Digital marketing has a language all its own. The more you know, the better your chances of success. To harness the power of digital marketing for your business, these five terms are mandatory knowledge.
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to what’s behind-the-scenes of your website with metadata tags, as well as what’s upfront with keywords and user-friendly copy. When it all works well together, your website shows up higher in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. But it’s not a once-and-done project. Monthly management is imperative for success because search engines frequently update the factors affecting search results. To learn five more facts about SEO, read this.
SEM
Search engine marketing, also known as SEM or Paid Search, refers to any type of advertisements placed at the top of search results and identified as an ad under the website link. What these copy-only ads lack in visual appeal, they make up for by being extremely well targeted to prospects searching for your keywords. SEM encompasses many other terms including paid search ads, paid search advertising, pay-per-click (PPC), cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) campaigns. The majority of SEM is managed through Google AdWords, since the search engine amasses a colossal 2 trillion searches per year.
PPC
Pay-per-click ads are one of the most popular types of SEM and work well to increase brand awareness, site visitors and conversions. In these campaigns, advertisers only pay when a customer clicks through to the website. Specific landing pages are often created for these campaigns to funnel prospects directly to the desired action. For example, if our agency wanted to generate more leads for our web development team, we could develop a landing page with basic information about our services and a contact form. Then, we would run a PPC ad linked to the page, only getting charged when people clicked through the ad to the landing page.
ROS
Run-of-Site refers to an online display advertisement where a banner, image or other type of media targets all pages of a particular website. The cost can be deceptively appealing compared to other types of ads because these campaigns often place ads in less-valuable spots to lower the overall advertising price. ROS ads can be effective for generating brand awareness, or promoting a new product or service on a smaller, more targeted website your desired audience frequents. For example, a tool company releasing a new product may choose ROS on hardware blogs or magazine websites, where nearly any page will reach the right audience, rather than ROS on a broadly-targeted news website.
Retargeting
Retargeting campaigns are ads delivered after someone has visited your website. By placing a specific piece of coding behind-the-scenes, visitors to your website get an anonymous cookie attached to their browser. Your business is then able to re-engage visitors by finding the cookie and serving them ads as they browse the web and social media. While retargeting is currently undergoing some big changes, it still remains a big player in digital marketing.
It’s easy to get lost in the verbiage of digital marketing. Getting comfortable with these five mandatory terms, though, can make a big difference in your company’s future. Ready to take the next step? Contact us today.
