Welcome to the 3rd and final part of our Internet Marketing and Website Design Industry Terms blog series. We hope that these terms will help you better understand the work we do.
- SEM – Search Engine Marketing: Any form of marketing that involves the use of search engines or their advertising partners. This primarily includes the use of Search Engine Optimization, and Paid Search Advertising. Search Engine Marketing can be an incredibly powerful tool because it allows you to advertise directly to those who are looking for your product or service.
- SEO – Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization is the process of fine tuning websites to make them search engine friendly so they rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). As the needs of searchers constantly change and evolve, particularly with the advancement of mobile technology and social media, search engines like Google and Bing tailor their algorithms to better suit the needs those searchers. These constant changes means that search engine optimization is constantly changing and evolving as well.
o Black Hat SEO: Using certain SEO tactics to manipulate or trick search engines into ranking your website higher in the search results. These methods may have a short term gain but will end up with your website getting a lower rank or banned from the search results all together.
o White Hat SEO: Only using SEO techniques that are appropriate and accepted by search engines.
- SERP – Search Engine Results Page: The webpage that displays the results from a search performed on a search engine. Search Engine Results Pages include both natural and paid listings. The closer a search result is to the top of the list, the higher that website’s ranking.
- Search Terms: Search terms refer to the word or collection of words that a person types into a search engine to find what they are looking for.
- Social Media: The way we connect, share, and socialize via online communities and networks.
- Social Networking: A type of social media that allows users to create and share content with each other and a select group of users. Multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn, have been created to allow their users to share their comments, pictures, videos, and to connect with one another online.
- Spam: Any unwanted data that is sent by email, or put on a website to trick a search engine. This could be things like hidden links that give the website a link without your knowledge. This can also refer to the type of spam you get in your email.
- Submission: The act of submitting a URL or sitemap to a search engine so it can be indexed in the search engines database.
- Tags: Words or phrases that are used to describe or categorize content on a website.
- Targeting: Focusing an internet marketing campaign on a select group of prospective clients or customers.
- Text Ad: An online advertisement containing only text. Text Ads are very commonly seen on Search Engine Results Pages.
- TLD – Top Level Domain: Refers to whatever comes at the end of your domain names root. Common examples are .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov,
The TLD for our site, www.oxleyinternet.com, is ‘.com’ - Tracking Code: Code that is added to some element of an online advertisement (usually the URL) that allows advertisers to see how effective their advertisements have been.
- Usability: How user friendly a website or web application. Ask yourself, how easy is it for your potential clients or customers to find and access the information they needed, on your website?
- Viral Marketing: A method of internet marketing that involves getting users on a social network that they your content with other users.
- Web Browser: A “browser” is a program that allows you to access the internet. The most common browsers are Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari.
Thank you for reading our list of terms. If you would like to learn more, just leave us a comment, or send us a message.
