In this last of our 3 part series on Internet marketing basic terms, we’re going to make things a little more interesting by skipping over the letter C and tackling some terms from the letter S, since my name starts with the letter S.
The letter S is one of the most widely used letters in the English alphabet and one of the most widely used terms is Search Engine. A search engine is a website where you can go and type in any word or group of words that you want into a search box and the website will return a ton of results related to that word you typed in. For example. If you wanted info on George Washington, if you typed in his name, the search engine would come back with a number of websites that had information on George Washington. Quite honestly, without search engines, nobody would be able to do anything on the Internet.
Another term that you’ll see get thrown around a lot is SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is a science in itself and many books have been written on the subject. Basically, SEO is the art of making it so that your website is optimized so that the search engines will like your site and put it up at the top of the searches for the niche your site belongs to. Believe me, it’s easier said than done, but that’s the basis of SEO.
Another term that is very common, especially to ecommerce sites, is shopping cart. A shopping cart on the Internet is really no different from a shopping cart that you use at the local supermarket. With an online shopping cart, you can place a number of items into it that you want to purchase and then when you’ve selected all the items that you want, go to the checkout, which in the online world is usually just clicking a button and being taken to a page where you enter in your credit card info. Some shopping carts get very sophisticated.
A term that is not very well liked, but used a lot, is spam. Spam is not the stuff that you buy at that supermarket that tastes like, well like who knows. Spam is technically unsolicited email. Unsolicited email is when somebody sends you an email presenting you with some kind of business opportunity or product to sell you when you did not request the information in the first place. Today, spam has spread to more than just email, unfortunately, but that discussion is way beyond the scope of this article.
The final term we’re going to cover in this series is the term splash page. This is a very simple and short web page that is designed solely for the purpose of getting a visitor’s attention quickly. Splash pages can be very effective if used correctly. There is a definite art to creating them.
This barely scratches the surface of the number of terms you are going to run into when getting involved in Internet marketing. Yes, there is a lot to learn and a lot of time to learn it.
