Web and web marketing technology can be baffling – we don’t mean to be but it sometimes happens.  Here are some widely used terms with brief explanations.

AdWords – sponsored advertising on Google. These are pay per click (PPC) ads, which mean you will pay each time someone clicks through from the ad to your site.

Alexa Rank – lists all sites in the world according to the amount of visitors they get.  1 is the most visited site in the world.Browser – a software application, or program used to visit pages on the internet. Common browsers include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

CMS (Content Management System) - Allows you as a non-technical user to change the pages in your web site, just like editing a word document. This is particularly important as high performance in search engines (SEO) relies on pages regularly being added, and CMS makes this easy and affordable.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) – a method of applying the styling to your web site, generally considered to be good practice.

Domain Name – a domain name is the name of a website, which will end in .com, .co.uk etc.

Ecommerce – business transactions over the internet, often used to describe online shops.

Flash – a language used to create animation sequences which require a specific browser add-on in order to run.

Google Page Rank - a number between 1 and 10 given to every site in the world.  A new site is 0.  The biggest 50 or so sites in the world are 10s.   As a small business once you get past 2/3 you are doing OK.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) – the programming language which webpages are written in.

Inbound links – links from another web site to yours.  These links are therefore on the pages of the other site.  A site with lots if inbound links is normally considered to be more important, and (all other things being equal) will rank more highly in Google.

Integration – the process of making two or more web sites or other computer systems talk to each other, saving you time and making your processes more efficient.  This may include entering your web site content in one place and having it fed to many, or feeding shopping cart results straight into your accounts system.

ISP (Internet Service Provider) – the company which provides your internet connection, for example BT, Sky or Virgin.

Keywords – the words which people search for in search engines such as Google.

META – Meta tags are pieces of content which are hidden in your web page, but which the search engines read.  Some of them are important, and some are not.  Getting the Meta right is only a small part of SEO.

Opensource – software or web site structure that has been developed by a community of developers, and is then made freely available to anyone who wants to use it under the GNU License.

PPC (Pay per Click Advertising) – The text adverts on the right hand side of the Google search page.  You can pay to be here, which brings visitors to your site immediately. However you pay a little bit for every one that clicks through to your site, so this absolutely has to be done right, and when done right can then be very profitable.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) – A way for website owners to share feeds of data with the latest news and updates to subscribers and other channels such as Twitter.

SEF (Search Engine Friendly) - refers to features of web design that are considered favourable in search engines, and helpful towards the high ranking of your web site.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – the process of making a web site show at the top of search engines. This is mainly focused on Google, which is likely to bring you well over half of all the visitors to your web site.

Server – a computer which is permanently connected to the internet, and ‘serves’ web pages as they are requested.

SMM (Social Media marketing) - The process of using interactive sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Digg and many more to reach out and involve with more people on the web.  This not only allows you to attract new visitors to your site, but to develop stronger relationships with the ones you already have.

URL (Universal Resource Locator) – an absurdly grand term for a web page address: http://www.this.com/page.html

W3C – The “Worldwide Web Consortium” – the body that defines the proper standards for valid code on web sites.  Valid code makes web sites quicker and sometimes better displayed in your browser, and is sometimes considered to help them rank more highly in search engines.

Paying someone to market your business online can be a costly expense.  However there are a number of things you can do yourself with the only cost being your time.  One of these free services is a Google Place page.  These are also known as Google Local Listings and Google Maps Business Listings.

What is a Google Local Listing?

These are business listings which are displayed in the search results alongside a map of the area.  Each listing has an alphabetical ‘pin’ with their precise location marked on the map.  The listings link through to a business website and to a Google local listing place page.