The term SEO is becoming more and more popular and commonly used when referring to the Internet and company websites. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of key business executives that are not clear on what SEO stands for or what it means to their business. They just know there is a lot of talk about it and are often told they should have it.

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. The most popular Search Engines where over 90% of searches are performed on the Internet are Google (holding about 80%) and Bing/Yahoo. SEO is how well you have optimized your website so it shows in the top 3 pages of search engine organic results section out of the millions of sites competing for the same placement.

There are basic techniques that search engines use to read and determine what keyword searches your website should come up under and in what order in comparison to other sites. Keywords or Keyword Phrases (a group of keywords) are the words that people type into the Search Engine. This is important since this is the foundation of all SEO. There are focused approaches website owners can take to make sure that their website is coming up within the first 10 to 30 results for the right keywords, or the keyword phrases that will bring the targeted visitors a business is looking for.

SEM is an acronym for Search Engine Marketing. This usually refers to PPC or Pay-Per-Click on Search Engines. If SEO is not getting a website placed on the first page, you can pay to have your website link/ad appear under the chosen keywords/phrases for a fee.

PPC is like an auction where a business can bid for a term(s) to be placed in the paid advertisement areas of the search results. The business will pay the search engine the agreed upon amount for each time someone clicks on their advertisement. Once someone clicks on the advertisement they will be directed to the specified (landing) page designated by the business. There are many requirements and methods that must be followed to set up your PPC campaign.

Other SEM strategies include other paid advertisements to get traffic to your website. This could be through popular websites, social networks, newsletters, email campaigns and more.

To learn more about how it all works read ‘How Does SEO Work? SEO Basics.

Google also offers many helpful resources, such as an SEO guide which can be downloaded here.