Sick and tired of Internet Marketing acronyms?

Everyone is talking about SEO this and SEA that. Meanwhile others work in the field of SEM or are definitely Ecommerce engagers. Ceo's are looking for Online Marketing professionals for the sole purpose of SEA. Meanwhile HR reps definitely demand a firm knowledge of STD in order to optimise PPC. Some CPA experience in Online MarCom would be OK... CEO's are investing in ROI to get SEO's to CPC at the ATM. CIO's want BPV's to strategise GIP when Ecom is not Online. And Emarketers are SEAying that CPS won't render SM deliverables, because FB states that posts won't converse. CTR does not compute when ROAS does not leverage funny funnels...

Sick and tired of Internet Marketing acronyms? Read my list.

SEO means search engine optimisation. The Dutch translation is zoekmachineoptimalisatie, the German: Suchmaschinenoptimierung. In all three languages it refers to making your website optimal for search engines such as Google. So you don't actually optimise the search engine; you optimise your website in order to be read better BY a search engine. The actual components of a website that can be optimised are:

text key words, meta descriptions, titles, body text, meta tags, links, alt tags, domain names, long tail, keyword use, headers, spelling mistakes, anchors, key word strategy, urls
indexation script use, XHTML layout, platform use, file use, css use, databases, navigation, jsp, image maps, cookies, robots, browsers, DHTML-menus, site age
linkpopularity back linking, internal links, link building, hubs, page rank, link audit, link campaigning, syndication, online awards, relevance, online tool syndication, widgets

SEA means search engine advertising. It refers to payed ads you create in Google Adwords. The ads are displayed in the right row of your screen. Both position and display frequency are influenced by the keywords you use and pay for, click rates and sites the ads link to. For instance, if an ad links to a popular site with a lot of traffic, this popularity is of influence on the position of the ad.

SEM means search engine marketing. In Dutch it means zoekmachinemarketing, in German Suchmaschinenmarketing. It refers to the use search engines for marketing purposes. Without a doubt it's the least used abbreviation of the three (SEO/SEA/SEM), even though it covers both SEO and SEA. 

Ecommerce stands for electronic commerce. A term widely used for the proces of selling goods over the internet. Basically, it means online sales. In general web shops operate in the field of Ecommerce. To reach the online sales targets an Ecommerce strategy might incorporate SEO or SEA or both, in which case SEM would be the relevant abbreviation. Logically, in Ecommerce the 'Marketing' part of SEM is strategised for online sales purposes exclusively.

Online Marketing refers to the marketing segment that exclusively exploits the Internet channel for its purposes. Depending on Internet strategy this field can cover all four above mentioned abbreviations.

SEO, when planning to optimise your site for search engines; SEA, if you plan to advertise your products through online ad campaigns; Ecommerce if you target to increase the online sales of your product; SEM if you plan to use both.


Pricing model acronyms:

CTR - click through rates (not thru!) is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A click through rate is obtained by dividing the "number of users who clicked on an advertisment on a web page by the "number of times the advertisement was displayed" (impressions). For example, if a banner ad was displayed 100 times (impressions delivered) and 1 person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting click through rate would be 1 percent.

CPC - cost per click is the sum paid by an advertiser to search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on their advertisement, which directs one visitor to the advertiser's website.

CPS - cost per sale is the sum paid by a publisher - someone who advertises his products on an advertiser's site - to the advertiser who sells his product for him.


PPC - pay per click is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the hosting service when the advertisement is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

CPO - cost per order is the amount of money spent on advertising and marketing on the sales of a product.

CPM - cost per mille is the amount of money an advertiser pays for every 1000 times his advertisement is displayed on his website

CPA - cost per action refers to the sum of money an advertiser pays for each online action a user takes after viewing the advertisers advertisment.


ROAS - return on advertising spending is a term that describes the profit made by advertising. This represents the euros earned versus the euros spent on an advertising campaign, and is figured by dividing advertisement-driven profit by the euro amount spent on.

ROI - return on investment is the difference between the profit you make by selling your products and the investments you do in your business.