Above the fold - What you see on your browser screen without scrolling. Typically, this is a space 600 pixels wide by...

Affiliate/associate programs - In 1997, Amazon.com launched the first associate program. Amazon initially started by selling books ...

Alt tag - The alternative text that the browser displays when the surfer does not want to or cannot see the pi...

Autoresponder - When a customer sends an e-mail to a certain address manned by an autoresponder, this powerful mailb...

Bandwidth - The range of frequencies a transmission line or channel can carry: the higher the frequencythe highe...

Banner ads - Those graphic advertisements that you see at the top of so many Web pages.

Bridge page - See doorway page.

Browser - Software that reads and translates HTML-coded Web pages automatically, allowing you to view, downloa...

Bulletin board - A bulletin board is a location on a Web site where people come to share information. Typically, you ...

Cache - Your browser stores everything it reads on the user's hard disk. Every HTML page, every graphic. The...

Catch-all e-mail account - If you have your own domain "domain.com" and catch-all e-mail account, no matter what word you put i...

CGI script - Common Gateway Interface. Interface standard that sets the rules for running external programs (gate...

Chat - A popular form of interactive, online communication that allows Internet users to have real-time con...

Client - A remote computer connected to a host or server computer that represents the customer side of a clie...

Client-side - Client-side pertains to programming that is done on YOUR desktop computer.

Cloaking - The process by which your Web site can display different pages under different circumstances. Primar...

Comment tag - The text present within the <!-- and --> tags in a Web page. While most search engines will ig...

Cookie - A cookie is a small file that gets written onto your hard disk, either by javascript or by a CGI scr...

CPM - This means "cost per thousand impressions" (thousand is "mille" in French). An impression counts eac...

Crawler - See spider.

Credit card - For our purposes, a credit card is any commonly used credit, debit, charge, or other payment card su...

Credit card processor - An Internet service that verifies that a customer has sufficient funds for a purchase and then relea...

Directory - A Web site containing links to other sites which are organized into various categories. Examples of ...

Domain name - A network name associated with an organization (e.g., google.com or yahoo.com). Domain names are org...

Doorway page - A Web page which has been specially created in order to get a high ranking in the search engines. Al...

Dynamic content - Information in Web pages which changes automatically, based on database or user information. Search ...

E-mail publications - There are several kinds of publications that are e-mailed to customers: e-zines - the equivalent of ...

Ecommerce - Electronic commerce (also known as ebusiness.). Buying and selling products and services via the Int...

Encryption - Transforming data so that it is unreadable to everyone except the intended recipient. The recipient ...

Entry page - See doorway page.

FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions. This efficient type of customer support takes advantage of the Net's "24...

Flash - A Web-based animation application that transforms Web pages into a swirl of action, colors, and exci...

Font - The style and size of text.

Form (and FORM tag) - <FORM> tags are special HTML tags that allow you to build forms on your Web page. Customer com...

Forum - A forum is a "meeting place" on a Web site where you go to ask and answer questions and to share inf...

Frames - An HTML technique allowing Web site designers to display two or more pages in the same browser windo...

FTP - File Transfer Protocol. An Internet standard for uploading and downloading files over the Internet. ...

Gateway page - See doorway page.

GIF - Graphics Interchange Format. A compact graphics file format developed by CompuServe, that was once t...

Hallway page - A page containing links to various doorway pages.

Heading tags - A paragraph style that is displayed in a large, bold typeface. Having text containing keywords in th...

Hidden text - Text that is visible to the search engines but is invisible to humans. Mainly accomplished by using ...

Hits / pages / visits / visitors - When someone comes to your Web site, that's a visitor. No matter how long he stays on your site, he'...

Hosting - Every website is stored on a computer, also known as a server. This server is connected to the Inter...

HTML - Hypertext Mark-up Language. The coding language to create hypertext documents (HTML files) on the We...

Hyperlinks - The underlined words or phrases you click on in Web documents to jump to another screen or page. Hyp...

Image map - An image containing one or more invisible regions which are linked to other pages. If the image map ...

IP address - When you get on the Web, your computer is assigned an IP address. This is a number that looks like 1...

ISP/Web host - ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. It is the company that provides you access to the Interne...

Java - A programming language developed by Sun Microsystems specifically for writing programs that can be s...

JavaScript - A scripting language for Web pages designed by Sun Microsystems and Netscape as a supplement to the ...

JPEG - (also known as JPG). This file format for color-rich images was named after the Joint Photographic E...

Keyword frequency - Denotes how often a keyword appears in a Web page or in an area of a page. In general, higher the nu...

