[1] One example of a conversion event other than a sale is if a customer were to abandon an online shopping cart, the company could market a special offer, e.g. free shipping, to convert the visitor into a paying customer. A company may also try to recover the abandoner through an online engagement method such as proactive chat in an attempt to assist the customer through the purchase process

Direct Navigation – typed URL in internet browser, bookmarks, email links w/o tracking codes, etc.)

Directory – Just like directories for people and phone numbers, there are directories for websites. Submitting your site to a directory gives you more than just an inbound link; it helps people find you. The most popular web directories are Yahoo! Directory and Dmoz.

Domain – The main web address of your site (example: www.yoursite.com). It’s good to renew ownership of your domain for several years. Search engine rankings favor websites with longer registrations because it shows commitment.

Google Analytics – is a free web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin. Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet.
Hits – The real Black Sheep in the family. The average website owner thinks that a hit means a visit but it is very different (see item 1). A Hit actually refers to the number of files downloaded on your site, this could include photos, graphics, etc. Picture the average web page, it has photos (each photo is a file and hence a hit) and lots of buttons (each button is a file and hence a hit). On average, each page will include 15 hits.

Indexed Pages – The pages of your website that are stored by search engines.

Inbound Link – A link from one site into another. A link from another site will improve your SEO, especially if that site has a high PageRank.

Impressions – How often your ad is shown. An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network. Each time your ad appears on Google or the Google Network, it’s counted as one impression. In some cases, only a section of your ad may be shown. For example, in Google Maps, we may show only your business name and location or only your business name and the first line of your ad text. However, when someone searches using Google Instant, an impression can be counted when one of these occur: Person begins to type and then clicks anywhere on the page like a search result, ad, or related search. Person types a search and then clicks the “Search” button, presses Enter, or selects a predicted query from the drop-down menu. Person stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds You’ll sometimes see the abbreviation “Impr” in your account showing the number of impressions for your ad.

Keyword – A word that a user enters in search. Each web page should be optimized with the goal of drawing in visitors who have searched specific keywords.

Keyword Density – To find the keyword density of any particular page you just need to divide the number of times that keyword is used by the total number of words in the page. Keyword density used to be an important SEO factor, as the early algorithms placed a heavy emphasis on it. This is not the case anymore.

Long Tail Keyword – An uncommon or infrequently searched keyword, typically with two or more words in the phrase. Small businesses should consider targeting long tail keywords, as they are lower difficulty and often have more qualified searchers. Common keywords such as ‘software’ are more competitive, and very hard to rank high for them in search.

Link Building – The activity and process of getting more inbound links to your website for improved search engine rankings.

New Sessions – An estimate of the percentage of first time visits.

On-Page SEO – Is the meta tags and text optimization done to a website page, whether just inserting keywords, or writing/rewriting full pages.

Off-Page SEO – Is Link Building.

Organic Search – Internet browser queries that sent traffic from any major or minor web search engines.

Pages / Session – Pages/Session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

PPC – (Pay-Per-Click) An advertising method in which an advertiser puts an ad in an online advertising venue and pays that venue each time a visitor clicks on his/her ad. Google AdWords is the classic example of this.

Page Rank – A number from 0-10, assigned by Google, indicating how good your overall SEO is. It is technically known as ‘Toolbar PageRank.’ Note: PageRank relevancy is changing.

Page Views – Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted. This is also called Impression. Once a visitor arrives at your website, they will search around on a few more pages. On average, a visitor will look at about 2.5 pages. Each individual page a visitor views is tracked as a page view.

Referral Traffic – from links across the web, social media, in traceable email, promotion & branding campaign links.

Responsive – Sometimes referred to as ‘Mobile Friendly’, the ability to view a website on a Mobile Device like a cell phone. Note: Most research indicates that, depending on the industry, mobile search comprises up to 1/2 of all searches performed. Therefore it should be clear how very important it is to have a “Responsive” Website!

RSS Feed – RSS stands for ‘really simple syndication.’ It is a subscription-based way to get updates on new content from a web source. Set up an RSS feed for your website or blog to help your followers stay updated when you release new content.

Robots.txt – This is nothing more than a file, placed in the root of the domain, that is used to inform search bots about the structure of the website. For instance, via the robots.txt file it’s possible to block specific search robots and to restrict the access to specific folders of section inside the website.

Ranking Factor – One element of how a search engine determines where to rank a certain page, such as the number of inbound links to a page or the contents of the title tag on that page.

SEO – (Search Engine Optimization) … this is the process of affecting the visibility of a website/web page in a search engine’s organic “natural” search results i.e. Google.

SEM – or ‘Search Engine Marketing’.

Sessions – Total number of Sessions within the date range. A session is the period time a user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc. All usage data (Screen Views, Events, Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session.

Social Media – Online media created by and shared among individuals. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter are popular social media websites. Links from many social media sites now appear in searches. It’s important to have links to your site spread throughout social media.

Spider – A computer program that browses the internet and collects information about websites

SERP – (Search Engine Ranking Page) – The page that you are sent to after you run a query in a search engine. It typically has 10 results on it, but this may vary depending on the query and search engine in question.

Sitemap – A special document created by a webmaster or a piece of software that provides a map of all the pages on a website to make it easier for a search engine to index that website.

Traffic – The visitors to your site.

Traffic Rank – The ranking of how much traffic your site gets compared to all other sites on the internet. You can check your traffic rank on Alexa.

Traffic Sources – How do visitors find your site

Web Crawler – Also called search bot or spider, it’s a computer program that browses the web on behalf of search engines, trying to discover new links and new pages. This is the first step on the indexation process.