Website Building Glossary

Above the Fold – indicates the part of a web page that can be seen without scrolling up or down.

AdSense – The Google advertising program that pays web site owners a fee when their visitors click on one of Google’s ads.

AdWords – The Google advertising program that provides space for advertising on the Google search results page (SERP) or for ads displayed on an AdSense partner’s site. Advertisers pay Google a fee whenever someone clicks on an ad (PPC).

Affiliate – Also known as a Publisher. The web site owner who refers clicks to a merchant in return for a commission or other form of compensation.

Affiliate Link – The link on an affiliate’s site that goes to a merchant. That link has a tracking code built in that identifies the click as coming from that affiliate’s site.

Affiliate Manager – The person who manages a merchant’s affiliate program.

Affiliate Program – The program offered by a merchant that pays other web sites a commission for leads, actions, or sales.

Affiliate Tracking – The process of tracking a link between an affiliate web site and a merchant. This is usually done through a tracking code and cookies (see Cookies).

Associate – Another name for an affiliate.

Banner Ad – The type of affiliate link that displays a graphical image of some type of marketing message. Banners usually come in certain predefined sizes and are usually in GIF or JPEG format.

Blog – Short for Web Log. The type of site or affiliate presentation that resembles a journal or diary. The implication is that it changes often and is mostly content based.

Browser – The computer software that displays a web page. Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari are examples of web browsers.

Charge Back – An invalid sale that results in an affiliate’s commission being rescinded. Also known as a reversal.

Click-Through - The process of clicking from one web site to another. Click-Throughs are a major component of affiliate tracking.

Click Through Ratio (CTR) – The ratio of click-throughs to impressions of an affiliate link or page. Higher ratios indicate greater effectiveness of a link.

Commission – The payment made for a referral from an affiliate site. Usually based on a percentage of a sale but can also be based on an action like a membership sign-up or for a visitor providing contact information.

Cookies – A piece of information added to a web site visitors computer that can be viewed and tracked by other web sites. Cookies are a key component of an affiliate link and provide the affiliate’s ID and also the length of time that an affiliates ID has been active (see Return Days).

Content – The information on a web site. Typically a website owner who focuses on content writes articles and product reviews that help brand and create credibility for himself or for a merchant.

Conversion Rate – The ratio of sales to visitors. If 1 visitor out of 100 buys your product or service your conversion rate is 1%. Conversion Rate is a major indication of a merchant’s ability to close a sale and to a degree of an affiliates’ click-throughs having been presold.

CPA – Cost per Action, also referred to as Pay per Action. When a me chant pays a commission or fee for some action, usually a sale, that was initiated from an affiliate site.

CPC – Cost per Click. Sometimes known as Pay per Click but more often it refers to the cost of each click in a Pay Per Click campaign. A fee is payed when a web site visitor clicks on a link to a merchant site. Google AdWords may be the best known Cost Per Click advertising model.

CPM – Cost per Thousand Clicks. When a few is payed for a volume of 1,000 clicks to a merchant site. This type of program is used less and less due to click fraud.

Datafeed – A delimited database file that provides product information, images, and tracking links for a merchant’s products. A datafeed may provide data for hundreds of thousands of products.

Deep Linking – The ability of merchant links to land on interior pages of the merchant’s site closer to the shopping cart and further down the sales cycle.

DRM – Dynamic Rich Media – The type of affiliate tracking links that are usually in javascript format and served by the merchant or network. DRM links are useful because they never need updating by the affiliate and automatically change when new products or promotions are available.

EPC – Earnings per 100 Clicks – A measurement of the conversion ratio and commission percentage provided by a merchant. Another factor is average order size. For example: A conversion ratio of 1 in 100 visitors and and average order size of $100 and a commission of 10% would equal an EPC of $10.

HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language – the programming format of web pages. Web browsers translate the code into viewable pages on a computer.

Impression(s) – The count for how many times a banner, text link, product link, or DRM was displayed in a browser.

In-house Program – An affiliate program where the tracking is managed by the merchant. See Network.

Javascript – A web programming language that offers functionality above and beyond the capabilities of HTML.

Keyword Research – The very critical first step in building a website. In Keyword Research you analyze the best keywords to build your site around. Ideally you want to find keywords with enough demand to get traffic but not so much competition that you can’t get on the first page of the Search Engine’s results page.

Landing Page – The page on a merchant site that the affiliate link goes to.

Merchant – Also know as Advertiser. The company or web site where products or services are sold and who pays the commission or fees to an affiliate.

Network – Term for a third party affiliate tracking provider that acts as a go-between for clicks from an affiliate site to a merchant and payments from the merchant to affiliates. The implication is that the network provides unbiased tracking and reporting. The merchant usually pays the Network a percentage of sales.

OPM – Outsourced Program Manager – an independent Affiliate Manager that is not a direct employee of a merchant.

Parasite – Term for a web site, usually an affiliate, that uses unethical marketing techniques to steal clicks and sales from other affiliates.

Pay Per Click (PPC) – The practice of paying a fee for click-throughs to a web site. PPC with the major search engines is common and sometimes effective way to generate traffic for a web site if ROI is tracked precisely.

Performance Based Marketing – The type of online marketing that pays a fee only when a sale or action is completed. Affiliate Marketing is an example of performance based marketing.

Residual Earnings – When a merchant pays an affiliate for sales by one of their referrered visitors even though the sale didn’t come from a direct click from the affiliate site.

Return Days – How long an affiliate cookie remains active and able to generate a sale. A return day amount of 90 days would mean the affiliate tracking would still result in a sale even though the visitor bought 90 days after the original click.

ROI – Return on Investment – The process of analyzing revenue return on an expense. As it applies to PPC, the process of tracking what sales volume is generated from a PPC ad spend.

SE – Short for Search Engine

SEO – Short for Search Engine Optimization – This technique in web site development that uses specific design and linking practices to make a site friendly to search engine robots (spiders) resulting in higher positioning in the SERPs.

SERP – Search Engine Results Page – the pages displayed on a search engine site as a result of a query.

Spider – The common term for the Search Engine robots that crawl the web analyzing web sites. SEs employ robots and algorithms so that the information on a web site can be evaluated and added to their index used to provide search results (see SERP).

Tracking – In Affiliate Marketing the process of managing clicks from an affiliate site to a merchant site and the resulting sales, usually accomplished by a uniques affiliate ID.

Text Link – The type of affiliate link that is text based and has no image attached.

Two-Tier Program – The type of affiliate program that pays affiliates a commission for sales generated from another affiliate site that was enlisted by the original affiliate.