web alphabet soup

for many of my small business clients, the alphabet soup that is part of my daily vocabulary is completely foreign to them. for that reason, i thought i'd take a quick moment and explain some of the terms that you should be aware of if you have a business that uses a website to market your company...

SEO
what it stands for: "Search Engine Optimization"
what it means: this refers to the process of making your site 'friendly' to the spiders sent out by Google, Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines to find web content for search results. your site is 'friendly' when it presents information in a way the spiders can easily find and categorize the data and site into its databases.
why you should care: every company wants their website to show up in the top of the search results for relevant keyword phrases. SEO works to make this happen by determining which keyword phrases your company and products are most relevant for and optimizing your site for those phrases.

SEM
what it stands for: "Search Engine Marketing"
what it means: marketing your company, services and products via search engines. this is usually done through keyword phrase advertising (i.e. the search results that appear in the right hand column of a Google search).
why you should care:
if you are looking for ways to reach new audiences, especially if your products are not limited by geography, search engine marketing can offer you an affordable way to reach out to new customers. you can advertise with text-only as well as traditional web banners, and campaigns can be targeted by site, geography and search engine.

CPC
what it stands for: cost - per - click
what it means: this refers to a type of online advertising campaign. with a 'cost per click' campaign, your ad may appear many times before it is clicked but you only pay for the number of times a website visitor clicks on your ad.
why you should care: most internet advertising (especially with search engines) is cost-per-click based. the cost of a click depends on a variety of factors, including the site you are advertising on, the quality of traffic that site receives and (in the case of search engines) the popularity of keywords you are choosing to advertise on.

CPM
what it stands for: cost - per - thousand
what it means: similar to the CPC, this is a type of advertising campaign, but this type is based on the number of VIEWS of your ad on the site where you are advertising.