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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Co-Location | Co-location means housing a web server that you own in the facilities of a hosting provider. This is an option if you want to own your own server, but do not want the hassle or security risk of maintaining that server. |
| Comments | 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 Spam | Comment spam is the unethical practice of leaving links in unrelated blogs and guestbooks with the intent of boosting a site's search engine ranking. Many comment spam postings are left automatically by programs that seek out blogs and guestbooks. One method to combat comment spam is to turn on word verification. |
| 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. 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. In the past some SEOs would stuff keywords in comment tags to help increase the page keyword density, but search has evolved beyond that stage, and at this point using comments to stuff keywords into a page adds to your risk profile and presents little ranking upside potential. |
| 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. |
| Contextual Advertising | Advertising programs which generate relevant advertisements based on the content of a webpage. Google AdSense is the most popular contextual advertising program. |
| Contribution Margin | Contribution Margin is the difference between total sales revenue and total variable costs. The term is applied to a product line and is generally expressed as a percentage. |
| Control Panel | An online package of tools permitting easy site management and editing. Almost all hosting companies provide this option today. By having your own control panel, you can maintain basic information about your site, mailboxes, etc. without having to send emails to the hosting company or call them on the phone. |
| Conversion Rate | Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who take a desired conversion action. From an eCommerce perspective, this typically refers to the number of shoppers to your site who convert into buyers. |
| 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. |
| Coupon | A promotional tool in the form of a document that can be redeemed for a discount when purchasing goods or services. Coupons feature specific savings amount or other special offer to persuade consumers to purchase specific goods or services or to purchase from specific retailers. |
| CPA | Cost Per Action - The effectiveness of many other forms of online advertising have their effectiveness measured on a cost per action basis. Many affiliate marketing programs and contextual ads are structured on a cost per action basis. An action may be anything from an ad click, to filling out a lead form, to buying a product. |
| 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 Ad Impressions - Many people use CPM as a measure of how profitable a website is or has the potential of becoming. |
| 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. |
| CRM | Customer Relationship Management - Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy designed to reduce costs and increase profitability by strengthening customer loyalty. |
| CSS | Cascading Style Sheets - A method for adding styles to web documents. Note: Using external CSS files makes it easy to change the design of many pages by editing a single file. |
| CTR | Click-through Rate - the percentage of people who view click on an advertisement they viewed, which is a way to measure how relevant a traffic source or keyword is. Search ads typically have a higher clickthrough rate than traditional banner ads due to being highly relevant to implied searcher demand. |
| Cyber Monday | Cyber Monday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year for online retailers. Retailers notice a spike in sales on this day as many consumers who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend or did not find what they were looking for, headed to the web on Monday from work or home to find bargains. |
| Cyberspace | A term used to refer to the WWW or the resources available on the internet. |
| Cybersquatting | Registering domains related to other trademarks or brands in an attempt to cash in on the value created by said trademark or brand. |