TMA - Too Many Acronyms

I run into acronyms a lot in the tech industry. Everyone assumes that you must know what all of them stand for since you are also in the tech industry. Other industries sometimes make this mistake as well. This actually relates very well to keyword marketing research and search engine optimization.

When is it ok to use acronyms in marketing? Only when the consumer understands what they mean or is actually looking for the acronym itself. For a great example from Verisign, the keyword “SSL certificate” is an excellent example of when to use an acronym. Not a lot of people know the meaning of the acronym, which is secure sockets layer. Around 320 people a month search for this word. However, 673,000 people search for “SSL” a month. The average consumer has probably never heard anyone use the real term, and so a company selling SSL certificates needs to market accordingly to the right audience.

For another example, we can look to domain registration. While I was recently at a conference, the words “TLDs” and “ccTLDs” were being thrown around like crazy. These are terms for domain names- top level domain and country code top level domain. With this acronym, around 1,900 people search for ccTLD a month compared to 880 for country code top level domain. However, does this mean that you should optimize for the acronym?

In this instance, no.  Only people in the tech industry have ever even heard this term before. The average consumer is searching for “domain names” at a rate of 450,000 a month. It is extremely important that your search engine optimization company use keyword marketing research to determine the best keywords to use for your campaign. Otherwise, you might be marketing to the wrong audience.