SEO – SEM – SEA – PFP – PPC – PPA – SM – LM – CD ….
Where does it end and what does it mean?
Nowadays, the Internet marketing industry has become a complicated and branchy science involving a great deal of theoretical knowledge in combination with applied techniques. As a science, it ranges from browser-side and server-side programming and coding on one end, to marketing and economics on the other.
Internet marketing means the use of the Internet to advertise and sell goods and services. It includes Banner and Text Advertising, Email Marketing, Interactive Advertising, Affiliate Marketing and Search Engine Marketing (including Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click Advertising).
So let us take a look at SEO.
SEO is not to be confused with Search Engine Marketing (SEM), as they are two very different techniques with very different connotations and outcomes. Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote web sites by increasing their visibility in search engines result pages through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion.
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is defined as the fundamental process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (organic or algorithmic) search results.
Without doubt, for the vast majority of businesses, organic SEO provides the highest possible Return on Investment (ROI ) and affordability of all Internet marketing and promotional activities.
Organic Vs. Paid
SEO is literally the foundation to your success online – think of it as the platform from which you can launch all of your other Internet Marketing strategies from.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimising a website primarily involves editing its content and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
There are many types of search engines including meta, pay-for-performance and human-powered, however, most of us are more familiar with the most common type, the crawler-based engines e.g. Google, Bing and Yahoo!.
TIP: It is important to know that most search engines are powered from Google and Bing, and while you may not rank accordingly on the other smaller or niche search engines, you will at the very least be listed or indexed. This is important for Small Business owners as it means you can focus your Search Engine Optimisation efforts.
SEO is a specialised field of internet marketing that requires the skills to not only understand the search engines requirements, but also the ability to manipulate code and web site, it is a scientific process and it can take up to 3 months for you to actually begin seeing genuine results if your site is under-optimised or brand new to the web.
Once you get going and then regularly maintain your optimisation, you can experience great results like increased traffic through your higher rank on the search engine results pages. Then it is up to you to do what you do best – convert the leads into paying customers and grow your business.
Happy optimising!
