Search Engine Marketing:
FAQ's

SEM FAQ's

1. What the heck do all of these acronyms mean?

Some of the first questions people ask regarding the search engine marketing industry have to do with explanation of the meanings of various acronyms used to describe aspects of the industry.

Here are some of the basic acronyms you will encounter:

SE - Search Engine

SERP - Search Engine Results Page

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

SEM - Search Engine Marketing

CPC - Cost Per Click

PPC - Pay Per Click

CPA - Cost Per Acquisition

CPO - Cost Per Order

ROI - Return On Investment

CPM - Cost Per Impression



2. What can I do right now to start optimizing my site for higher search engine rankings?

The first place to begin is to take a look at your site design - is your content within a frameset? Is your site built in flash? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then you might want to consider rebuilding your site in static, frameless HTML - it will make your optimization job a lot easier (there are workarounds, of course, but for this question we'll stick to best-case scenarios). Once you've done this, the next piece of advice is write, write, and write some more! The search engine spiders love nothing more than to sink their teeth into your site's text content.



3. What is the difference between a "search engine" and a "directory"?

A search engine uses a massive database, or "index" of web sites that it gathers via "spidering" the web, by sending out a robot, bot, or spider (a computer program designed to find more web sites and read their content so that more sites can be added to the database). When a user performs a search, this database is "queried" and results are returned based on a pre-determined list of ranking criteria, the term for which is called an "algorithm". There are no humans involved in the direct inclusion of web sites within the database of a search engine, as sites are added automatically via the spidering process.

A directory, on the other hand, is a database of web sites that is structured by topic-based categories that have been pre-determined by humans. The addition of sites into each of these various categories is done manually by human editors, instead of an automatic search engine spider. As a result, it is somewhat more difficult to get your web site listed in one of the major directories such as Yahoo! and DMOZ, or Open Directory than it is to have your site automatically added to a search engine's index.