When we conduct website evaluations for clients we usually have to spend time explaining what certain terms mean. That's too bad because these are terms, in my view, that every business person should know.

Just as someone had to explain to you what a website was in the 90's, you now need to know some of the other key terms surrounding websites and, specifically, terms associated with search engines.

Search engines are, after all, what drives traffic to your site. They are the first step in converting someone with an interest in your products and services into a paying customer.

Here are some of the more common terms and definitions.

Search engine: Search engines are programs that attempt to emulate human behavior as it relates to finding information online. There are 100's of search engines but Google, with 65%+/- market share is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla, followed by Yahoo with 19% share and Bing with 9%. Google users are more often male, older and wealthier. Yahoo searches tend to be younger and less affluent. Bing users tend to be female, older, and are most likely to convert from searcher to buyer.

Spiders, crawlers, or robots (bots): These are automated programs used by search engines to visit your website, analyze, and then index its content. You need to create and insert "Metadata" (see next bullet) and a "sitemap" to help these programs analyze your site and its content correctly. If the search engines are able to analyze your site accurately then they are more likely to deliver high-quality visitors.

Metadata & meta tags: Metadata and meta tags give the search engines a structured description of your website. They are invisible to the average visitor and appear at the beginning of the code on each webpage. Metadata must be keyword (next bullet) rich to help drive traffic to your site.

Keywords: Finding the best keywords for your site is part science and part art.The best keywords are the ones people actually type into the search engines when looking for your products and services. If those words have limited competition, so much the better. Generic terms such as "marketing," for example, are too broad and have tons of competition.

Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is the process of editing metadata and website content to rank higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs). It has been reported that ranking at the top position (#1) on page one of Google, for example, will drive significantly more traffic (254%!) to your site than the next highest (#2) ranking position.

Natural or organic search: These terms refer to search results produced by a search engine's algorithm when indexing unpaid submissions.

Paid search or Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Paid search results are purchased (fixed fee or bid) by someone, usually the website owner or their marketing agency. They can appear in sponsor banners at the top of the search engine page or in ads that appear in the right margin of the page. They are typically highlighted with a slightly darker background so you can distinguish between paid and natural (or organic) search results.

Search engine marketing (SEM): SEM combines both natural and paid search activities. So if you are conducting both SEO and PPC activities, or campaigns, then you are actively conducting search engine marketing. In my view doing either qualifies as SEM.

Steve
800-707-9150