C

Cache

Copy of a web page stored by a search engine. When you search the web you are not actively searching the whole web, but are searching files in the search engine index. Some search engines provide links to cached versions of pages in their search results, and allow you to strip some of the formatting from cached copies of pages.

Campaign Integration – Planning and executing a paid search campaign concurrently with other marketing initiatives, online or offline, or both. More than simply launching simultaneous campaigns, true paid search integration takes all marketing initiatives into consideration prior to launch, such as consistent messaging and image, driving offline conversions, supporting brand awareness, increasing response rates and contributing to ROI business goals.

Canonical URL

Many content management systems are configured with errors which cause duplicate or exceptionally similar content to get indexed under multiple URLs. Many webmasters use inconsistent link structures throughout their site that cause the exact same content to get indexed under multiple URLs. The canonical version of any URL is the single most authoritative version indexed by major search engines. Search engines typically use PageRank or a similar measure to determine which version of a URL is the canonical URL. Webmasters should use consistent linking structures throughout their sites to ensure that they funnel the maximum amount of PageRank at the URLs they want indexed. When linking to the root level of a site or a folder index it is best to end the link location at a / instead of placing the index.html or default.asp filename in the URL.

Canonicalization – The process of picking the best URL when there are several choices; this usually refers to home pages. Source: Matt Cutts Blog: SEO Advice. In addition, “Canonicalization is the process of converting data that has more than one possible representation into a "standard" canonical representation. This can be done to compare different representations for equivalence, to count the number of distinct data structures (e.g., in combinatorics), to improve the efficiency of various algorithms by eliminating repeated calculations, or to make it possible to impose a meaningful sorting order.” Source: Wikipedia

Cascading Style Sheets or CSS – An addition to your HTML, a web site’s “cascading style sheet” contains information on paragraph layout, font sizes, colors, etc. A cascading style sheet has many uses as far as search engine optimization and web site design are concerned.

Catch All Listing

A listing used by pay per click search engines to monetize long tail terms that are not yet targeted by marketers. This technique may be valuable if you have very competitive key words, but is not ideal since most major search engines have editorial guidelines that prevent bulk untargeted advertising, and most of the places that allow catch all listings have low traffic quality. Catch all listings may be an attractive idea on theme specific search engines and directories though, as they are already pre qualified clicks.

Common Gateway Interface - interface software between a web server and other machines or software running on that server. Many cgi programs are used to add interactivity to a web site.

Click Bot – A program generally used to artificially click on paid listings within the engines in order to artificially inflate click amounts.click fraud Improper clicks on a PPC advertisement usually by the publisher or his minions for the purpose of undeserved profit. Click fraud is a huge issue for add agencies like Google, because it lowers advertiser confidence that they will get fair value for their add spend.

Click Fraud – Clicks on a Pay-Per-Click advertisement that are motivated by something other than a search for the advertised product or service. Click fraud may be the result of malicious or negative competitor/affiliate actions motivated by the desire to increase costs for a competing advertiser or to garner click-through costs for the collaborating affiliate. Also affects search engine results by diluting the quality of clicks.

Click Through - When a user clicks on a hypertext link and is taken to the destination of that link

Click Through Rate – The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link. For example, imagine 10 people do a web search. In response, they see links to a variety of web pages. Three of the 10 people all choose one particular link. That link then has a 30 percent click-through rate. Also called CTR.

Client - A program, computer, or process which makes information requests to another computer, process, or program.

Client-side Tracking - Client-side tracking entails the process of tagging every page that requires tracking on the Website with a block of JavaScript code. This method is cookie based (available as first or third party cookies) and is readily available to companies who do not own or manage their own servers. cloak The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This Black Hat tactic is frowned upon by the search engines and caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.

Cloaking - Displaying different content to search engines and searchers. Depending on the intent of the display discrepancy and the strength of the brand of the person / company cloaking it may be considered reasonable or it may get a site banned from a search engine. Cloaking has many legitimate uses which are within search guidelines. For example, changing user experience based on location is common on many popular websites. It is the process by which a web site can display different versions of a web page under different circumstances. It is primarily used to show an optimized or a content-rich page to the search engines and a different page to humans. Most major search engine representatives have publicly stated that they do not approveof this practice.

Clustering - In search results the listings from any individual site are typically limited to a certain number and grouped together to make the search results appear neat and organized and to ensure diversity amongst the top ranked results. Clustering can also refer to a technique which allows search engines to group hubs and authorities on a specific topic together to further enhance their value by showing their relationships.

