Not quite! But as in most industries, terminology exists to differentiate between types of services-here’s an overview of some of the terms that you might of heard whilst talking to people within the industry…

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Placement (SEP) are terms used to describe the practice of modifying or tuning invisible website content according to the key search terms it is required to be found for. Some parts of this process are on-site: the modifying of the actual website – some work involves establishing external links (link building) from other websites to yours. Careful work with site content that is efficient (and useful for the site visitor), organic and well structured is usually the first step of a long, but well worthwhile journey to becoming a website of authority status.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a natural evolution for SEO, but is more far reaching in terms of using other methods to achieve high numbers of visitors and general exposure. This is a form of on-line marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results through the use of paid inclusion, paid placement or contextual advertising i.e. Google Adwords (PPC).

Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is related to SEO, but the main focus of this is on driving traffic from other sources, rather than search engines. i.e. RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, social media sites and other media exposure can contribute extensively to a website popularity.

Conversion Rate Marketing (CRM) is the science of detailed analysis of a website to goal settings and funnelling strategies of all on-line traffic. This procedure often involves highly detailed visitor data for the website (metrics). An in-depth refinement process can be be conducted through multivariate testing, heat maps and other other methods that constantly refine and improve the sites structure, layout and also navigation. All text content, ‘calls to action’, persuasion paths and other elements of design are changed to convert more visitors and massively reduce bounce rates. Raising visitor retention considerably (often in excess of 50 percent) makes interesting reading from the point of view of a Return of Interest on moneys invested.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions or require any further information regarding these or any other terms, please give us a call or check out Calm Digital.

The majority of people think of (SEO) Search Engine Optimisation as an art to improve their search engine rankings, being a time studied profession that, without putting a great deal of time and effort into it,should be left to the techies. Wrong! Yes, improving search engine rankings in competitive areas does require a huge amount of knowledge and expertise and search engine optimisation techies are needed, but most websites aren’t in hugely competitive areas. Many of them can achieve effective rankings by applying some of these search engine optimisation basics.

SEO is the art of achieving high search engine results, increasing website traffic. It’s when the content is set out so the search engines can read it easy and effectively, and most importantly, it is about creating real value for the searcher. SEO is about attracting visitors specifically focused around predetermined key search terms. A valuable user experience will be rewarded by the search engines by increasing your Google Pagerank. SEO is all about making sure your website delivers what it says it will!

SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimising a website involves writing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords. Sometimes a site’s structure must be adjusted too. Because of this, SEO needs to be considered at the design phase of any project and a strategy created specifically. It is critical that all the elements work together including the content and how the website is designed:

• Keyword analysis
Using our SEO expertise we will research and refine keywords into a definitive list. Using our specialised software Calm Asylum will run searches on keywords to understand how many people are searching for them and how competitive they are. The aim being to find popular search terms which are specific to your offering allowing you to rank as high as possible.

• Title tag
The keywords or phrases must be present in this tag. The priority of the keywords run from left to right in the title tag, so more important keywords are placed first. The title tag is indexed by the search engines in its own right and its influence is multiplied if the keywords within it are also used inside other elements.

• Meta keywords
Meta keywords allow you to provide additional text for search engines to index along with the body copy. Although this tag is indexed by search engines, text appearing within it only has limited relevancy as it is text and cannot be seen by the user. Like title tags priority runs from left to right, separated by commas. Keywords should never occur in meta keyword tags unless they also appear in the page text and generally should not be any longer than 255 characters including whitespace.

• Meta description

The meta descriptions allow you to influence the description of your page with search engines. The meta description has to contain your keywords and also relate to the copy on the page and be ideally no longer than 128 characters in length.

• Keyword distribution
It is essential that the predefined keywords are evenly distributed throughout the web page without simply keyword stuffing or spamming. To prevent this, keywords should not be used to often, but used in every paragraph, heading, subheading and also links. This simply allows the search engines to know that is what the content is about.

• Page URLS

Search engines love static URLs as they are sure that the pages content is less likely to have changed since last being indexed and not have duplicate information. An affective URL should be short and contain your most important selected keywords making your pages more trustworthy to search engines.

So as a round up if you have a spanky website and are fed up paying for Adwords why not contact Calm Digital for a chat and discuss in further detail how Calm can help.

Twitter seems to be all over the media like a rash at the moment. So much so that I’ve been forced to revisit my twitter after it had lain dormant for months. And guess what – it’s so addictive that I’ve had to limit my time on it. So what’s happened?

It’s hit the Tipping Point!

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explores three personality types that are essential for reaching out to people: Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople.

Connectors: These are folks who naturally build links, networks and connections between individuals and groups – think twitter fiend Jonathan Ross.

Mavens: In the best sense of the term these are people who love to gather practical information and share it with others, think  Stephen Fry, Arch Twitterer.

Salespeople: Folks who love to sell because they are passionate about people and twitter. – Phil Schofield fits this archetype.

Of course there are also those who by their very status can ifluence simply by adopting, like Barack Obama.

These personality types are enjoy people and effectively build community. Prominent personlaties fitting these archetypes can influence individuals and organizations who may adopt Twitter, becoming contributors, followers and ultimately twitters best advocates.

Add to the mix a global networking frenzy in the form Twestival, a live networking and fundraising event in 202 cities in the world, and yo, twitter hits the mainstream in a big media glitz type way.

As generously shared with the masses by @seotimeline on twitter and re-shared by Calm Asylum yo.

It really is an essential roadmap for all your social media / networking needs, detailing both community and B2B social networking sites, search engines, video sites, micro-blogging and texting, tools and platforms, blogs, wikis, photo sharing sites, social bookmarking and podcasting. The full palava really. Check it out here.

Calm Asylum has found the blog of a true genius. The periodic table of social media elements is so cool and it even gives you links to social media movers and shakers like Guy Kawasaki and The Real Shaq.