CPA
"Cost-per-Acquisition" - This is the amount you are willing to pay to obtain a new customer and is useful in calculating the maximum CPC you should be willing to pay. CPC
CPC, or Cost-per-Click, is the amount that an advertiser pays when a web-user mouse-clicks on one of their PPC advertisements. CR
"Conversion Ratio". This is the number of visitors to your website divided by the total value of sales in a period. Your CR is useful when forecasting sales and advertising budgets.
Hosting
This is the facility of storing your website physically on a certain computer or computer network. Link-building
Search engine rankings are understood to be heavily dependent on the number and quality of in-bound links to it. “Link Building” is the pro-active garnering of these links, through request, purchase, or link exchange. Link Exchange
This is the procedure by which one site agrees to link to another site in return for a link back from that site. "Organic" or "Natural" Listings
These are the "free" listings offered by a search engine. In Google they are listed with a plain white background on the left hand side of the screen. SEO services aim to improve these listings, however, it is worth noting that no company other than the search engine themselves can guarantee a place in these listings - be very wary of any company who claims to be able to guarantee a certain rank the organic listings. For guaranteed listings please see "Paid Listings" Paid Listings
Most Search Engines now offer a way to advertise on their results pages in a Paid Listing section. The most common way of doing this is a PPC system (Pay Per Click) where you would only pay when a potential customer clicks on your ad and visits your website. The three main PPC systems in the UK are Google Adwords, Yahoo's Overture and Espotting/Miva. PPC
“Pay-per-Click”. The form of on-line advertising where the owner of an advertisement is charged in direct proportion to the number of times the advertisement is clicked on by web users. These advertisements usually appear beside a search engine's natural listings or beside a web page. SEO
“Search Engine Optimisation”. This is the process by which a website is shaped in structure, technology and content in order to encourage search engines to rank it highly for selected key phrases. (Sometimes this term is used to cover site optimisation also.) Site Optimisation
SEO, Usability and Link-building under one umbrella term. Usability
Usability is the effectiveness of a website for achieving the website owner's goals once a web user has arrived at the site, whether that be to encourage the customer to make a purchase, to sign up for a newsletter, or to phone a number. Usability will obviously include issues of making the site attractive to customers and making it easy for them to find and buy what they are looking for. |
