SEM is one of those buzz words that almost everyone banters about, but few really know what it means. Oh yeah, it’s an acronym for Search Engine Marketing, but what does that mean? What exactly does optimizing for search engines entail? Did you know that the words you choose to name a file can improve your results in SERPs? Here’s an explanation that will make sense to those who use computers as productivity tools and not as their source of income.
People who are not familiar with Internet marketing often find the terminology intimidating. SEM, Search Engine Marketing & Optimization… wha?
There are many aspects to SEM that can be confusing to anyone who does not have ‘GEEK’ tattooed on their forehead. For this discussion, let’s talk about just one SEM element.
Optimizing a web page to achieve better results in a search is the process of making the components of a web page more visible to the search engine. Okay, so what does that mean?
On this particular web page there is a photo (an image) of an automobile. The filename of this graphic is ‘img004.jpg’. It received that name when a digital camera snapped the photo and assigned it a filename of img004.jpg.
Search engine spiders are blind. They can read text, but they cannot see pictures. When they read an image filename of img004.jpg, it means nothing, it does not contribute to the context of the other words on the page. This beautiful photo contributes nothing to the content of the page. However, if we renamed this file as “volkswagen_passat_sedan.jpg”, it now becomes visible to the search engine spider and contributes to the page’s subject matter.
The search engine now knows that a photo of a “Volkswagen Passat Sedan” can be found on THIS page. So, when a search is performed for a “Volkswagen Passat Sedan”, this page could find itself on page one of Google’s search results.
Is this an oversimplification? Of course, because there are other factors that contribute or detract from this particular page’s value relating to the term, “Volkswagen Passat Sedan”. However, if other SEM elements are crafted properly, they all contribute to add value to this page content. This is just one facet of Search Engine Marketing that the team at AdzZoo employs to give our customers the results they expect.
