Key terms for your Online Marketing plan

I meet with agents all the time and I often times have to give them definitions of several key terms before we begin working. I wanted to list a few of those key terms here. This is by no means a complete list of SEO terminology, it is however a good start. Please bookmark this page and come back to it as often as you need to. For some real estate examples please feel free to contact me.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization

This is the process of achieving higher search engine rankings. SEO is often times used when agents talk about their real estate websites. This process includes several on page and off page tactics that will result in a greater page strength in each search engine. The higher the page strength the more likely a web page will show up in the top ten in search engine rankings.

SEM Search Engine Marketing

This is a very broad term that encompasses paid advertisements as well as traditional SEO as defined above. The paid portion is when an agent creates ads through the particular search engine.

Black Hat SEO

This is a term that indicates that the SEO that is on your website goes against the terms of service that search engines provide. It is characterized by deliberate manipulations such as entering hundreds of keywords in on a web page in a clear or similar color scheme to increase SEO. Black Hat SEO can often times result in web pages being deliberately removed from the search engines indexed pages.

White Hat SEO 

Each search engine has a list of guidelines that webmasters must conform to and when webmasters do this they are practicing white hat SEO techniques.

Bounce Rate 

This is a percentage of users who leave your site upon entering. It often means that they left without viewing more than one page. It has an inverse relationship with your web page strength. If you have a high bounce rate, your web pages strength is lower.

SMM Social Media Marketing

This is when a brand of website is promoted through social channels either with ads of organic growth. With the recent changes in the search engine rankings, SMM has become and will become even more critical in the future of online marketing.

Meta Description 

This is the first few lines that show up in a search query. Typically it consist of 140 characters and explains what the web page is about. This is a great place for keyword use and keyword phrases to appear.

Meta Keyword 

These keywords are tags that are coded for search engines to easily read them. Keywords are one element of the meta aspect of websites. 

PageRank  

This is Google’s trademark that measures your pages strength when searched in Google. PageRank consist of a value of 1-10 and it is determined by Google algorithm. At its core PageRank is an analysis of a web page to determine if the user will find the content on the page helpful to the search. 

Index

This is a web page database that search engines use when users search. It is important for all websites to be indexed. Index can also be used when people talk about the action of indexing a web page. If you have new content on your site, it most likely will get re-indexed by search engines.

As I mentioned earlier this is only a few of the terms that online marketers must be able to explain to the general public. As I meet with real estate agents this is a list that I keep handy. I have a smaller list that I use for classes and they are often class specific. If you would like to learn more about SEO terminology please feel free to contact me at any time.  

If you have any Marketing Questions for me please email me here