Now if you are new to the world of being a fabulously successful online entrepreneur and you have started training or your first blog you may be coming across various acronyms and online marketing terms and definitions that mean diddly squat to you.

Do not fear, my learned colleague, below I have deciphered some of the most commonly used words and phrases so that you can:

1. Understand just what it is you are learning about
2. Not come across as a complete newbie when talking to other online marketers (our Rat Race Escape Project reputation is on the line here!)

OK without further ado lets get into it. Below I am mostly referencing Google, but the same applies to all search engines (eg. Bing and Yahoo).

Affiliate Marketing

Our chosen online career, escape from the Rat Race and profitable passive income stream.

Affiliate marketing is when you choose a product to promote, you market that product to a group, someone buys something and you make a commission. It’s as simple as that.

The beauty of affiliate marketing with many companies is it doesn’t matter what they actually end up buying you still get paid.

Picture this – you find a really well-built, great priced art deco office chair through Amazon, you write a fantastic blog about ergonomics and office set up for affiliate marketers.

In your blog you provide a link to the office chair, one of your website followers clicks on the link but doesn’t like that particular chair and starts clicking around in Amazon and buys a new laptop instead (you know you’ve all done it!) – you still get the sale because you introduced them through your affiliate link.

See why I love this business as a legit way to escape the Rat Race?

Algorithms

Every search engine has its own set of factors that it considers when deciding how to rank websites and the content therein.

It is obviously important to Google that when you type in a search term you get what your looking for, otherwise you will go elsewhere and maybe even start using Bing for example.

Google has over 200 factors which it considers as part of the algorithm that determines what appears on it’s SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page).

These are not fixed and as people’s browsing habits change and technology advances Google changes its algorithm and this can sometimes change where your website appears in the SERP’s.

Google gives these major updates cool animal names like Penguin, Panda, Pigeon, Hummingbird and Fred (I don’t know why they went with Fred!).

You may read lots of stories about how some sites were slapped when Google brought out it’s latest algorithm update, Panda in 2014, and sites that were doing extremely well, thank you very much, suddenly dropped off of the search results altogether.

This is not something to get worried about, if you learn how best to set-up your site and blogs to work with Google and don’t get involved in any shonky business to try to artificially elevate your website then most Google algorithm updates can be used to improve your rankings.

Analytics

This is data about your website, and will usually include information like how many visitors your site has, where they are coming from, how long they are staying on your site, how they came to be there eg. search or social etc.

To truly know what’s going on with your website analytics is crucial.

Early on when developing your website it is usually best to get analytics set up but I don’t recommend you check them.

It is only normal to feel disheartened when you check your reports each day to see 2, maybe 3 people have been on your site.

Do not worry, all great online businesses take time to grow and reach authority. The numbers of visitors grows exponentially the longer you have an active website and the more quality content you have available to them.

Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it takes time and effort to build a quality website which will return passive income for years to come.

The first 3 – 6 months is a time to build, to learn and to set the foundations of your future and it can be tough if you keep checking the analytics and do not see the huge growth in traffic you want.

This is normal and to be expected. So set up your analytics but try your hardest not to look at them (once a month in the first 6 months if you really have to look).

Backlinks

Whenever your website URL appears on another website it’s called a backlink. Backlinks are gold for increasing your ranking in the SERP’s. Why?

Because search engines think that if your site is mentioned and a link to it included in another site then someone else thought your content was worth directing people too. The clever algorithms also work out if you were linked too by another site in your niche or area of expertise, and if the site that linked to you has high authority.

Good quality backlinks are called white hat links, they are honestly gathered eg. by having quality content, by building relationships with other sites within your niche and are a true representation of the authority of your site.

The value of a backlink is often referred to as having “link juice”.

So a link from another brand new website with a Domain Authority (DA) of 1 would have poor link juice, whereas a link from a high authority site with a DA of over 50 would have great link juice.

Blackhat links, on the other hand, are usually gotten through practices which are against a search engines terms of service. This may be by buying your links (rather than earning them honestly), or by the use of viruses or malware to fraudulently create links on other people’s sites (very poor form!).

By using black hat links you are exposing your website to a complete ban from all search engines. This is basically the death of your website and your business!

Conversion Rate

When it comes to affiliate marketing this usually refers to the number of sales compared to the number of visitors, but it could be the number of sign-ups to your newsletter or any desired action you have set up on your website compared to the total number of visitors.

So say I have 50 visitors to my site and 5 of them buy something then I have a 10% conversion rate; or I have 100 people click on a link and 20 of them buy something then my sales conversion rate would be 20%.

Cookies

When your visitor clicks on the affiliate link on your website a cookie is stored on their computer which tracks information about where they click.

