Helpful definitions of common terms used in Internet Marketing.

Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing is the umbrella term for marketing a business, product, service, or just about anything using Internet technologies. These Internet technologies often times include web sites, search engine optimization (SEO), online advertising, email marketing, blog marketing, social marketing, viral marketing, and others.

As more and more people use the Internet in their everyday life, Internet Marketing is becoming crucial for businesses, local and global, in order to compete.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the ranking or position of your website for certain search engine keyword searches. By improving this ranking, you increase likelihood of more targeted website visitors coming to your website.

This optimization process is constantly changing as the search engines change the way (algorithm) they determine these ranking of websites based on keyword searches. With the increase in popularity and use of search engines, these search engines have become one of the most popular ways to find websites on the Internet.

Internet Yellow Pages
The virtual equivalent to Yellow Pages Books typically used by businesses to advertise to the local market. Similar to the paper based Yellow Pages, businesses list their name, address, phone numbers, and specials. The leading paper based Yellow Pages companies also have Internet Yellow Page directories, but the leading Internet Yellow Page sites are the Local Search section of the leading Search Engines like Yahoo! and Google.

The majority of the Internet Yellow Pages list businesses for free, but charge for and enhanced listing, typically shown higher on the screen than the basic free listings. Some Internet Yellow Page offer Pay Per Click (PPC) and Pay Per Call services as well.

Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay Per Click has become one of the most popular forms of online advertising because of its advertiser flexibility. The most common form of Pay Per Click advertising is tied to keyword searches at leading search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Advertisers specify how much they are willing to pay for a click on their ad (visitor to their website). The advertiser sets which keyword searches will cause their advertisement to be displayed to the searcher.

Pay Per Click advertising can be an effective advertising model for local businesses because of the ability to control how much they are willing to spend, which keyword searches trigger their ads, the ability to target users in specific geographical areas, and control ad spend.

The keys to success in Pay Per Click advertising for local businesses is choosing keywords that have a high likelihood of producing your desired result (purchase, lead), understanding the lifetime value of a new customer, and the ability to “convert” a high enough percentage of ad clicks into your desired result.

Pay Per Call
Similar to Pay Per Click, but instead paying for a click to another website, the advertiser pays when a potential customer calls your business. Pay Per Call is successful for businesses that require a conversation to help complete your businesses desired result.

Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
CPM advertising is different type of advertising compared to PPC. In PPC advertising the advertiser pays when their ad is clicked on. In CPM advertising the advertiser pays for every 1000 times (impressions) their ad is viewed. For example, an ad with $1 CPM would be displayed 1000 times at a cost to the advertiser of $1. The advertiser pays $1 regardless of the number of times the ad was clicked.

Banner Advertising
Banner advertising is the oldest and probably the commonly noticed type of online advertising. These are the graphical ads (banners) commonly shown on websites. Banner advertising can be PPC, CPM, or flat-rate ads. Flat-rate ads are ads that are displayed on a site for a specific time period for a specific fee. Time periods can be as short as one day and as high as multiple years, but monthly is the most common length of ad period. The flat-rate fee’s are set by the publishing website where the ad will be displayed. Number of impressions (times viewed), number of unique visitors, visitor demographics, and placement of ad are all factors that typically go into determining this flat-rate fee.

More Definitions Coming Soon!