I met with a client a few days ago who was new to the world of online marketing and I started to use terms that were “standard” for me, but very new to him, so I thought I’d add some often used terms and definitions.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing is the art of getting your site ranked well on search engines, purchasing paid listings, or both. SEM includes SEO, copywriting, traffic reports, pay per click (PPC), Website architecture, search engine registration, pay for Inclusion.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization – good SEO helps your site rank higher in the organic search results
Organic Search – Organic search listings are results based on factors such as keyword relevancy within a Web page. These are the listings generally found on the left hand side in search engines, and are not influenced by direct financial payments, only by effective search engine optimization.
Landing page – When you click on a banner ad you are driven to a landing page. Landing page design and optimization is taken very seriously in the online marketing world. Landing pages are sometimes called lead capture pages. There are two types of landing pages. Transactional which typically have a header, footer (attractive) some minimal and engaging text and a lead capture form. Lead capture forms are typically designed to capture the minimal amount of information about a prospective buyer because most people don’t like to give companies a lot of information. Referential landing pages are the second type, typically containing links to other pages, or information that drive (reference) you to other sites. People spend a lot of time optimizing their transactional landing pages to get more and better conversions.
Conversion – When a person fills in a form on a landing page (giving you their data) they are considered to be converted (converted into a lead). Now it doesn’t mean they are a particularly qualified lead, but it does mean they are interested enough in your product or service to provide you with their information.
A/B Testing – something that is done in the traditional world of marketing, but also done in online marketing. A/B testing used to test the effectiveness of a landing page (or other webpage). Here is a typical scenario: Two landing pages (it could be more) are created, option a and option b. Generally, one of the options is considered a control sample “where we started from”. The difference between A and B may be colour, copy, or images (really, any number of tweaks). A certain set of users (50%) are presented with landing option a and the rest with landing page option b. A campaign is run, in this example, let’s say it’s a banner ad. The results of how many users visit each page, and fill in the landing page form are tracked. Once enough people have gone through the experiment, results are compared and typically, one landing page has faired better, bringing in more conversions than the other.
