SEO Basic Terms


Whenever you begin a new business, marketing, or advertising campaign, it is important to gather all the information. SEO is an essential part of marketing, as the Internet is the most efficient way to contact people from all over the globe. Here are a few basic terms you will come across as you learn more information about the world of SEM.
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization): This refers to the practice of trying to optimize your page rank for the search engine.
  • SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Basically refers to all the SE techniques and practices generally undertaken by businesses.
  • Keywords: Carefully chosen words to represent your page to the search engine, as well as to users of all different sites. These are generally short terms that are often typed into the search engine, with high results.
  • Long Tail Keywords: These are more specific, longer phrases that target users and consumers online. While these phrases are search for much less frequently than their shorter counterparts, if you use these keywords on your site, you are likely to get very high rankings for these less competitive terms.
  • Back Links/Inbound Link: This simply refers to the hyperlinks that are found on your other sites, but link back to your site.
  • Spiders: These “crawlers” literally crawl all over the web in a matter of seconds and return with information gathered from millions of different web sites. When people write content for SEO, they are writing for people, but through these spiders as a messenger or third party.
  • Adsense: A Google marketing technique in which you place ads on your site, around various links, or on other public sites around your content. Pay Per Click is commonly implemented and any profits are shared with Google. You can embed hyperlinks in text, graphics or videos. A common way to use Adsense is to embed advertisements in videosharing programs such as on YouTube.com. In order for this to work, it is important to have decent videos, so you might want to learn more about video production in San Diego, or in a town near you.
  • Adwords: This is a much more complicated campaign regarding the value of various keywords in search results, and which words to choose for your particular site’s content.
  • Analytics: If you’re really serious about your blog or website, you might want to spend some time with an analytics program. You can find free programs online such as Google or Yahoo that will show you the most popular links on your page, and where to optimize your site.
  • Conversions: This simply refers to the occasion when a website user completes an action on your website. This could be making a purchase, filling out a form, or even providing an email address.