Glossary of Internet, Marketing and Web Development Terms

Over 100 internet, marketing and web development terms are defined. Some contain a reference to other terms in this glossary. A link to the second term is indicated by a (?).

AD COPY - The writing for an ad that you do. Effective ad wording will get you more clicks and sales.
ADSENSE - A Google program, where you can place ads on your website, and get paid when visitors click on the ads.
ADVERTISERS - The people who are actively placing ads to get sales or visits. Advertisers put ads on publishers' sites.
ADWORDS - A Google program where you pay to advertise for your site and products. You only have to pay for clicks on your ads. These are the ads that are on the right side of the page when you Google a search term and appear on many other websites.
AFFILIATE - Someone who gets paid a commission or flat fee for referring a paying customer to a merchant's site.
ALEXA - This site rates sites on the Internet by popularity. Alexa.com
ASP - Active Server Pages - Microsoft's scripting language for creating dynamic webpages.
AUTO-RESPONDER - A program that responds automatically to sign ups for newsletters. You can equip it with several messages to be sent at predetermined time increments.
BANDWIDTH - The amount of data that can be transmitted in a certain amount of time. e.g. bytes per second. Hosting companies often use the term bandwidth to mean the amount of data (text and images) sent to a visitors browser. Hosting packages usually specify the maximum bandwidth that can be used per month without additional fees.
BASIC RESELL RIGHTS - When you obtain resell rights you are legally able to sell the product to others, but those buying from you will not be able to sell it.
BLOG - Web log - a website or series of web pages displayed in reverse chronological order. An online journal or diary, often devoted to a specific niche.
BOOKMARKING - A method of saving links to your favorite web pages. Social bookmarking is a new way of saving favorites by adding them to a site where others can see them and share theirs. This can be an effective way to get traffic.
BUG - An error in a computer program, script or web page. The origin of the term is usually attributed to Grace Hopper but it had prior use by engineers, including Thomas Edison, to refer to flaws in engineering design.
BUM MARKETING - Coined by Travis, article marketing to advertise your affiliate links and sites. You pick a product, get the link, write articles, and submit them to sites which act as article depositories.
BUSINESS PLAN - A business plan is a document containing your busines goals and steps to accomplish them. This is a detailed plan of what you are going to do to become successful in your business. Tip: a must have for Internet Marketing. Set out your goals and plans for the present and future of your online business.

CAMPAIGN - The work you do to advertise a particular site, service, or product.
CLICKBANK - One of the more popular websites that sells digital products, e-books, and software. It contains affiliate links to these products to give you the chance to make money as a publisher or sell your product. Clickbank.com.
CONVERSION RATE - The rate of how many visitors to your merchant's sites turn into customers.
COPYWRITING - The writing you do for your marketing efforts. Tip: How successful the campaign is depends on how you word your ads.
CPANEL - A control panel for websites hosted on Linux systems. It controls your files, and site information.
CPC - COST PER CLICK - How much you will pay each time someone clicks on your ads, links, or text when using an ad buying program.
CSS - Many sites are formatted with css (cascading style sheets), enabling the html to contain only the content of the site.

DEBUG - Eliminate the errors in a computer program or web page by testing and fixing the code. See BUG (?).
DEDICATED HOSTING - Internet hosting that provides a whole server (computer) for a specific client's websites.
DIRECT LINKING - A link for an affiliate program is placed in an ad, article, or other form of advertisement one one site and transfers the visitor to the merchant's site. This is not as effective as having a landing page in between that pre-sells the item.
DIRECTORY - A web directory is an organized list of websites categorized by topic to make it easy for people to find the sites. These are sometimes used to get back links.
DOMAIN NAMES - The name of your site. Ex: newbies.com, newbies.info, newbies.net
DYNAMIC WEB PAGE - A page of a website that provides the customized content to visitors based on a database, server information, cookies or information entered by the visitor. See STATIC WEB PAGE (?).
E-CARD - Electronic greeting card. An invitation is sent by email to visit a specific webpage containing the greetingcard contents made specifically for them.
E-COURSE - A series of informational e-mails or lessons based on teaching a specific topic.
EMAIL - Electronic mail delivered via the internet.
EZINE - An online magazine.