The affiliate link allows your affiliate program to track the visitor so that you get the commission when they purchase a product and they originate from your website.

Cookies will have a predetermined lifespan. Some affiliate programs have 24 hours cookies, so if your visitor clicks your link but doesn’t buy immediately, they go away and sleep on it say and then return to the seller’s website within 24 hours and purchase something you will still get the sale.

Some affiliate programs have 30 day cookies, some program even have lifetime cookies!

Keywords

Keywords are the words or sentences that people put into search engines, it’s what people are searching for. Quality keywords are a prerequisite to having blogs and posts that rank well in the search engines.

A great quality keyword is a word or sentence that a lot of people are searching for but there are few websites with content about that keyword. This makes it easier for your blog to rank high in the SERP’s because you have less competition.

So how can you tell a great quality keyword from a poor quality one? You need a keyword search tool to tell you.

You can check out a cool blog I wrote explaining keywords and the best keyword tool to use, being Jaaxy.

You can try it for yourself, pick a keyword you might use for your next blog and pop it in the box below then click Find Keywords:

PPC – Pay Per Click

This refers to the adverts you see on various websites. As the website owner you may host another companies advert on your website and each time someone clicks that advert you get paid.

Works in reverse too – you as a website owner (affiliate marketer) might take out an advert, say on social media, and then you will be paying each time someone clicks the advert and comes to your website.

Can also be referred to as CPC (Cost per Click).

PPC is a marketing style that should be thoroughly researched before leaping into it, it can cost you a great deal of money very quickly with little return.

My recommendation is to leave PPC until your site is well-established, and even then really do your research so you know what you’re doing. There are other organic ways to increase growth to start and PPC can be considered later down the track.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

This is how we get our website, blog, page, image or post to appear as high as possible in the search engines unpaid results. Yep good SEO results in FREE rankings within Google, Bing and Yahoo, so you don’t need to buy adverts to get your latest blog post appearing right up there at number 1.

Understanding SEO and applying it to all areas of your website is crucial to having a successful site which attracts viewers and ultimately buyers.

When someone searches for a word or a phrase relevant to a blog you have written you want Uncle Google to think of you first and display your blog right up there at the top – good SEO makes this happen.

How many times have you scrolled past page 1 and actually looked at the websites listed on page 2 – 10?

If you are like me probably not very often.

This is because Google has algorithms which determine how relevant the content available on the internet is to the search term you used and finds the most relevant and informative blogs to show you right up front.

More thorough information, if you are really keen to know more, can be found by clicking here to Wikipedia.

SERP – Search Engine Results Page

This is simply the page or screen you see after you hit search in Google. Obviously, that first page is precious real estate and everyone wants a piece of it. Lucky for us it is not the richest or the fastest that gets a piece of that real estate, you just need to know the correct techniques of SEO and you can claim your piece of paradise on Page 1 of Google.

Site Authority

Websites as a whole have a Domain Authority (DA) – which is a search engine score which tries to predict how well a website will rank in the SERP’s.

Your website will have a DA score between 1 and 100 (every site starts at 1 and works it’s way up).

Generally the higher the number the more authority the website has and the more often it will appear higher in the search results.

How do you gain a higher DA? Backlinks!

High DA score sites usually have a very large number of external links back to their sites from other high scoring DA sites eg. Wikipedia (DA of 97).

As well as Domain Authority each page within a website will also have a Page Authority (PA) based on similar metrics.

DA & PA are not something you need to spend particularly much time trying to influence. Your sites DA and individual PA’s will change and grow over time as your site matures and more content is added. But at least now you know what it means.

URL – Uniform Resource Locator

It’s a fancy name for your website address. I know I don’t know why they don’t just call it that either, but they don’t. So when someone asks for your URL you can copy and paste the address of your website and give them that eg. for my site here it is https://ratraceescapeproject.com

Wealthy Affiliate

Simply the best online platform to build a successful affiliate marketing business. If you haven’t heard of it check out my blog titled What Is The Escape Plan? for all the details. It is what I am using to build my online career with a view to leaving the Rat Race behind, and I’d love for you to join me.

Feeling Knowledgable Now

Hopefully that has answered some of your questions about what these terms mean and how they apply to affiliate marketing and growing a profitable online empire.

As always if you have any questions or you have an online marketing term or definition you need explained please drop them in the comment box below and I will be glad to help you out.

Remember there is no such thing as a stupid question, if you are thinking it chances are others are also, so get it out there and we can answer it for everyone.

If you found this blog helpful please share it with others.

We are all about sharing the love here at the Rat Race Escape Project so that we can help as many people as possible achieve the financial goals they have set and get them living the life of their dreams.