If you’re currently working with an SEM expert for your business or are thinking about hiring one in the near future, check out the first of the multipart series of basic SEM terms to get you up to speed.

SEM: SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, which is a form of online marketing that increases awareness for websites through Search Engine Results Pages (otherwise known as SERPs). SEM encapsulates a variety of different methods, like Search Engine Optimization, paid search ads, contextual advertising, and sponsored listings. Think of it like this: Just like Direct Marketing consists of a variety of marketing techniques like brochure mailings, telemarketing, door-to-door, and email marketing, SEM is an umbrella term that covers multiple types of, well, marketing on search engines. 

SEO: SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization, is a form of Search Engine Marketing that involves a variety of techniques to move you and your business’ website up in search results on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Why would you want to do this? If you’re on the first page of search results on Google, you’ll get far more free traffic than sitting on the 457th search result page. 

Search engines consider a multitude of criteria when ranking websites in search results, and Search Engine Optimization is essentially the process of tweaking your website to best fit what Google is looking for. Think of it like this: Sure, you could have the slickest looking website out there to a human, but if Google’s robot-eyes can’t seem to read it, then it won’t think it’s very important. Consequently, anyone searching the web won’t be able to find it. Looking for some neat tools on Search Engine Optimization? Check out The Ultimate SEO Toolbox here.

PPC: Pay Per Click is the model where anyone who is looking to buy advertisements online agrees to pay for the ad only if it is clicked on, and specifically with search engines, advertisers usually bid on keywords that are relevant to their business, so that when someone searches for your keywords, your ads will appear (depending on your bid.) Examples of search engine PPC models include Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter.

CPC: Cost Per Click, related to PPC, is the actual cost that an advertiser pays when their ad is clicked on and subsequently brings someone to the advertiser’s website

CPA: CPA actually can stand for two things, a. Cost Per Action and b. Cost Per Acquisition. Cost Per Actionactually refers to an advertising model where an advertiser pays for a specific action. For example: I own an online store that sells laptops. Rather than paying for an ad when someone clicks on it or simply sees it, I agree to pay when someone clicks through an ad and purchases something (an action).

On the other hand, CPA can also refer to Cost Per Acquisition, which basically means the amount of money spent to acquire something, typically a new customer. For example: I own a magazine business, and I currently have 30,000 subscribers. I spend $10,000 on various marketing technique to attract new subscribers, and at the end of the month, I have 40,000 subscribers (up 10,000). This means I spent $1 dollar to acquire each new customer in the past month, making my CPA $1.

CTR: This one’s important. CTR stands for Click-Through Rate, which essentially is the rate of people that actually click on your ad (or any other clickable item on a web page that you are tracking) over the number of people that actually see it. This is usually displayed in a percentage form. Think of it like this: If 100 people saw my ad on a specific web page in one day and three people clicked on it to go to my store, my click-through rate is 3/100, or 3 percent.

Organic Search: This is basically a fancy way of referring to the regular old search results that appear when you type something into a search bar. The reason why these are deemed organic is because they are only influenced by the search engine’s ranking algorithm and is not related to amount of money paid by an advertiser. This is where something like Search Engine Optimization comes into play to move your site up in search results.

Backlinks: Backlinks, commonly known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, is another fancy term that essentially means someone has linked to your website because they think it’s important enough to mention, and more importantly, search engines find it very important if that’s the case.

Conversion: This one is really simple. Essentially, conversion is when something converts into something else, usually something that you're looking for. For example: When someone does a search and finds your business' blog, they're just a casual visitor. However, if they continue to read your blog and eventually learn more about your business and are convinced to purchase something, they're converted from a casual visitor into a sale. 

Conversion optimization is one key area many businesses are focusing on today. Even changing a few words in a headline can mean the difference between a few hundred customers. For more, check out the article "Landing Page Optimization Is The Quickest Way To Increase Revenue."

The more backlinks to your page, the better, right? Not exactly. Search engines also take inconsideration the value of the page that is linking to you, so simply setting up 10,000 fake websites with links to your site won’t actually help you nearly as much as getting links from10,000 high-quality, relevant, well-trafficked sites. However, search engines aren’t entirely immune from non-relevant links from fake websites, which has caused a surge in the “spamdexing” or “linkspamming” industry.

Meta Tags: Meta tags is an area content that is usually never seen by any of your human visitors but is stuff that search engines are looking through as they comb through your website. The data you provide in these tags allows for search engines to categorize them correctly. Although filling out meta tags used to be one of the best ways to improve your search rank back in the day, nowadays it isn’t nearly as important due to abuse from web masters. Check out this article on 5 Easy Ways To Improve Your Search Ranking.

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