FANTASTICO - A script installer that is run on Linux hosting accounts, usually through cPanel. It helps you to easily install blogging, content, shopping carts and other popular scripts on your domain, with the click of a button.
FFA- FREE FOR ALL - Just as it says, this means the information, or product, or service is free for everyone who wants it.
FLASH - A popular website technology, where pictures and graphics and text are displayed in colorful animatations. Tip: Flash content is not indexed by search engines and is not accessible to those with visual disabilities, so use <noscript> tags to provide content to search engines and visitors who do not have Flash enabled.
FORWARDING - Sending an e-mail from your inbox to someone else's address.
FTP - File transfer protocol - a method of transferring your files from your computer to your website. Some web development tools (editors) include ftp access or you can use a utility designed to do only ftp. Ftp can also be used to download files.
FOOTER - The bottom of a webpage or ad.
GIVE AWAY RIGHTS - These are the legal rights you obtain to give away a product for free.
GUERILLA MARKETING - Unconventional marketing that often leaves the customer uanaware of the marketing. It is sometimes considered unethical because of the stealth techniques used. It uses the most minimal budget to get the greatest profit possible.
GURU - A person that has been successful in an area, such as Internet marketing, and has a lot to teach others. They usually are considered experts in their field.
HEADER - The top of a webpage, ad or an html program.
HITS- File requests for your site, images, and the index page all count as single hits. This is not a good way to count traffic.
HOSTING - A place (data center) online that holds all of your documents for your websites. It provides disk space, bandwidth, and database and other services for account holders.
HTML - Hypertext Markup Language is a simplified computer language for developing web pages.
IM - Internet Marketing acronym. Marketing products online to make money.
IMPRESSION - The number of times your link appears on another site. used in Adwords and other advertising programs to show how many times your ads are displayed.
INBOUND LINK - A link on another site that directs traffic to your site.
IP ADDRESS - An identifier for a computer on a network (?). The format is 4 numbers separated by periods. Each number can be 0 to 255. Your ip address is 18.97.14.86.
JAVA - An object oriented programming language, originally developed by Sun, that runs on many computer platforms.
JAVASCRIPT - A scripting language that can do more than just HTML coding. Tip: Google and other search engines cannot understand Javascript. Use <noscript> tags to provide content to search engines and visitors who do not have Javascript enabled.
JV - Joint venture - working with another marketer to make money. You make an agreement and follow through until the end of the agreement term.
KEYWORD DENSITY - A number indicating how many times keywords are used in a given amount of text. Tip: Usually 3-5% is good.
KEYWORD RESEARCH - Act of searching for keywords that are searched for often but have few true competing results in search engines.
KEYWORDS - The most important words, or phrases on a web page. These are the words that people type into the search engine to find what they are looking for.
LANDING PAGE - A page in between your ad or article and your merchant's order page. Usually a review page of the merchant's products, or a testimonial page for the merchant.
LINK EXCHANGE - Exchange links with other websites. They post your link on their site, and you post theirs' on your site.

MAILING LIST - A list of all the people who have freely given you their email address. You can use this list to send out emails of products at any time.
MASTER RESELL RIGHTS (MRR) - These rights allow you to legally sell the product and the resell rights too. The person you sell to can also sell the product if you choose to let them.
MERCHANT - The merchant is the company or person who is selling the product or service. As an affiliate, you are working to get people to buy from the merchant so you can get paid.
META TAG - A part of your coding in HTML that describes your web page. The title and description provided in your meta tags is usually shown in search engine results. Meta tags always appear within </head> tags.
MINI-SITES - Small websites consiting of only a few pages. These are somewhat like landing pages but have more information all on one site. You could have 4-5 pages of information about your niche, merchant, or product. This increases the amount of information Google has to scan on your site, which might get you a higher Page Rank.
MODERATOR - On a forum, certain people are given the responsibility to watch over what other people write. If someone is breaking the rules, a moderator can delete the post or ban the person who wrote the content.
MRR - Master resell rights (?).
MYSQL - A popular technology for accessing online databases. It allows you to store, update and acess organized information about your products, customers, etc.
NETWORK - A group of computers linked together.
NEWBIES - This word refers to people who are new to something such as Internet marketing or web development.