CMS (Content Management System) - Tool used to help make it easy to update and add information to a website. Blog software programs are some of the most popular content management systems currently used on the web. Many content management systems have errors associated with them which make it hard for search engines to index content due to issues such as duplicate content. Programs such as Wordpress, which separate most of the mundane Webmaster tasks from content creation so that a publisher can be effective without acquiring or even understanding sophisticated coding skills if they so chose.

COA – Acronym for Cost of Acquisition, which is how much it costs to acquire a conversion (desired action), such as a sale.

Co-citation - In topical authority based search algorithms links which appear near one another on a page may be deemed to be related to one another. In algorithms like latent semantic indexing words which appear near one another often are frequently deemed to be related.

Comment - The text contained within a “comment” tag in a web page. “Comments” are used in a variety of situations, such as communication between web developers and Cascading Style Sheets (See Above). comment spam Posting blog comments for the purpose of generating an inlink to another site. The reason many blogs use link condoms. Many blogs and other content management systems allow readers to leave user feedback. Leaving enlightening and thoughtful comments on someone else's related website is one way to help get them to notice you.

Comments Tag - Some web developers also place comments in the source code of their work to help make it easy for people to understand the code. HTML comments in the source code of a document appear as . They can be viewed if someone types views the source code of a document, but do not appear in the regular formatted HTML rendered version of a document.

Compacted Information - Information which is generally and widely associated with a product. For example, most published books have an ISBN. As the number of product databases online increases and duplicate content filters are forced to get more aggressive the keys to getting your information indexed are to have a site with enough authority to be considered the most important document on that topic, or to have enough non compacted information (for example, user reviews) on your product level pages to make them be seen as unique documents.

Competitive Analysis – As used in SEO, CA is the assessment and analysis of strengths and weaknesses of competing web sites, including identifying traffic patterns, major traffic sources, and keyword selection.

Concept Search - A search which attempts to conceptually match results with the query, not necessarily with those words, rather their concept. For example, if a search engine understands a phrase to be related to another word or phrase it may return results relevant to that other word or phrase even if the words you searched for are not directly associated with a result. In addition, some search engines will place various types of vertical search results at the top of the search results based on implied query related intent or prior search patterns by you or other searchers.

Conceptual Links - Links which search engines attempt to understand beyond just the words in them. Some rather advanced search engines are attempting to find out the concept links versus just matching the words of the text to that specific word set. Some search algorithms may even look at co-citation and words near the link instead of just focusing on anchor text.

Consumer Generated Media (CGM) - Refers to posts made by consumers to support or oppose products, web sites, or companies, which are very powerful when it comes to company image. It can reach a large audience and, therefore, may change your business overnight.

Content - The part of a web page that is intended to have value for and be of interest to the user. Advertising, navigation, branding and boilerplate are not usually considered to be content.

Content Management Systems (CMS) - In computing, a content management system (CMS) is a document centric collaborative application for managing documents and other content. A CMS is often a web application and often it is used as a method of managing web sites and web content. The market for content management systems remains fragmented, with many open source and proprietary solutions available.

Content Network – Also called Contextual Networks, content networks include Google and Yahoo! Contextual Search networks that serve paid search ads triggered by keywords related to the page content a user is viewing.

Content Targeting – An ad serving process in Google and Yahoo! that displays keyword triggered ads related to the content or subject (context) of the web site a user is viewing. Contrast to search network serves, in which an ad is displayed when a user types a keyword into the search box of a search engine or one of its partner sites.

Contextual Advertising - Advertising programs which generate relevant advertisements based on the content of a webpage. Google AdSense is the most popular contextual advertising program. It is automatically served or placed on a web page based on the page’s content, keywords and phrases. Contrast to a SERP (search engine result page) ad display. For example, contextual ads for digital cameras would be shown on a page with an article about photography, not because the user entered “digital cameras” in a search box.

Contextual Distribution – The marketing decision to display search ads on certain publisher sites across the web instead of, or in addition to, placing PPC ads on search networks.

Contextual Network – Also called Content Ads and Content Network, contextual network ads are served on web site pages adjacent to content that contains the keywords being bid upon. Contextual ads are somewhat like traditional display ads placed in print media and, like traditional ad buys, are often purchased on the same CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model for purchased keywords, rather than a CPC basis.