Keyword prominence - Denotes how close to the start of an area of a Web page that a keyword appears. In general, having t...

Keyword weight - Denotes the number of times a keyword appears in a Web page as a percentage of all the other words i...

Keywords - A word or phrase that you type in when you are searching for information in the search engines.

Kilobyte - Although kilo is Greek for a thousand, a kilobyte actually contains 1,024 bytes (that's 2 to the 10t...

Link exchanges - Find Web sites with similar interests to yours. Look for sites with similar customer demographics th...

Link popularity - The number of Web sites which link to a particular site. Most search engines uselink popularity as a...

Linux - Intel-processor-based operating system developed as an alternative to Unix. It is currently used by ...

Logs - Every time someone logs onto your Web site, information like IP address, time/date, error messages, ...

Mailing list - A mailing list is much like a newsgroup, except that it is e-mailed to everyone in the group. First,...

Mailto: link - This is an HTML link that automatically opens an e-mail software, with the address already entered. ...

Merchant - A business entity that sells goods and/or services and determines the methods of payment they will a...

Meta Description tag - The tag present in the header of a Web page which is used to provide a short description of the cont...

Meta Keywords tag - The tag present in the header of a Web page which is used to provide alternative words for the words...

Meta Refresh tag - The tag present in the header of a Web page which is used to display a different page after a few se...

Meta tag - An optional HTML tag that is used to specify information about a Web page. Some search engines read ...

MP3 - Mpeg Layer 3 is an amazing standard for audio compression. It is capable of 10:1 compression with no...

Newsgroups - Newsgroups use a different communication means called "Usenet." Technically speaking, Usenet is neit...

Opt-in e-mail marketing - Many Web marketers create a newsletter that offers content of value to the reader. The Web site asks...

OS--operating system - The low-level software that schedules tasks, allocates storage, handles the interface to peripheral ...

Pay-Per-Click search engine - A search engine in which the ranking of your Web site is determined by the amount you are paying for...

Protocol - The communications rules computers have to follow to talk to each other on a network. The Internet i...

Real-time authorization - A credit card purchase is authorized in real time, as the customer completes the checkout process on...

RealAudio/Video - Progressive Networks' RealAudio client-server software system enables Internet users equipped with c...

Redirect - A redirect occurs whenever the surfer gets sent to an address different than the one actually reques...

Residual income - Income that occurs for a prolonged period of time, after the original sale has been made. When appli...

Robot - In the context of search engine ranking, implies the same thing as Spider. In a different context, i...

Robots.txt - A text file present in the root directory of a Web site which is used to control which pages are ind...

Scripting - In the Internet world, a script is a program that runs on a server and processes requests in respons...

Search engine - A program that indexes Web sites according to words, phrases, and subject matter. Search engines hel...

Search engine placement - The practice of trying to ensure that a Web site obtains a high rank in the search engines. Also cal...

Secure server - A Web server that uses special software, called security protocols, to protect against third-party t...

Secure sockets layer (SSL) - A transaction security standard developed by Netscape Communications to enable commercial transactio...

SEO - SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a series of tricks that can be used to improve the ...

Server - The business end of a client/server setup, a server is a host computer on a network that stores info...

Server-side - Something that is done totally on your Web host's computer (or your own server, if you run you own),...

Shopping cart - A section of an online store where a customer can order products and provide credit card information...

Sig file - A short text file that contains a brief info-sales-message that appears at the end of your e-mail. Y...

Spamming - Using any search engine ranking technique which causes a degradation in the quality of the results p...

Spider - A software that visits Web sites and indexes the pages present in those sites. Search engines use sp...

Splash page - A media-rich (usually Flash) entry page to a Web site. Usually, these pages take much time to load, ...

Stop word - A word that often appears in Web pages, yet has no significance by itself. Most search engines ignor...

Store design - A pre-designed online store that is ready to be customized and have products added to it.

Streaming - On the Web, usually you wait for a file to download before you can see it. Same goes for music - you...

Telnet - (also known as remote login). An Internet protocol for connecting to a remote host or server on the ...

Title tag - The contents of the Title tag is generally displayed by the browser at the top of the browser window...

Unix - A flexible, portable and powerful operating system, dominant around the world. It was invented in 19...

URL - The Uniform Resource Locator is used to specify the address of Web sites and Web pages. Having keywo...

VIEW SOURCE - Both Netscape and Explorer allow you to see the HTML coding behind the actual Web page that you see ...

Web address - See URL.

XML - eXtensible Markup Language. A programming language/specification that provides a powerful set of too...

ZIP - A Windows-based compressed file commonly referred to as a "ZIP file." ZIP files can hold one or many...