Anchor text is the actual words a search engine user clicks on – these usually describe the page/site that the link will direct the user to. These words are recognised by search engine crawlers and therefore are very important in Search Engine Optimisation.

A bid is the maximum amount of money that an advertiser is willing to pay for each time a search engine user clicks on their ad. These bid prices can vary enormously due to factors such as competition from other advertisers and search volume.

The click through rate of an advert represents the percentage of clicks it receives. This is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the number of impressions the advert has received.

In website terms, a conversion happens when the site visitor takes a desired action. This could be filling out a form, downloading something or buying a product for example.

The conversion rate represents the percentage of visitors to a site who performed a desired action, a “conversion”. This is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors by the total number of conversions.

Conversion Optimisation is about improving the quality of the visitor’s experience on a website, making it as easy, fast and natural for them to complete a ‘conversion’ as possible.

The cost-per-click is the exact amount of money an advertiser pays each time their advert is clicked on by a user. This can range from as low as 2p for a less popular term to tens of pounds for very competitive markets.

Why CPM, and not CPT? Simple: the M is not a letter, it’s a roman numeral. M stands for mille, the Latin word for thousand. The cost per thousand impressions advertising model is only used in certain areas of paid search engine advertising. It quite simply means that the advertiser agrees to pay a set price for every one thousand times their advert is shown.

Crawlers are also known as spiders or bots. They are the automated programs that literally ‘crawl’ websites and ‘read’ the content of the page whilst also making copies of them to store in the search engine’s index and following hyperlinks on the page.

AdWords is the paid advertising program offered by Google, which produces the adverts or ‘sponsored links’ seen on the side of search engine results or on relevant sites (see content network).

Aside from being shown alongside search engine results, advertisers also have the opportunity to show their ads on relevant sites either automatically decided by Google (content targeting) or hand picked by the advertiser (site targeting). This is particularly effective for adverts aimed at increasing brand awareness.

More commonly just known as a link, this is the text (or icon, or image) that you see on websites or adverts that can be clicked on leading you to another page or site.

An advert receives an impression each time it shown by the search engine. The advert could be shown in the search engine results pages themselves or could be shown on other relevant sites (see site targeting). This does not represent the same figure as ‘clicks’ which is where a user actually chooses to click on the advert once it has been displayed.

Keywords are also known as ‘search terms’. They are the words typed into search engines or directories when a user is looking for a website or information. Webmasters use a variety of tools and data to research the popularity of these terms in order to optimise their website and their adverts.

The successful integration of the long-tail keyword into SEM strategy is often considered core to the success of search engine marketers in today’s competitive market.

Broadly speaking, the long-tail keyword is a relatively new concept that is a departure from the traditional idea that a particular product or market should focus budget and strategy only on a top 10 or 20 revenue generating, popular keywords. Instead it aims to share the campaign focus with all the possible combinations of less obvious, multi-phrase keywords that potential clients could use in search engines to find the same product.

So for example the financial advice market is currently very competitive for search engine marketing. The top keywords are likely to be “financial advice”, “financial advisor”, “finance advice” or “finance advisor”. But there are also thousands of other less obvious phrase-style keywords that search engine users could be using such as: “independent financial advice”, “independent financial advice on mortgages” or even “independent financial advice on mortgages in london”.

It is these less obvious keywords that are termed ‘long-tail keywords’. This method allows search engine marketers to target a wider audience, with a high likelihood of conversion due to the targeted nature of the search query.

PPC is a form of internet advertising where advertisers can display their ads (shown alongside results in search engines) in return for agreeing to pay a set amount which directs the user to their website. Adverts are shown based on search keywords or website content themes.
It is important to note that the advertiser does not pay when their advert is shown on the search engine (impression), but only if a user actually clicks on it through to the relevant website.

Return On Advertising Spend relates to the difference between profit made by ad campaign conversions per pound spent on advertising costs. It is calculated by dividing profit made through advertising by expenditure on advertising.

An algorithm is a set of complicated rules and procedures that search engines use to rank the listings of websites that are contained within their indexes. The exact method is not known by the general public so website optimisation is based upon trying to understand which factors search engines place importance on and improving best practice areas.

SEM is all about getting exposure, increasing quality traffic and improving the visibility of websites for visitors looking on search engines. This could be to both increase brand awareness and for the purpose of direct sales. Principally this is done through two key areas: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC). (NB. Although there is some disagreement over exactly what areas SEM covers – Moodia defines it in the same manner as the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organisation - SEMPO).

SEO is the process of increasing the amount and quality of traffic to websites by improving their position on search engine results pages (SERPs). These positions cannot be paid for so the process is achieved through manipulation of a number of factors on the website including content and structure of the site, title and meta tags and quality inbound links.

A search query is the particular string of keywords or phrases that a user types into a search engine to find a website and/or information.

You may see the acronym SERP used quite in lot in relation to search engine marketing. It simply refers to the list of results that appears in any search engine after a user has typed in a particular search query.

Search volume represents the amount of search engine users typing in a particular search query per month. This is very important both for PPC and SEO in order to determine the best keywords to target.

Site targeting allows Google Adwords advertisers to choose specific sites that they would like their adverts to be shown on, outside of being only shown on search engine results pages. These sites are part of the Google content network are can be picked individually according to relevance. They are priced based on a CPM model rather than a PPC model.

A unique visitor represents a real internet user (as opposed to a crawler). This is usually tracked by the user’s unique IP address. This means that even if a visitor comes to a web site and clicks on a whole variety of links, it is still only counted as a single unique visit.

Usability is the ease and efficiency with which a website user can perform certain tasks on a website – e.g. navigate around, buy a product, find required information.

Usability Testing does exactly what it says. A panel of non-biased users representing a random sample of genders, ages etc. are asked to perform key tasks on a website and provide feedback about its accessibility. Based on these findings, the site’s layout and design can then be improved to bolster usability.

Web Analytics:

Web analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing a website ’s performance based on the behavior of its users. This provides valuable information to help improve every aspect of the website including usability, layout and conversion optimization.

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