When you first get into online marketing, you will find tons of unfamiliar and downright confusing terms that will make you scratch your head.
I have gathered 25 of the most important that I feel are excellent for beginners to know.
Do note that you don’t need to memorize any of this stuff to be successful. To succeed within this business, you really just proper guidance and the will to succeed.
That being said, I just decided to add these terms so if you ever get lost, find a product, site or are being pitched something and are confused by the terminology, you can refer back to this page at anytime to gain clarity. With that said, let’s get right into it:
Common online marketing terminology (ABC Order):
1) Adsense: A service created by Google that allows you to have ads placed on your site. Whenever someone who visits your website clicks on the ad, you get paid. Usually you earn pennies, but Google Adsense does have tremendous potential for sites that have a lot of visitors.
2) Adwords (Google Ads): Another service created by Google. It allows you to create ads and put it up on Google’s search engine. The benefit of using Adwords is that it allows you to get tons of potential visitors to your site very quickly, but you do have to pay for it. Each time someone clicks on your ad, you have to pay a certain amount. This is different from Adsense because with it you get paid each time someone clicks on an ad on your site.
3) Autoresponder: A program that allows you to capture, store and send out emails in automated order. It’s a great service to use if you ever have a lot of people signing up on your website. My personal favorite autoresponder is Aweber.
I have been able to collect a big email list with Aweber.
4) Website Authority. This term is used to describe a website (usually) that has great prestige in that many people love it, listen to and read what is written there and Google sees that value of the site and gives it good rankings. Learn more about website authority here.
5) Backlink: Whenever a site links back to YOUR site, that’s a backlink. This used to be a popular form of online marketing to get high rankings in search engines, but died out a few years back and is no longer a smart move. If you someone tries to sell backlink services to you, watch out! Do backlinking this way.
6) Bing Ads: It’s like Google Adwords, except it’s Bing. You can put up ads on Bing’s search engine and each time someone clicks on it, you have to pay a certain amount. However, like with Adwords, there is a lot of potential with Bing ads to gain a lot of exposure. Which one is better? It varies. Full comparison between Bing Ads and Google Ads.
Note: I am an expert at this network and here’s how I made a lot of money with Bing Ads and affiliate marketing.
7) Black hat SEO: A form of online marketing which involves using questionable tactics to generally fool search engines and gain high rankings quickly. I am not a fan of such methods and always advise against using anything black hat. See more info on what black hat SEO is.
8) Content spinner: A content spinner is a software program which takes whatever you write and makes copies of the text, but in different words to sound different. Content spinners are generally a form of black hat SEO and I would advise against using them.
9) Domain name: Whatever you decide to name your website and buy, that is your domain name. If I were to purchase a site called: Vitaliyonlinemarketing.com, that would be my domain name.
10) Domain extension: Whatever follows the domain name is the extension. It could be a .com, .net, .org. Which is best? Generally a .com, but there are exceptions to this.
11) Email marketing: A form of online marketing which involves collecting emails from people and then sending them out promotional offers and making money in the process. It can work quite well, but there’s warnings like these about email lists you should check out.
12) Keywords: Anything you type into a search engine is a keyword. To succeed online, it’s important to look for low competition keywords.
13) Leads: A lead is a person who is a potential customer. Generally people who sign up to receive emails on your site are called leads. In the future, they can turn into customers of even returning customers.
14) List building: It’s basically another name for email marketing. You get people to sign up to your email list. You collect a list and then send them out offers and make money in the process.
15) Local Marketing: A form of marketing which involves promoting businesses in local areas such as towns, cities, boroughs and basically none large areas (states, provinces, countries).
16) Niche: Basically a specific market or topic. For example: Weight loss = market. Weight loss for dogs = niche. Notice how we have a specific group identified in the second example (dogs). Niches are imperative for success online. More details on what a niche really means.
17) Permalink: It’s an extension of your site after the .com. Permalinks appear when you add new pages to your site. For example: If my site’s name was: Vitaliyssite.com, then I added a new page called page 1, it would appear as such: Vitaliyssite.com/page-1. The page-1 part is the permalink.
18) PPC: Stands for Pay-Per-Click and is a form of paid marketing online. It involves using popular places such as Adwords and Bing ads. If you do advertising on those networks, you are doing PPC. PPC can be very risky due to you paying for it, but it can also be very rewarding. What is important is to use proper training on pay per click before trying it.
19) SEO: Stands for Search Engine Optimization, but in layman’s terms, it means whatever methods we use to get websites ranked very high on search engines. This is NOT PPC. SEO involves ranking organically on search engines and can bring in a lot of visitors to your site, all of which are free. More info on what SEO means here.
20) SEO Companies: Places which claim they can help your website rank high on search engines. Generally they charge a lot of money and in my experience don’t do a good job. I recommend learning SEO on your own from places like Wealthy Affiliate and applying it. It’s much more cost effective and you can make a lot more when you know what to do.
21) Social Marketing: Marketing on popular social networks such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter and many others!
22) Solo Ads. Generally this is a term used to describe a person who owns an email list and sells it to a buyer. It can also be a website which has groups of these people, each with their own email lists all looking to sell it for good prices. Some say solo ads are great for marketing, but I have a different point of view.
23) Traffic: It’s another word for visitors. The more traffic your site gets, generally the more it can make. But be careful because there’s different types of traffic. Some can be junk while others of higher quality.
24) Website: It’s your headquarters and is imperative to have if you plan on owning an online business. Making websites is very easy and even fun nowadays. All you need is the right approach and you’re set. My personal recommendation is to use this if you’re completely new.
25) Yahoo Ads: It’s actually joined together with Bing Ads so whenever you put up an ad on Bing, it will also appear on Yahoo. It’s just another way of advertising on search engines.
What to take from this list of online marketing terms:
Again don’t worry about remembering any of this stuff. If nothing else, use it as reference if the need arises. They are A LOT more terms I could have gotten into, but I felt these were the most important to know if you’re a beginner.
If you are completely new to online marketing, I would recommend starting off in places which teach you the A-Z of how it works. My #1 recommendation which is Wealthy Affiliate is one of the few places I ever vouch for to do this.
If you have any other terms you’d like to add to the above list, let me know in the comments section below!