Glossary of Terms

SEO – Short for search engine optimization or search engine optimizer, SEO is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP).

SEM – Depending on the context, SEM can be an umbrella term for various means of marketing a website including SEO, or it may contrast with SEO, focusing on just paid components.

PPC – Is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the hosting service when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

SERP – Is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query.

Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network, the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.

CPM – Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost ‰ and cost per thousand (CPT) (in Latin mille means thousand), is a commonly used measurement in advertising. Cost per impression, often abbreviated to CPI or CPM for Cost per thousand impressions, is a phrase often used in online advertising and marketing related to web traffic.[1] It is used for measuring the worth and cost of a specific e-marketing campaign. This technique is applied with web banners, text links, email, and opt-in e-mail advertising. Although opt-in e-mail advertising is more commonly charged on a cost per action (CPA) basis, sometimes CPM is used.

CPL – Cost Per Lead or CPL is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for an explicit sign-up from an interested consumer interested in the advertiser offer.

CPA – Cost Per Action or CPA (sometimes known as Pay Per Action or PPA) is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.

CPT – Cost Per Time refers to a form of Internet advertising, where the buyer pays for an advertisement to be placed on a website for a set amount of time.

Internet Marketing – Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, web marketing, online marketing, search marketing or e-marketing, is the marketing (generally promotion) of products or services over the Internet.

PPS – Pay-per-sale or PPS (sometimes referred to as cost-per-sale or CPS) is an online advertisement pricing system where the publisher or website owner is paid on the basis of the number of sales that are directly generated by an advertisement.

Revenue Sharing – On the Internet, revenue sharing is also known as cost per sale, and accounts for about 80% of affiliate compensation programs.

Value Per Action – Value Per Action (VPA) refers to an online marketing business model similar to the Cost Per Action (CPA) model.