If you are new to website marketing, it may be difficult for you to keep track of the abbreviations used by marketing professionals. This post helps you understand these terms so you can use them when needed.

SEO, SEM, SEA, SMO, SMM, SERP, SERM

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO or Search Engine Optimization helps in getting the website or a web page on the top ranking in search engines. By increasing the visibility of a website in the ranking of major search engines, more and more internet users visit the website resulting in an increase in business. SEO is a great way of getting more traffic to a website. It can be done by two techniques, white hat or black hat.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is a powerful advertising channel.It is a technique of diverting more traffic towards the website by increasing the rank of the website on popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is also called as Search Marketing. It can be done by two ways; by getting traffic to the website with the help of SEO and by getting traffic with the help of paid advertising (SEA).

SEA (Search Engine Advertising)

SEA or Search Engine Advertising is a technique of gaining traffic to a website through paid advertising like Google Adwords or PPC (Pay Per Click advertising). It is one of the basic areas of Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

SMO (Social Media Optimization)

Social Media Optimization or SMO is the technique of increasing a websites awareness with the use of social media communities. These social media websites include social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google Plus+, Orkut and more. SMO also helps in increasing the positioning of a website on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). SMO generates publicity of a website, its products and services on social networks, resulting in increased website traffic. Social News sites, particularly Slashdot, Delicious, Digg and Social Bookmarking sites, particularly Reddit, Pinterest and StumbleUpon are also included in social media.

SMM (Social Media Marketing)

SMM or Social Media Marketing is a way of promoting a website and getting traffic to it through social media sites. The main purpose of SMM is to generate awareness of a website, the products and services that are offered through it. The process of SMM is to create attractive content to grab the attention of the social networking site users and to encourage them to share it with their friends or social networks.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

SERP or Search Engine Results Page is the list of websites which are shown by the Search engines as a result when any keyword or a set of keywords is entered into the search bar. The list shown is relevant to the keyword(s) that is searched. With the help of the list given by the Search Engine, one can optimize his/her website or a web page to get better ranking. Search Engine Optimization is done to increase the ranking of a website for specific keywords.

SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management)

SERM or Search Engine Reputation Management enhances and controls the website reputation, generates positive publicity online and destroys search engine spam. It controls the appearing of negative comments about the website before the positive ones to prevent the reputation of the website from being destroyed.