One of the biggest mistakes that people like me make when it comes to explaining internet marketing is to assume that the listener actually understands what you are talking about.
This is not to denigrate anyone but is simply a reminder of how, when we learn something, we actually forget of the time before acquiring the knowledge, when we too hadn’t a clue.
(I recently discovered this when I was telling a client that one of my sites was on page 1 of Google for a particular keyword/phrase and he genuinely thought that I had paid Google to achieve this!).
So the purpose of this piece is to explain some critical terms of online or internet marketing to ensure that you can properly market your business online with a good understanding of what you are trying to achieve.
And how to measure the success or failure of your efforts.
Once you understand these terms you will quickly be able to identify what is happening on the internet and how your business may be able to exploit it to grow your business.
(See the video at the end of this page also)
Here are 5 terms you must understand..
1.Search engine
Google, Yahoo and Bing are the most popular search engines with Google holding a massive lead over it’s competitors. A search engine essentially allows you to search for information by typing a word or phrase into the search engine search box.
2.Search Engine Results Page (“SERPS”)
The search engine results page is the page or results served up by the search engine, say Google, for the search term or word that you put into the search box.
It is worth noting that Google have a search engine for each country and the results served up in Ireland will generally be the Google.ie results whereas if you are searching in the UK or the States you would get a different set of results.
This is of enormous significance for your business because which set of results you wish to target will be determined greatly by where your target market is located.
For example if you were selling genealogy services primarily to the US market you would want to rank well on Google.com but not be too concerned about your ranking on Google.ie.
On the other hand if you are selling house insurance in Ireland your target market will generally be Irish house owners so ranking well on Google.ie will be worth a lot more to you than on Google.com.
3. Ranking
Ranking refers to the position of each result returned with 10 results per page so the top result is ranked no. 1 and so on down to the bottom of the page to position 10. The number 1 result gets around 42% of the search traffic for any given search keyword or phrase with the balance distributed through the remaining results on page
4. Keyword/keyphrase
A keyword or phrase describes the search word that people type into the search box. “Dublin” for example is a keyword while “Dublin office furniture” is a key phrase.
To tie in the terms explained above to relevance with your small Irish business, if you are selling office furniture in Dublin then you want your website to rank well in the search engine results for the key phrase “Dublin office furniture”.
5. Adwords
Google Adwords is Google’s advertising program and allows advertisers to buy advertising on the search engine results pages (and also on individual sites who opt in to show advertising on their sites such as the Irish Times, Irish Independent or Home Insurance Ireland).
Adwords advertising can be quite expensive and if you can get onto the first or second page of Google’s search results in the natural/organic/free listings for search terms related to your business then you can save your business a huge chunk of money and gain a lot of traffic to your website.
Free traffic versus paid traffice is the choice for your business
(Click on the image above for a closer look at these key definitions..)
What this means for your business
What this means for your business is that if you are selling office furniture in Dublin, for example, then you want your website content ranking well in the SERPS (search engine results page) for the key phrase “Dublin office furniture” and similar, related phrases.
Your website should not be restricted to only ranking well for one keyphrase but should be capable of ranking well for phrases like “office supplies”, “filing cabinets”, “office desks” and so on.
If you as a business person understand the 5 terms explained above then you are in a position to know precisely what you want from your website and your internet marketing efforts to promote your business.
Without this understanding you are in danger of spending a lot of money trying to get to grips with online marketing and worrying needlessly that you are being left behind in relation to social media and other buzz phrases.
As long as you retain the goal of getting your goods and services in front of interested, targeted visitors with a well optimized website you will get a great return from your internet marketing effort.
See the video below which expands on this piece..
