PPC Glossary

Auto Bidding - A means by which your bid on a given keyword is automatically changed by 1 cent if your nearest competitor changes their bid. Although you set a maximum bid, you may pay less if auto budding works in your favor.

Backlink - Backlinks are links found on other websites that will take the user to your website.

Bid - See Keyword Bid.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) - Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Cost Per Click (CPC) - The amount you pay for each click on your ad. Some people use this term interchangeably with the pay-per-click cost.

Conversion Rate - The percentage of visitors who actually are converted into purchasers of your product/service. It is calculated as the number of click-throughs divided by the number of actual conversions, and the higher the conversion rate, the more effective your campaign has been.

CPM - The cost for 1,000 impressions or ad views.

Hits - The number of times a particular web page is viewed. The number of hits is independent of whether or not it is the same user visiting the same page more than once. Sometimes also referred to as visits.

Impression - Also known as ad views. "Impression" is the term used to describe the viewing of an ad by the user's browser.

Keyword - Keywords are the terms that users enter into the search box of a search engine. Consequently, these are the word(s) you should choose to use in your pay-per-click campaign. Depending upon the company and the size of the campaign, the number of keywords used can range from a few to thousands.

Keyword Bid - The maximum amount of money you are prepared to pay for every time that a user clicks on your pay-per-click ad on a search engine and thus visits your website.

Link Building Campaign - An process of connecting with businesses conducting a type of business comparable to yours in order to exchange links and thus move up both in natural search engine robot crawls as well as in pay-per-click campaigns.

Link Farming - A practice considered unethical by most. It involves a web site linking to others to which it has no connection in terms of the type of business they do, but rather solely for the purpose of increase page ranking in search engines that consider the number of links in their decision on ranking pages.

Minimum Bid - The minimum amount set up a pay-per-click search engine for either a specific keyword, type of keyword, or the overall minimum bid acceptable for any keyword.

Page Rank (PR) - The position that your website has on a given search engine. Often seen abbreviated, as in "I've got a PR6 in Google", meaning you are ranked as number 6 under Goggle for a certain keyword.

Page Views - The number of times a web page is viewed.

Paid Inclusion - A sales technique currently under review by many search engines, paid inclusion is where an advertiser arranges to pay a search engine a certain amount of money to ensure a ranking in their search results, although most search engines do not guarantee the ranking will be among the highest. Many search engines have either stopped this type of plan or are in the process of considering removing this option for online marketing.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising - A method of marketing where a business pays a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on a small ad on a search engine's results page or homepage and is then taken to the advertiser's website.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine (PPCSE) - A search engine that offers pay-per-click advertising as an option to businesses.

Pay Per Performance™ Web Search - Overture's first PPC product which debuted in 1998.

Reciprocal Linking - A practice by which one site links to other (and vice versa) because they offer complementary products, are an affiliated site, etc. The more links one has to other sites usually results in a higher page ranking in search engines, as long as the links are not perceived as link farming.

Return on Investment (ROI) - The bottom line; that is, the amount of money you make as compared to the amount of money you have spent. Many tools exist to help you calculate your ROI for whatever undertaking, including pay-per-click campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - A variety of techniques whereby you change the content, keywords, meta tags, placement of text versus code, etc., in order to enhance your ranking in a search engine.

Unique Visitor - The number of people who visit a web page. If one person visits the same web page 3 or 4 times, the statistics will list them as 1 unique visitor only. See Hits.

Visits - See Hits.