NEWSLETTER - A periodic publication sent to a list of people. It can be packed full of pertinent information for the reader. Tip: This is a good way to promote products to your mailing list.
NICHE - A narrow topic that describes the market you are promoting to, based on what visitors search for. An example would be: Internet Marketing Terms for Newbies. Tip: Usually the more focused the niche the better.
OOP - Object-oriented programming - A type of computer programming that reuses coded for objects (nouns) and methods (verbs that act on objects).
OPT IN - When someone has indicated that they have chosen to be a part of your mailing list. Double opt in also has them confirm via e-mail that they have requested being added to your mailing list. Tip: Double opt in helps you to be sure they have a vaild email address.
OUTSOURCING - Paying other people to do the work for you. Such as writing your web pages, writing articles, writing ads and sales pages and other things you might find it is easier to pay for than do yourself.
PAGE LOADS - The number of times your page has been accessed in a browser. This is a popular way of counting people that visit your site, but is not as good as counting unique visitors.
PARALYZATION - A state of paralysis experienced by most newbies. It is often due to information over load. You have read so much that you don't know what to do or where to start. Tip: To get over your paralyzation, focus on one thing at a time.
PASSWORD - Secret data used to verify access to a membership website or other resource.
PAYMENT THRESHOLD - Minimum amount required before payment is made. Many sites that pay you commission or flat fees have these - they will not pay you until they owe you a specific amount of money.
PDF - A file format used by Adobe. It is the most popular format for e books.
PHP - A script language, used mostly on Linux servers or hosting. This languages allow you to manipulate data, images, etc.
PLR - Private Label Rights, Legal rights to a product where you can rename, add links, sell, modify and break up into multiple products/sites, unless otherwise stated.
PLUGIN - Additional functionality for a browser, editor or other utility.
PM - Private message - Messages sent to a specific member of a forum or website from another member or the organization. It is an email of sorts without actually exchanging email addresses.
PPC - PAY PER CLICK Advertising model where the merchant only pays when a visitor clicks on their ads or links. The publisher receives credit each time an ad/link is clicked.
PPP - PAY PER POST - A way of getting more posts on your forums. When forums start out they are very small, have few visitors and fewer people who contribute to the topics. In order to get more posts the forum owner may pay people to post topics and replies.
PR - PAGE RANK - Google's indication of website popularity. Where a site or page is located in the search results depends partially on page rank.
PRE-SELL - Marketing to a customer before transfering them to the merchant's site. Reviewing a product or merchant for the customer or giving your own personal testimonial on the product are examples of pre-selling. Telling them about the product, good and bad, and removing doubt before they get to the merchant's site.
PRESS RELEASE - An announcement to the world via news media. It includes the who, what, when, where and why of a topic. Things like What is new, when is it going to happen, etc.
PUBLISHERS - The people who place ads and links on their web pages to advertise a merchants products or services. In return for this, publishers are paid, often through a third party.
RECIPROCAL LINKS- Links placed on two websites that point to each other's sites. You place a link on your site, in return for them putting your link on their site.
REDIRECTING - Automatically transfering the visitor from one webpage to another, sometimes on a different website. This is done to avoid broken links when you reorganize your website or to have a shorter url linking to a longer one. With a short URL, there is less to remember and less to type to get to a site. Tip: Here's the code of a redirect link:
<head>
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url="http://www.whereyouwantthemtogo.com/">
</head>
RESELL RIGHTS - With these rights you can legally sell the product yourself, but you may not sell the rights to sell it.
RESOURCE (BIO) BOX - When submitting articles you will get a small area of text where you can write information about yourself, your product or website. Tip: The more interesting your bio box, the more likely you are to get click throughs from your articles.
RETURN DAYS - As an affiliate, the return days are how many days it takes for you to get paid after the end of the pay period or the actual purchase.
RSS - An online feed of your posts or site information. When someone signs up to get it, each time there is an update on your site they get notified through their reader.
SALES COPY - The information on a sales page to get visitors to purchase a product or service.
SALES LETTER - A letter to the customer, describing the product, its benefits, price, testimonials, etc.
SALES PAGE - The web page where a product is sold. It gives buyers all the information they need to make an informed decision to purchase the item and links a sales cart or payment method.
