Understanding SEO Acronyms - The List

Search Engine Marketing (a.k.a SEO), whether it’s via pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimization, is a “must know” skill for any successful affiliate marketer. As a continuation to my Affiliate Marketing Acronyms post, here is a list I put together of the most common SEO acronyms.

SEO
The acronym SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is the act of making changes (optimizing) to a website’s coding in order to achieve higher natural (organic) search engine listings for a particular keyword or keywords. SEO usually involves making both on-site changes, such as keyword usage and placement, as well as external factors such as link popularity.

SEM
The acronym SEM stands for search engine marketing. SEM can include both optimizing a website’s natural search engine rankings (SEO) in addition to pay-per-click advertising. Pay-per-click advertising would be considered “unnatural” listings because you pay for the particular position)

SEP
The acronym SEP stands for search engine placement or search engine positioning. For example, you may ask someone what their SEP in Google is for a particular keyword. SEP can also be used synonymous with SEO. For example, you might say “I also specialize in SEP.”

SERP(S)
The acronym SERP(S) stands for search engine results page(s). SERPs are the search engine results returned after searching for a particular keyword. For example, you might say “I’m number five in the Google SERPS for the keyword “great site.”

PPCSE
The acronym PPCSE stands for pay-per-click search engine. An example of some PPCSE networks are Google Adwords, Yahoo Publisher Network (formerly Overture), MIVA or Search123.com.

The major PPCSE listings are displayed at the top and/or along the side of natural search engine results. The highlighted top ads and the right side bar ads after a Google search are sponsored ads called Adwords. The top highlighted boxes during most MSN searches are MSN Adcenter ads. Yahoo Publisher Results are displayed in similar fashion to Google Adwords ads, but also include some ads at the bottom of the natural search engine listings. Natural search engine listings are the non-paid listings of websites in the search engines for a particular keyword. A website’s exact ranking is based on each search engine’s unique algorithm.

PR
The acronym PR stands for Page Rank.
See Page Rank Defined by Google for more info.

PageRank, developed and used by Google, is calculated on a page by page basis and is calculated based on the number of website pages linking to your webpage and those pages’ Page Rank. This includes both the incoming external links and the internal flow of your website’s links. WebSites as a whole do not have a single Page Rank. WebPages within your website do. In order to see your website’s Page Rank, you must have the Google Tool Bar installed on your browser or you can use an online tool such as the Page Rank Checker tool found on Webmaster-Talk.com

Once the toolbar is installed go to your website and place your mouse over the green bar under “pagerank” and your website’s numeric Page Rank will be displayed. The toolbar only shows Page Rank on a scale of 0 – 10, but it is actually calculated using a complex logarithmic scale.

Let me know of any SEO acronyms I should add to the list!

Did you enjoy this post? Please Subscribe via RSS or email.