Paid Search Marketing Glossary

Do CTR, SEM and average CPC mean anything to you? Well if your wanting to market you business using Pay Per Click advertising they should. We’ve created a plain English list of the all the online marketing Jargon used in search marketing to help you better understand what is possible with paid click advertising.

Actual Cost Per Click

Most Pay Per Click ad services calculate the cost of a click each time an ad is displayed and clicked on. The actual cost-per-click you will pay will be less than or equal to the maximum cost-per-click bid that has been set for that keywords.

What you pay for a click is determined by the ad’s previous performance (click-through rate), and what the Maximum Bid competitors are willing to pay. Actual cost per click is not usually used to describe account performance. Average cost per click is a better measure of the cost performance of an account.

Ad Status

When and Ad is created in Google Adwords, Google will will review the ad and give it one of several approval statuses. If your ad isn’t showing for certain users, or if it’s not showing at all, it could be because of your ad’s approval status.
Possible approval statuses
Here are the approval statuses your ad can receive:
• Under review
• Eligible
• Approved
• Approved (non-family)
• Approved (adult)
• Approved (limited)
• Disapproved
• Site suspended

Ad Text

The Ad Text is the actual text that a user will see when your ad is displayed. It’s important that the text is short and relevant to the users search query. Attractive ad copy is crucial for gaining a high click-through rate for an ad. There are some restrictions on Ad text regarding grammar, superlatives, character length and trade marks.

AdWords

Adwords is Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system. When a search term is entered into the Google search bar, relevant PPC ads appear at the top and down the right hand side of the search results page. Adwords ads can also appear across Google’s content network of Adsense publishers.

Analytics Tracking

Analytics tracking software is used to record user behavior on your website. Google Analytics is a powerful and free tool that we use to give valuable insights into your website traffic and advertising effectiveness.

Search Algorithm

A set of rules that search engines use to rank the results of any search query. Google’s Algorithm is designed to present a user with the most relevant results for their search. There are numerous factors involved in the ranking system too many to list here.

Average Cost Per Click (Avg CPC)

The average cost per click is measured over any specified period of time. The total cost of all clicks is divided by the total number of clicks to get your average cost per click. The average cost per click is a good indicator of an Adwords accounts performance over time.

Inbound Links

Links from other webpages that refer back to your website. The quantity and quality of a backlink is an important factor in determining its value to your website rankings in the search engines.

Clicks (click-throughs)

One click is registered each time a user clicks their mouse on an advertiser’s ad and is taken to their website. For Pay Per Click adverts, you only pay when a click is registered, not each time the ad is displayed.

Click Fraud

Click Fraud or invalid clicks occur when users click on Ads multiple times to try increase an advertisers spend. Google has very sophisticated systems to stop this type of behavior.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The click through rate is simply the ratio of clicks per ad impression (i.e. clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage).

Content Match & Search Match

Pay-per-click ads can be displayed both on the search engine results page, and also via the Google content networks. Search match ads are the regular ads or “sponsored listings” displayed along with natural search results on a search results page. Content match ads are contextual text ads placed on relevant-content websites, and may include image ads or video ads.

Conversion

A conversion is a pre-specified action that an advertiser desires a user to perform on their website. Conversions can be sales, leads, sign-ups, or page views (of important pages). Some tracking code is placed on a conversion page (conversion point), in order to track conversions (enquiries or sales), and calculate the conversion rate.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of a website is the rate that clicks (website visits) actually convert into a specified action. For example if an e-commerce website has a conversion rate of 5%, it means for every 100 visits to the web age 5 of those visits result in a sale.

The conversion rate is the ratio of conversions per click, (i.e. conversions divided by clicks, expressed as percentage).

Conversion Tracking

Pay Per Click campaigns are highly measurable and allow the advertiser the ability to accurately track Return on Investment (ROI). The number of times a conversion occurs (count) and the monetary value (value) of each conversion can be tracked and reported on.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

The cost of each click for a pay-per-click ad. This is automatically calculated, based on the maximum cost-per click bid and the competition for a particular search term. The actual cost per click is often lower than the maximum cost per click bid.

Cost Per Conversion

The click costs required to deliver a conversion, or the total click cost divided by the total number of conversions.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions)

The cost for 1,000 ad impressions. This cost model of online ads is usually used content-networks.

Crawler (Spider or Bot)

Search engines use a crawler (also called a spider or bot) to crawl the web, following hyperlinks from one page to the next. Crawlers are used to index web pages in the search engine databases.

Daily Budget

The maximum budget an advertiser is willing to pay for clicks per day. This will go into determining the number of impressions / clicks that the ad receives.

Destination URL

The specific URL a user is sent to if they click on an ad. The page that is displayed after a click is made is also called the landing page. The more relevant the landing page is to the advert and keyword the better the ad will perform.

Display URL

The URL displayed in the ad. This may be a shortened version of the destination URL. All pay-per-click providers have guidelines regarding how long the display URL can be and what it should contain. The display URL must have some sort of relationship to the destination URL.

Image Ads

Image ads are banner ads that are displayed on the content networks. Targeted image ads use keyword matching technology to appear on content sites most relevant to your ad.

Impressions

The number of times an ad is displayed on the screen.

Landing Page Optimisation (Conversion Optimisation)

Conversion optimisation is the process of improving website design, functionality and content in order to achieve better “results”. Results might be anything from making a sale online to making sure people recommend your brand to their friends via social networks.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page. Meta tags give the search engine crawlers more information about your website and its content.

Maximum Cost Per Click Bid (Max Bid)

The maximum price that you’re willing to pay for a click. Generally you pay less than your maximum bid. Your maximum bid is a determining factor in the rank of your ad in the sponsored results for a search term.

Natural Search Results (Organic Listings)

The non-sponsored results that are displayed by a search engine when a user enters a search query. Search engines use a number of off-page and on-page factors in determining where your web page ranks in the natural search results. The process of actively increasing your natural search ranking is called search engine optimisation.

On-Page Factors

All the aspects of the actual code that makes up your website, that contribute to your website’s ranking for each search term. On-page factors include meta-tags, page content & programing language used.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or “Paid Search” Advertising

When a user searches for a particular search term, the search engine returns a list of natural search results, along with a list of targeted pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Advertisers only pay when a consumer clicks on the ad and is taken to the advertisers website. For this reason PPC advertising is a very powerful and measurable advertising medium. The consumers who click on PPC ads tend to be very targeted as the have actively searched for the product, or service.

Ranking

Ranking: The position of your site in a search engine’s natural results, when a user enters a particular search term. There is also a ranking system for Paid Click Ads (ad position) this is determined by your maximum click bid, and the click-through-rate of the Ad.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The practice of getting your website visible on the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Essentially, SEM is about delivering traffic to your website. Two of the most successful SEM strategies are search engine optimization, and pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A collection of techniques used to enhance a website’s ranking in search engines’ natural search results. This includes optimizing your website, by using relevant keywords in content and links and making the website standards compliant. SEO strategies constantly evolve as the search engines update their ranking algorithms.

Search Terms (Queries)

The keyword(s) or phrase that a user types into a search engine’s search box.

Quality Score

The AdWords system calculates a quality score for each of your keywords, the score is a rating out of 10. It uses a variety of factors to measure how relevant your website and keywords are to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).