Dragonfly Media Curacao

By Patricia Bruscha, Source: HSMAI
In today’s medium of sophisticated online marketing, optimizing a website really is a separate art requiring some specific skill sets. Boldly stated: the majority of webmasters today do not have the proper training or knowledge to utilize optimization techniques to properly craft a marketing message, or to position a website for the right target audiences. Relying on your webmaster alone to handle your search engine optimization is about as crazy as hiring your mechanic to decorate your house.

This seems to be a reoccurring topic with numerous people I speak with, all claiming that they “don’t need to optimize their site” because their webmaster does it for them! Unfortunately the phrase Search Engine Optimization has become so overused that anyone stating they “practice optimization best practices” are not measured against any type of industry standard. Can you imagine if you had to pass an optimization certification to practice SEO? I wonder what that would look like and if any of today’s webmaster’s would be able to pass it? I know I am venturing into dangerous territory here, as I may not receive the most popular vote from webmasters out there; however I never claim to have the knowledge to program a site.
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When you work within an industry you tend to forget that not everybody knows what terms mean. For instance, when we have a meeting with the accountant I need to ask for an explanation every 10 sentences. The same goes, of course, for what we do and the terms and abbreviations we use. Therefore, for the benefit of our clients, we would like to explain what we mean when we use certain words. Below you will find the definitions we use at Dragonfly:

• Search Engine Optimization (on-site/off-site)
  The abbreviation for both forms of search engine optimization is SEO.
  On-site Search Engine Optimization is a process which uses a set of techniques for optimizing readability of your website by search engine robots (searchbots, spiders). Off-site Search Engine Optimization is a process which involves finding ways of making a website more popular in the ‘eyes’ of search engines without touching the website itself.
  The goal of SEO (on-site and off-site) is for the website to rank higher in the organic (free) search results for relevant search queries.
• Search Engine Marketing
  Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a marketing technique utilizing the sponsored search results of search engines to advertise a website when relevant search queries are made.
• Internet Marketing
  Internet Marketing is the process of marketing a website (or products available from a website) on the internet. This can involve SEO & SEM, but also regular on-line advertising, strategically placed content, etcetera.