WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay Per Click (PPC), Cost Per Click (CPC), etc...
Feeling lost already? Don't worry, we know all the 'lingo' and, more importantly, can explain it without resorting to techhy speak and jargon.
THE BASIC PREMISE
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the name for the processes undertaken on a website to try and help it rank highly in the search results pages when people are looking for things on the Internet.
THE SEARCH ENGINES
There are a number of Internet search engines however there is arguably only 3 main ones which people attempt to gain high rankings in, they are Google, Yahoo and MSN / Live Search.
As Google has such a large market share of all Internet searches (around 70% – 80% in the UK) when most people talk about ‘optimising for search engines’ they are more often than not talking about Google.
Because of its position as a market leader a top ranking in Google will deliver substantially more website visitors than the same or better rankings in all the other search engines put together.
The downside of this is that it makes achieving these top position rankings highly competitive, especially since for any 1 search query there can be only 1 website in the number 1 position (pretty obviously!).
WHAT IS NOT SEO?
When you search using a search engine you may often see a box at the very top of the listings holding up to 3 search results which have a different background colour to the rest of the page, they also say 'sponsored Listings’ beside them. Getting a website listed in this area is NOT SEO.
These ‘Sponsored Listings’ also appear down the right hand side of a search results page and the adverts contained fall under the marketing activity described as Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Click (CPC).
Together, PPC and SEO are a part of what is called Search Engine Marketing (SEM).