Common acronyms associated
with search engine talk.
CPC: Cost-Per-Click
PPC: Pay-Per-Click
PR: PageRank™
ROI: Return On Investment
SEM: Search Engine Marketing
SEO: Search Engine Optimization
SERP: Search Engine Results Page
SES: Search Engine Strategies
Q: What's the
difference between optimization and marketing?
A: I'll give the short version
here to keep reading to a minimum.
SEO: Coding
a page to take advantage of what is known to be helpful
in the eyes of search engines. Proper SEO is all about making
every page an independantly optimized page. Your website is not
seen by engines as "one page". It is seen as many pages and
each page that makes up a website has the potential to rank somewhere
in the SERPs on its own.
SEM (or internet
marketing): Using techniques
such as link building, blogging and participating in social media
sites are part of marketing. It also includes using PPC
services from the leading search engines. The marketing aspect
of a website has very little to do with what is on the
website itself.
Online Reputation/PR: Search engine marketing and understanding how your company's name, or how your company's official's names appear in a search engine can be an important step to understanding how your company is performing within social media. With Reputation.com Owen Tripp and Michael Fertik work with companies to help control their online public relations and eliminate bad press. However, a simple step such as Googling your companies name can be a good understanding of how you're performing.
Q: What does search engine friendly mean?
A: A common misconception
about the term "search engine
friendly" is
that people believe it means their website will automatically
rank well in the search engines. This is not necessarily true.
The
term "search engine friendly" simply means the code
that makes up the website has been formatted in such a way that
search engines can easily "crawl" the sites content
for indexing purposes.
Q: How much does it cost to make my website
rank high?
A: This is not the same for every website. There are many factors
involved in determining
the cost.
Some of the questions to be answered are:
- how many other websites will you be competing against?
- where do you currently rank?
- how many key phrases will be optimized?
- who will be keeping the website updated?
- will the site need to be redesigned to acheive high placement?
There are
more factors involved, but the list above gives you an idea
of the types of questions that will need to
be answered to prepare a quote.
Q: Should I be concerned about the PR
of my website?
A: First, PageRank™
is only measured by Google and is not universal to all search
engines. There have been hundreds, probably
thousands, of discussions about PR on SEO forums
around the world. There are two
general schools of thought.
1) PR does not really
matter. It does not affect your placement in the SERPs
and is used primarily to benchmark the value of trading/buying
links.
2) The higher the PR, the more authoritative the website.
As a result of being authoritative, the site ranks higher.
The
above is a -very- condensed and
watered down version of the two sides and by no means represents
the extent
of the
two ideas.
Here's my take on PR... Routinely
work on your website to keep it fresh and build links... the
PR
will follow. PR is
not something,
in my opinion, that should be worried about. Do I
want high PR for my site? Absolutely. But it's more about
bragging rights than
placement in the SERPs.
Q: I have good links on my site, why
am I not ranking well?
A: Linking to other quality,
or authoritative, sites can actually help your ranking, but
do not carry as much weight as inbound links. Inbound links are
one-way links from other sites to your site. Inbound links carry
more weight with search engines because, in theory, if someone
else is linking to your site and you are not linking back, you
must have something of value to offer the public.
A proper balance of outbound and inbound links is essential
to SEO. The key to effective linking is link relevance.
Q: I have hundreds, or thousands, of backlinks to my website. Why
am I still getting out ranked?
A: Simply having hundreds, or thousands, of inbound links does not ensure high ranking. It is more important that your inbound links be from quality websites that are relevant to your field of work.
Q: What's the big deal about "social networking" type sites?
A: This isn't really an SEO question, but it's a great question. Social networking sites like LinkedIn and FaceBook aren't necessarily for SEO, they're for building networks between people you know and the people your friends know. Some people will simply not work with someone unless they know them or are referred to them by a friend. Social network sites can increase the chance of getting referral work exponentially. By the way, if you're reading this and belong to LinkedIn or FaceBook feel free to add me to your network. Yes, that is a shameless plug to get in your network ;)
This page will be updated as new questions
are directed my way. Be sure to check out the search
engine optimization page as well for useful
information.
