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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| B2B | Business to Business. |
| B2C | Business to Consumer. |
| Backbone | A high-speed line or series of connections that forms a major pathway within a network. In general, the better the backbone of the hosting company, the better the availability of the websites that run on their computers. |
| Bait and Switch | Marketing technique where you make something look overtly pure or as though it has another purpose to get people to believe in it or vote for it (by linking at it or sharing it with friends), then switch the intent or purpose of the website after you gain authority. It is generally easier to get links to informational websites than commercial sites. Some new sites might gain authority much quicker if they tried looking noncommercial and gaining influence before trying to monetize their market position. |
| Bandwidth | How much information you can send through a connection. Usually measured in bits per second (bps). A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 57,000 bits in one second. Full-motion, full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits per second, depending on compression. |
| Banner | An online advertisement in the form of a graphic image on a Web page that links to a location of the advertiser's choice. These familiar banners are usually in GIF, JPEG or SWF format. Banners can include graphic advertisements of any size, so don’t let this term even hold any importance to you. Instead, visit www.iab.net/standards/adunits.asp and make yourself familiar with the different types of ‘interactive marketing units’ available under IAB standards. Take into account things like your logo and message to determine which sizes are best for your advertising efforts. |
| Behavioral Targeting | Ad targeting based on past recent experience and/or implied intent. For example, if I recently searched for mortgages then am later reading a book review the page may still show me mortgage ads. |
| Big Box Stores | Large stand-alone store with varying market niches. |
| Bit (Binary Digit) | A single-digit number, either a 1 or a 0. A bit is the smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits per second. |
| Black Friday | Black Friday is used to describe a number of historical Fridays in which an event led to public chaos or disaster. |
| Black Hat SEO | Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers. Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO. Those which are considered within their guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next. Search engines are not without flaws in their business models, but there is nothing immoral or illegal about testing search algorithms to understand how search engines work. People who have extensively tested search algorithms are probably more competent and more knowledgeable search marketers than those who give themselves the arbitrary label of white hat SEOs while calling others black hat SEOs. When making large investments in processes that are not entirely clear trust is important. Rather than looking for reasons to not work with an SEO it is best to look for signs of trust in a person you would like to work with. |
| Block Level Analysis | A method used to break a page down into multiple points on the web graph by breaking its pages down into smaller blocks. Block level link analysis can be used to help determine if content is page specific or part of a navigational system. It also can help determine if a link is a natural editorial link, what other links that link should be associated with, and/or if it is an advertisement. Search engines generally do not want to count advertisements as votes. |
| Blog | A periodically updated journal, typically formatted in reverse chronological order. Many blogs not only archive and categorize information, but also provide a feed and allow simple user interaction like leaving comments on the posts. Most blogs tend to be personal in nature. Blogs are generally quite authoritative with heavy link equity because they give people a reason to frequently come back to their site, read their content, and link to whatever they think is interesting. The most popular blogging platforms are Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type, and Typepad. |
| Blog Comment Spam | Either manually or automatically (via a software program) adding low value or no value comments to other sites. As time passes both manual and automated blog comment spam systems are evolving to look more like legitimate comments. I have seen some automated blog comment spam systems that have multiple fake personas that converse with one another. |
| Blogger | Blogger is a free blog platform owned by Google. It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain off of Blogspot.com, or to FTP content to your own domain. If you are serious about building a brand or making money online you should publish your content to your own domain because it can be hard to reclaim a website's link equity and age related trust if you have built years of link equity into a subdomain on someone else's website. Blogger is probably the easiest blogging software tool to use, but it lacks many some features present in other blog platforms. |
| Booking Program | The opportunity to view new products or samples now and to place an order for that merchandise to be delivered at a later date. |
| Bookmarks | Most browsers come with the ability to bookmark your favorite pages. Many web based services have also been created to allow you to bookmark and share your favorite resources. The popularity of a document (as measured in terms of link equity, number of bookmarks, or usage data) is a signal for the quality of the information. Some search engines may eventually use bookmarks to help aid their search relevancy. Social bookmarking sites are often called tagging sites. Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking site. Yahoo! MyWeb also allows you to tag results. Google allows you to share feeds and / or tag pages. They also have a program called Google Notebook which allows you to write mini guides of related links and information. There are also a couple meta news sites that allow you to tag interesting pages. If enough people vote for your story then your story gets featured on the homepage. Slashdot is a tech news site primarily driven by central editors. Digg created a site covering the same type of news, but is a bottoms up news site which allows readers to vote for what they think is interesting. Netscape cloned the Digg business model and content model. Sites like Digg and Netscape are easy sources of links if you can create content that would appeal to those audiences. Many forms of vertical search, like Google Video or YouTube, allow you to tag content. |
| Boolean Search | Many search engines allow you to perform searches that contain mathematical formulas such as AND, OR, or NOT. By default most search engines include AND with your query, requiring results to be relevant for all the words in your query. Some search engines also allow you to search for other unique patterns or filtering ideas. |
| Bounce Rate | The percentage of users who enter a site and then leave it without viewing any other pages. |
| Branded Keywords | Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically branded keywords occur late in the buying cycle, and are some of the highest value and highest converting keywords. Some affiliate marketing programs prevent affiliates from bidding on the core brand related keywords, while others actively encourage it. Either way can work depending on your business model and marketing savvy, but it is important to ensure there is synergy between internal marketing and affiliate marketing programs. |
| Breadcrumb Navigation | Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between pages. Whatever page the user is on is unlinked, but the pages above it within the site structure are linked to, and organized starting with the home page, right on down through the site structure. |
| Break-Even Point | The point in business where the sales equal the expenses. There is no profit and no loss. |
| Brick and Mortar | Brick and mortar store refers to retail shops that are located in a building as opposed to an online shopping destination, door-to-door sales, kiosk or other similar site not housed within a structure. |
| Broadband | Generally refers to a method of signaling that works with different frequencies. |
| Browser | Client used to view the world wide web. The most popular browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Safari, and Opera. |