SEO, PPC, and SMM... acronym overload!

If you own a website, at the very least you have probably wondered how you will get people to visit your website. If you've done any amount of research into the subject, you have no doubt seen some of these acronyms SEO, PPC and most recently SMM. Let me be anti-climactic and define these acronyms:

SEO: Search Engine Optimization
PPC: Pay Per Click (Advertising)
SMM: Social Media Marketing

Ok, so now you know what the acronyms stand for, your next question is probably what the heck do they mean and why should I care?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Getting your site to show up at the top of search engine result pages is something that most website owners want. With the amount of people turning to search engines for simple things like looking up a company's phone number, it's imperative that your website is ready to be found. I almost feel silly making that last statement. It's almost as elementary as telling business owners that they need a website. In this day and age, it's just assumed that you need a presence on the web, and I would argue that having placement within the search engines falls into the same category.

SEO is not an overnight thing, it can easily take 3-4 months to see results. Another thing to understand is there are never guarantees with SEO. That said, if you do everything right and are persistent in your SEO efforts, you should see favorable rankings over time.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Don't want to wait for SEO efforts to kick in? Well, if you are the instant gratification type, you can utilize PPC advertising to have your website ads shown when a user types in keywords you specify for your ads. Every time someone clicks your ad, you pay a fee to the search engine that is serving your ad. The fees are based on a bid system, where generally speaking the higher you bid, the better your placement is within the search results.

PPC, which in 2009 accounted for 95% of Google's revenue, and the main catalyst for their growth, must be budgeted for. The great thing about PPC is you can spend as little or as much as you want, and you can track ad performance very nicely. You can track exactly which keywords are bringing in the most revenue, as well as determine which advertisements convert into the most sales.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

As much as search engines are ingrained in our daily internet use, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In are rapidly being utilized by companies as marketing tools. While SMM is quite new compared to SEO and PPC, the concept is actually quite old. Build a community, inspire collaboration among your customer base and stay connected with your customers. These principles have been in use before I was born, so why the big stink about it now? Well, for starters businesses have unprecedented access to their customers in so many different mediums. Think about how hard it would be to get a discussion going among 200 of your customers about a new product you are launching, 20 years ago. With tools like Twitter or discussions on Facebook pages, this is a trivial task.

SMM isn't about advertising, it's about connecting. If you want your customer base to stay connected with you, having active Facebook or Twitter content is a good start. Providing frequent, useful, content through your social media network keeps your customers thinking about you. The great thing about SMM is that it can be done with little to no money invested, besides your time of course.