-- INTERNET TERMS --

Unique visitors

Number of unique visitors to your site (visitors that come back again within a few hours don’t count twice. If they come back the next day, they count a new unique visitor.)

Number of visits

Number of people who looked at your site, including ones who came back to look again later (non-unique).

Pages

Total number of pages loaded. Each page they visit or revisit counts.

Hits

Each request for a page or a graphic from the web server. Since there are numerous graphics on every page, every page visit will trigger lots of hits (about 14 per page).

Bandwidth

Total number of KB downloaded. Each page/graphic has to be downloaded, so the size of every item on the page counts.

Disk Space

Amount of space on the web server allocated to house your website, including HTML files, graphic images, databases, and any files your site requires.

Data Transfer

Amount of Bandwidth used by your site each month. The higher your site traffic, the higher your data transfer will be, since each visitor requires bandwidth to access the pages and images on your site.

Search Engine

One of several programs which allow internet users to search for relevant web site on the internet. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Excite, Ask Jeeves, and Lycos are all examples of search engines.

Search engines come in two forms:
1) Crawler-based

these search engines have programs called spiders, crawlers, or bots which find and examine web sites on the internet by moving from link to link to link. The spiders store all of the data they find about a web site into a computer index which is accessed when a user makes a search request. Google and MSN are crawler-based search engines.
2) Directory-based

these search engines use a directory edited by humans to classify and index web sites. Yahoo! and DMOZ.org (Open Project Directory) are two significant directory-based search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of modifying your web site in order for it to rank better with the search engines (SE's). Just a few of the things that could be optimized include:
1) Content – The text of your web site determines its relevancy to the SE's The more relevant a search engine believes your web site is, the higher rank it gives it.
2) Navigation – Clear navigation and strong site structure make your site easier for SE's as well as your users to navigate and understand. Typically, you never want a user to have to make more than three clicks to find a piece of information. All of your links should be relevant to your site content and should use descriptive text.
3) Links – Links into and out of the pages of your web site also play into relevancy attributed to your site by SE's If lots of sites link to your site, the SE's believe it must be a very popular, and therefore more relevant, site. If your site links to lots of reputable sites relevant to your content, the SE's believe that you offer good resources. Incoming links carry more weight than outgoing links.
SEO is a science and an industry all on its own. More for information, see HighRankings.com, a web site by one of the best SEOer’s out there.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is the process of marketing your web site in the search engines. Usually, SEM involves a PPC (pay-per-click) advertising campaign. Generally, SEM is where you pay for search engines visibility and SEO is what gives you “free” visibility through organic listings. SearchEngineGuide.com discusses SEM in great detail.

Organic listings

The “free” listings that come up in a search engine, usually below a number of “Sponsored” listings. The #1 spot in organic listings is the lofty goal of SEO.

Internet Marketing

The generic term for marketing your site on the internet. SEO, SEM, and paid banner ads are all part of internet marketing.

Backlinks

The links from other sites pointing to your site. A higher number of quality backlinks usually translates to a better search engine ranking. Link farms or random reciprocal links count as backlinks but don’t help your site ranking as much as relevant, high-ranking sites linking to yours. Find your backlinks by typing “link:http://www.yourdomain.com” into Google.

Flash

The technology which allows complex animation and special effects to be embedded in a web page. Flash elements require a Flash player embedded in the browser to function. If the user does not already have a Flash player, they can download one for free before running the Flash content.

Hosting

Every web site needs somewhere to live on the web. The hosting provider provides that place to live and you pay a hosting fee as rent for your web site to live on the hosting provider’s web server.

Search phrase

The words a user types into a search engine to find web sites on a particular topic.

Keywords

The selected search phrases which apply best to a certain web site. There are tools available online to help identify which search phrases are used most so as to narrow down a list of keywords to the ones that will be most advantageous to your site.

PPC - Pay-per-click

Type of advertising where the advertiser pays whenever an internet user clicks on the link to their site. These ads appear at the top and right side of returned search results for your keyword phrases. Examples include Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator. The web address of a site or page.

If you come across a new confusing term, let Debbie know about it.