SCRIPTS - Programming, installed on your website which allows manipulating information. Scripts can make widgets move, count down product quantity, add shopping carts, maintain a guest book and more.
SEO - Search engine optimization - Making your website or web page as search engine friendly as possible. Tip: Optimizing your site can get it to show up more frequently and higher on search engine results.
SERP - Search Engine Results Page - The web page(s) that is returned when a search term is entered in a search engine. It lists all the results for a keyword.
SERVER - The main computers or computer that runs the software for all the computers in a network.
SHARED HOSTING - Many websites, owned by different account holders, are hosted on the same server. This makes hosting more affordable and is sufficient for most websites.
SIGNATURE (SIG) - Lines at the end of an email or forum post that contain your name and where you can promote your product, site, or place other information within the forum rules. Tip: Use your signature to get free traffic for your sites.
SITE BUILDER - A software program or utility that is used to create a website. It makes it much easier than coding HTML directlying. Many use a WYSIWYG interface - what you see is what you get. They help to create web pages, link all your pages together, add images, add text and more.
SPAM - Unwanted email or forum posts that are off topic.
SQUEEZE PAGE - A web page intended to persuade visitors to enter their email address. You can offer a freebie, discount, newsletter, etc to get them to opt in to your mailing list.
STATIC WEB PAGE - A page of a website that provides the same content at all times to all visitors. See DYNAMIC WEB PAGE (?).
SUBDOMAINS - Extra names that precede your domain in your URLs. Subdomains correspond folders on your website. In domain healthtips.com, a sub domain of exercise would have URL http://exercise.healtipstips.com/ which redirects to http://www.healtipstips.com/exercise/. Tip: Use keyword names for subdomains for better search engine ranking.
TEMPLATE - A set of files for a website or ad, containing a sample webpage/ad with images, and headers. All you have to do is fill in the blanks with your own text.
TRACKING CODE - A method used by many affiliate programs to determine which publisher is to be paid for the sale or lead. Each affiliate has a unique tracking code. They put your tracking code into a link, and when there are purchases through that link you get paid.
TRAFFIC - Visitors coming to your site. Driving traffic is actively finding ways to get more visitors. More visitors mean more sales, if your sales copy is effective.
TROJAN HORSE - A computer virus (?) where a desired program releases another program which creates havoc on the computer. Named after the Greek legend of a huge horse containing soldiers.
TRUE COMPETITION - Other sites/companies that market for the same keywords. Search with quotes around your keywords to find out exactly how many other sites have your exact set of keywords in their content. The results are your true competition.
TURNKEY SITES - These are sites that are all set up for you. All the text, images, tables, headers, and links are all set up. You might have to add your own tracking code to the links, but other than that it is ready to go. You just need to get traffic. Tip: For best results your site needs to be unique. You could start with a turnkey site if you are inexperienced, but modifying it and adding content will make it stand out to the search engines and your visitors.
UNIQUE VISITORS - A count of how many different IPs have accessed your site. The IP is their home Internet address.
VIRAL MARKETING - Marketing that is based on sharing the information, forwarding it to friends, sharing on other websites, and other ways of getting the information to more and more people fast and free.
VIRUS - A computer program that copies itself by embedding itself in shared programs which are distributed by human actions. Many viruses are delivered by email. Others propagate themselves from infected websites. A virus can be latent on your computer, but will not do damage until you execute it's program and will not be distributed unless you send it's file to someone via email or by placing it on your website.
WHOIS - A protocol for accessing a database of informaion about internet domains. Also used to refer to the websites that display this information which includes the owner of a domain, where it is hosted, information on contacting the owner and much more. e.g. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp and http://whois.domaintools.com/ (formerly whois.sc).
WORDPRESS - A popular site and script used for blogging. This site is different though in that it allows you to add pages to your blog as well as posts. See http://wordpress.org/ for the software to install on your own site or http://wordpress.com/ for hosting your blog. Both are free. This software is usually available in Fantastico within cPanel on Linux hosts.
WORM - An acronym for "write once, read many". A malicious computer program that copies itself to other computers without human intervention.
WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get - Used to describe a user interface where the version being edited resembles very closely the version displayed/printed later.