupons, Twitter ads coupons and often also hosting coupons or discount codes.
CPA – cost per action, in advertising this is the cost you pay for a certain action.
CPC – cost per click, in advertising this is the amount you pay for each click on your adverts.
CPM – cost per mille, in advertising this is the cost you pay per 1000 views of your advert (instead of paying for CPC)
CSS – cascading style sheets, a way to define styles used on web pages to make them look nicer.
Database – a system for storing and retrieving data, such as MySQL.
DNS – domain name system which maps internet addresses to servers.
Domain – domain name, the easy to remember address which represents the hard to remember IP address of a website or other internet service.
Double Opt-In – the act of verifying (typically by clicking a link that was mailed to you) that you really did submit your email to a mailing list – helps to prevent abuse.
eBook – enter your email in the box on the right and you can see one!
Email Blog – an ezine or email newsletter.
EMD – exact match domain, a domain name which consists of the main keyword/phrase the site will
target.
Ezine – an email newsletter or email blog.
FTP – file transfer protocol, a method for uploading/downloading files to a server, not very securely.
HTML – hyper text meta language, a simple language used to construct web pages.
IM – internet marketing (also instant messaging), what you are or will be doing if you read this site!
IP Address – an address for a server, a series of 4 numbers, separated by dots like: 192.168.1.123
JS – javascript, a client side language (runs in your browser) used to add dynamic features to a website.
Keyword Planner – a keyword research tool provided for free by Google as part of Adwords.
Lists – mailing lists, a list of people who have subscribed to a mailing list/ezine.
Long tail – typically keyword phrases representing micro niches which alone may not get much interest but when many long tails are targeted they add up and can be quite profitable with high conversions due to their highly focused nature.
LSI – latent semantic indexing, from an SEO point of view it regards using synonyms of primary keywords to help clarify the meaning of a page without resorting to keyword stuffing.
MySQL – a relational database server application, used by countless web applications such as wordpress.
Nameserver – a DNS server, every domain needs at least two nameservers.
Off-page SEO – basically creating discussion about and backlinks to pages and sites for SEO purposes.
On-page SEO – optimization of pages on a site for the search engines, one side of SEO.
Opt-In – the act of submitting an email to a mailing list.
PDF – a popular document format.
Perl – a programming language used on the web but particularly good for text processing and backend tasks.
PHP – a programming language widely used on the web.
PMD – partial match domain, similar to EMD but consists of more than just the exact keyword.
PPC – pay per click advertising, Google Adwords is probably the most popular ad network where you can buy PPC ads.
Proxy – a server through which requests are sent (such as fetching a web page) which can mask the real ip address of the person or machine making the request. Commonly used for SEO and keyword research software.
SCP – secure copy, a file copy program which runs over SSH.
SEO – search engine optimization, a combination of on-page and off-page optimization techniques to get a site ranked higher in search engine results.
SFTP – a secure implementation of FTP.
SMTP – simple mail transport protocol, basically an outgoing mail system.
Solo Ad – an advert in the form of an email sent to a mailing list by the list owner.
Spinning – a method to produce many variations from one article by replacing words/phrases with synonyms, typically from spintax format.
Spintax – the format used when creating articles for spinning, eg. “the {black|white|pink|large|angry|hungry} {cat|dog|horse} {ran|walked|jumped|died|grew wings and flew away}”. Spinning and creating spintax is usually done with special software unless you are a masochist or some kind of mad genius.
SSH – secure shell, a method for making secure, encrypted connections to servers.
Themes (wordpress) – designs which can be easily installed to change the entire look of a site.
UD – ultimate demon, a very powerful and popular automatic backlinking application for SEO which will save you months of tedious manual backlinking work if used properly.
UNF – ultimate niche finder, a useful keyword research application.
VPS – virtual private server, in web hosting this is functionally like a dedicated server but in fact several VPS instances can run on the same physical server.
Whois – an internet tool for looking up the owner of a domain name.
Hopefully the above will be useful and we will be adding more over time but if there’s anything missing, let us know!
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