Contextual Search – A search that analyzes the page being viewed by a user and gives a list of related search results. Offered by Yahoo! and Google.

Contextual Search Campaigns – A paid placement search campaign that takes a search ad listing beyond search engine results pages and onto the sites of matched content web partners.

Conversion - Many forms of online advertising are easy to track. A conversion is reached when a desired goal is completed.

Conversion Action – The desired action you want a visitor to take on your site. Includes purchase, subscription to the company newsletter, request for follow-up or more information (lead generation), download of a company free offer (research results, a video or a tool), subscription to company updates and news.

Conversion Rate - Conversion rates are measurements that determine how many of your prospects perform the prescribed or desired action step. If your prescribed response is for a visitor to sign up for a newsletter, and you had 100 visitors and 1 newsletter signup, then your conversion rate would be 1%. Typically, micro-conversions (for instance, reading different pages on your site) lead to your main conversion step (making a purchase, or signing up for a service).

Conversion Rate – The number of visitors who convert (take a desired action at your site) after clicking through on your ad, divided by the total number of click-throughs to your site for that ad. (Expressed as: total clickthroughs that convert / total click-throughs for that ad = conversion rate.) For example, if an ad brings in 150 clickthroughs and 6 of the 150 clicks result in a desired conversion, then the conversion rate is 4% (6 / 150 = 0.04). Higher conversion rates generally translate into more successful PPC campaigns with a better ROI.

Copyright - The legal rights to publish and reproduce a particular piece of work. The Protection and ownership of works or expressions fixed in a tangible form, including words, art, images, sounds, and music. Copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to copy, display, license, or expand the work. Copyrights cover virtually any original expression; and the protection arises under common law as soon as the original expression is created (fixed in tangible form). However, proving ownership of the original expression may be difficult legally, unless the work was displayed or used publicly at a verifiable point in time.

Cookie - Small data file written to a user's local machine to track them. Cookies are used to help websites customize your user experience and help affiliate program managers track conversions.

CPA or “Cost Per Acquisition” – Also referred to as “Cost Per Action.” This is a metric used to measure thetotal monetary cost of each sale, lead or action from start to finish.

CPC - Cost per click. Many search ads and contextually targeted ads are sold in auctions where the advertiser is charged a certain price per click.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions) - A statistical metric used to quantify the average value / cost of Pay Per Click advertisements. M - from the Roman numeral for one thousand. CPM is a standard monetization model for offline display ad space, as well as for some context-based networks serving online search ads to, for example, web publishers and sites.

CPO – Acronym for Cost Per Order - The dollar amount of advertising or marketing necessary to acquire an order. Calculated by dividing marketing expenses by the number of orders. Also referred to as CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).

Crawl Depth - How deeply a website is crawled and indexed. Since searches which are longer in nature tend to be more targeted in nature it is important to try to get most or all of a site indexed such that the deeper pages have the ability to rank for relevant long tail keywords. A large site needs adequate link equity to get deeply indexed. Another thing which may prevent a site from being fully indexed is duplicate content issues.

Crawl Frequency - How frequently a website is crawled. Sites which are well trusted or frequently updated may be crawled more frequently than sites with low trust scores and limited link authority. Sites with highly artificial link authority scores (ie: mostly low quality spammy links) or sites which are heavy in duplicate content or near duplicate content (such as affiliate feed sites) may be crawled less frequently than sites with unique content which are well integrated into the web.

Crawler (bot, spider) - A program which moves through the worldwide web or a website by way of the link structure to gather data. It is an Automated program in search engines that gather web site listings by automatically crawling the web. A search engine's crawler (also called a spider or robot) “reads” page text contents and web page coding, and also follows links to other hyperlinked pages on the web pages it crawls. A crawler makes copies of the web pages found and stores these in the search engine's index, or database.

Creatives – Unique words, design and display of a paid-space advertisement. In paid search advertising, creative refers to the ad’s title (headline), description (text offer) and display URL (clickable link to advertiser’s web site landing page). Unique creative display includes word emphasis (boldfaced, italicized, in quotes), typeface style and, on some sites, added graphic images, logos, animation or video clips.

Custom Feed – Create custom feeds for each of the shopping engines that allow you to submit XML feeds. Each of the engines has different product categories and feed requirements.

Cybersquatting - Registering domains related to other trademarks or brands in an attempt to cash in on the value created by said trademark or brand.