Online Marketing Glossary: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing:
- An agreement between two sites in which the affiliate agrees to feature content or an ad designed to drive traffic to another site. In return, the affiliate earns a commission for referring clicks, leads, or sales to a merchant.
Funny…it sounds so simple when put this way! Remember this very basic definition while getting your stuff ready for Affiliate Summit! For all the datafeeds, dynamic content, widgets, blogs, niche sites, and everything else that’s wrapped up into affiliate marketing – this is the meat and potatoes definition.
The rest is just jargon 😉
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Social Network
Social Network:
- Online networks of communities who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, which necessitates the use of software.
Okay, this seems like an overly technical and complicated definition, so let me throw some commonly known examples at you instead. Facebook. MySpace. LinkedIn. Social Networks and social networking is a great way to connect with friends, family, and colleagues!
It’s probably too late to register for Affiliate Classroom Live, so now you’re officially missing out on my round table discussion about social digital networking for affiliate managers, which will be happening in T-minus 1 hour and 50 minutes in the Waterfront I Ballroom here at the Boston Seaport Hotel.
Don’t worry – I’m sure to post a recap. I’m solid like that 😉
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Data Feed
Data Feed:
- A text file that contains the information needed to generate a website. It is provided either directly to the affiliate or indirectly through a network. The affiliate then converts the data feed into a database, which is then used to populate webpages full of products.
There are a lot of questions in the affiliate world surrounding data feeds. What content is required? How should they be formatted? I know that one of the hopes of the budding Performance Marketing Association is to set some industry standards on this rogue content generation tool.
Unfortunately for me, data feeds are something that I’ve yet to master. It’s one of those things I keep meaning to research and learn how to generate and use, but haven’t yet had the time. If you want to learn more about the PMA’s efforts, they’re hosting a Q&A on Monday at Affiliate Summit East in the Harbor View Ballroom from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Inbound Link
Inbound Link:
- A link to a particular page from elsewhere on the Internet. Inbound links are important to SEO because many search engines’ rankings are at least partially based on the amount of inbound links.
Your break from the glossary is over! Inbound links are tricky as you usually have no influence on whether you get them or not. A good tip is to submit your site to directories at the beginning to start building some inbound links, and make sure your content is good. If you have excellent content, more blogs and other websites within your niche will want to link to yours.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Organic Search Results
Organic Search Results:
- Non-paid search engine results (also called natural search) – the pages that search engines find in a vast index of the Web that the search engine determines are the best matches for the search keywords.
These are the dreams that SEO is made of. Responsible web masters do everything within their power to heighten their organic results because it’s free, and will get your listing in front of more eyes when searching for keywords.
An easy tactic to help this is to use the keyword multiple times on one page. Don’t over do it, but the more a particular keyword is worked into the text on your page, the more clout the search engines will give you site when bringing up results for that keyword in searches.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Quality Score
Quality Score:
- Reflects an ad’s historical CTR, keyword relevance, landing page relevance, and other factors proprietary to Google. Yahoo refers to it as a Quality Index.
Of course getting the most links to your website isn’t always the name of the game; it’s getting high quality links. This is why spammers who link to your content aren’t helping you. The quality score of your ad helps boost it’s position on the page just as much as the amount you bid on those keywords.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
