C

CAPTCHA; stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”; is a feature used as an additional security layer in order to avoid automated actions generated with robot programs; usually are various small “challenges” or tasks that can be completed only by humans

click-through rate (or CTR); a metric used to measure the level of interest; if a link displayed 100 times has received 2 clicks, it means a CTR of 2%

cloaking; hiding certain content on webpages or in affiliate links; the former method is considered to be a black hat technique that will damage your SEO efforts; the latter is a useful, widely accepted and used practice in affiliate marketing

contextual link; a link which is literally included, incorporated in the main content of a web page as a usual underlined textual link; the opposite is some sort of traditional advertisement displayed within various secondary structural elements (header, sidebar, etc) in form of textual or image links

conversion; the fulfillment of a desired, well-defined action or objective as a result of a given marketing message or strategy (e. g. a new sale, a new subscriber, etc)

conversion rate (or CR); a metric used to measure the efficiency level; if a link displayed 100 times has generated 3 sales, it means a CR of 3%

conversion rate optimization (or CRO); the sum of all the efforts and practices that are used to increase the number of those visitors who will take a specific decision or desired action once they have arrived on a website

cookies; a text file sent from the merchant’s website to the customer’s web browser; is used to assign an ID to a given customer who landed on the merchant’s site after clicking on your affiliate link; if the actions of the given customer will produce the desired outcome in a precisely defined period of time – even later and without clicking again on your affiliate link -, you will receive a commission

cookieless tracking; a new, emerging tracking method that not relies upon cookies; the negative impact of the widely spread spyware programs and the quite common practice of routinely deleted browser cookies are real problems for advertisers

cookie expiration; an amount of time predefined by the merchant; you are going to receive your commission only if the customer referred by you will produce the desired outcome before the given period expires; the average cookie time is between 30-60 days

cookie stuffing; an unethical method that will try to send and deposit multiple cookies from different merchant websites onto customers computers in the hopes that these customers who actually has never seen the advertiser’s website before, eventually will visit the merchant’s site generating a sale; usually is strictly prohibited by affiliate agreements

copywriting; the act of writing compelling and engaging textual content that will be used as a marketing asset in order to generate a certain customer behavior

cost per action (or CPA); the amount paid to generate one qualified action (e. g one sale)

cost per click (or CPC); the amount paid to generate one click one one link; with $100 spent and 40 clicks received, your CPC would be 40 cents

cost per thousand (or CPM); the amount paid in order to display an advertisement 1,000 times; if an advertiser has a $5 CPM offer, you’ll have to pay $15 to have your ads displayed 3,000 times

crawler (or spider); a piece of software utilized by search engines to discover and analyze the content of a given website

creatives; textual or graphical marketing aids or materials provided by the merchant; they are used by affiliates on their own websites to generate the desired actions (e. g. banners)

CSS (or cascading style sheets); coding language used to define formatting rules – position, dimensions, color, alignment, etc – that will tell a web browser how to display a given web page element

D

data feed (or product feed); an organized list (a CSV, XLS, etc file) with certain products or attributes that can be advertised and compared in a unique way

deceptive advertising; unethical practices used to mislead the customer with false statements and claims, overestimated products and services, ambiguous photography, hidden fees, etc

deep linking; linking technique used to send a visitor to a given specific offer or second-, third-level category webpages (not the homepage) on the advertiser’s website

domain age; it is what it is: a measure of how old a domain is; usually older domains are considered to be more trustworthy by search engines

domain mapping; a feature used to point multiple – or parked – domains to a primary hosting account

doorway page (or gateway page); numerous identical web pages optimized for different, particular keywords; they are created for spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for particular phrases with the purpose of sending visitors to a different page; it’s an unethical black hat technique

duplicate content; content blocks – within or across domains – that are vary similar or completely identical; in the context of SEO these repeatedly used or copied content pieces will cause lower rankings

dynamic URL; a URL created, generated as a result of a database query on a database-driven website; in these URLs the domain name is followed by an unreadable script-generated character string (the result of the query); a dynamic URL is user-unfriendly, therefore is bad for SEO and must be rewritten into a static URL

E

evercookie; a Javascript-based programming interface used to create persistent, longevous cookies in a browser in order to identify a customer even after the classic cookies has expired or removed

exact match; a Google AdWords match type (keyword setting) which allows you to show your ad only when the searcher used the exact word or phrase defined by you; the opposite of broad match