List of some commonly used online marketing terms with definitions and descriptions.
I used the following terms a lot in my jobs and figure that it should be useful to you, too. Feel free to suggest the terms and definitions you commonly use. This will be continuously updated.
Above the fold
Originally “above the fold” is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. The term has been extended and used in online marketing and web development to refer the portions of a web page that can be visible without scrolling. [From Wikipedia]
The size/length of the fold depends on user’s screen resolution. At a lower resolution such as 640 x 480 the fold is high on the page, while at a higher resolution such as 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 1024 or higher the fold extends to further down the page. Decision on what the fold for your website is should be based on your target audience screen resolutions: you can go with the majority, or go with the lowest screen resolution.
Add URL
To submit a website URL to search engine(s) in an attempt to make the search engine(s) aware of the site, crawl the site and add its content to the search engine database.
Adding URL can be done manually or automatically by using software applications. With manual submission you need to go to the search engine submission page and fill out the add-url form individually. With automatic submission, you will use a software application to mass submit the website information to multiple search engines and web directories at once.
- Add URL to Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
- Yahoo! suggest a site: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
- MSN Live Search URL submission: http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx
Related article: How search engines work and Way to increase website traffic.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is is an internet-based marketing practice in which a business [also known as the merchant or advertiser] rewards its affiliates [also known as publishers] for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
Some widely known affiliate programs include Amazon.com associate program, Google adsense program and hundreds of other affiliate programs offered by various merchants.
AIDA
Stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. This is a historical model of how advertising or selling process works, by first getting the consumer’s attention/awareness, then raising their interest, next creating desire, and last but not least soliciting their action [of buying or doing some subsequent actions such as exploring more about the product, going to the showroom…].
The above is usually obtained by targeting the right group of consumers, then focusing on their needs and demonstrating how the involved product/service through its advantages and benefits can satisfy those needs. Thus, today marketing professionals have added an S – Satisfaction – to AIDA and make it AIDAS.
While AIDA emphasizes the action of getting a new customer, AIDAS goes one step further, getting and keeping a customer, making him or her become a repeat customer.
ALT text
ALT text is the HTML attribute of the image tag <IMG> providing alternative text when an image cannot be displayed on a web page or HTML email due to a broken link, internet connection issue, or security firewall or blocking. ALT text provides more details/descriptions of the image and is specially useful for enhancing a website accessibility – helping people with various disabilities to see or read the website more conveniently.
Today, in order for a site to be validated as standard compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium W3C, all image tags must have something for the ALT attribute.
As best practices for search engine optimization and web standard compliance, the ALT text should have descriptive keywords about the web page in general and the image in particular. ALT text can be as long as needed to.
Email client
An email client, email reader, or more formally mail user agent, is a computer program used to manage email. Specifically, the term email client may refer to any agent acting as a client toward an email server. In addition, a web application providing message management, composition, and reception functionality is sometimes considered an email client. [Wikipedia]
Knowing what kind of email client your target audience are using is very important for you email campaign since you can better prepare/design the email so that it’ll be correctly displayed on your target audience’s email reader.
Related article: Email client popularity
SEO
SEO – Search Engine Optimization – refers to the process of increasing the ranking of a website in search results through enhancing the volume and/or quality of traffic to a website organically or with non-paid activities. These activities primarily involves editing web content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to facilitate the indexing activities of search engines. Submitting the site URL to search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN and other online directories like DMOZ as well as building links with other/relevant websites are also common ways of SEO activities.
Related article: How search engines work and Way to increase website traffic.
Keep on writing, great job!