As a web developer in Salisbury, clients often ask me what do the terms Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) mean. Do they mean the same thing? So I thought I would write this article to try and clear things up a bit.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM):
So what is search engine marketing? Well SEM is the process of increasing your position in Search Engine Results Pages, often called SERPs. Not only can this increase traffic, it can also help to improve sales, as the people clicking on your adverts are interested in what your site offers.
There are several different methods of SEM; I will cover two of the main ones in a bit more detail.
PPC (Pay Per Click):
Pay Per Click (PPC) is where your website listing appears on relevant search engine results pages, and then you pay every time someone clicks one of your adverts - the amount you pay the search engine is known as CPC, or Cost Per Click. Your adverts often appear next to relevant content, so as web designers in Salisbury, we may want our web design page to appear in searches for “web site design Salisbury”, as this would be relevant to our business, and again we may want our mobile applications page to appear alongside search results for “mobile applications Salisbury”. PPC adverts are handled differently by different search engines, Google, for example includes them above and down the right hand side of search results. This keeps the search engine results pages clear and concise but still allows adverts to function.
Traditional Adverts:
Traditional adverts are one of the most popular forms of advertising on the Internet. This form of advertising often involves embedding adverts into a website, the adverts themselves come in many different forms, from images to Flash to plain text. These adverts are designed to appeal to users and encourage them to click on the banner - taking them to the relevant website. Affiliates earn money, either on a CPC (cost per click) basis, or on the number of impressions delivered.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):
Search engine optimisation is the process of tweaking your website’s visibility within search engines using natural or unpaid methods. There are two main methods of improving your websites SEO; Onsite SEO and Offsite SEO.
Onsite SEO: On site search engine optimisation is the process of improving your websites content to improve its search engine ranking, increase traffic and ultimately increase sales. There are a couple of main aspects of onsite SEO:
Code Tweaks: You should make sure that your website is well coded, and to a good standard. While this will not directly help your search engine ranking, it can prevent issues when search engines crawl your website and help improve your site speed, which is a known ranking factor. Using a HTML validator can make this process easier.
You should also ensure that each page has a title and META description, with unique, relevant keywords.
Content Tweaks: You should read over your content and ensure that each page has a good variety of relevant keywords within the text; these should match up with the keyword strategy used in the titles and descriptions. Main keywords should be included in the heading tags on the page, with the more important keywords being in the more prominent positions.
You should also ensure that all of your images have keyword rich and relevant alt tags, and that anchor tag text is relevant.
Navigation: You should make sure that your site is easy to navigate, by both search engines and users. You can use sitemaps and XML sitemaps to improve how easy it is to navigate your website. You should also ensure that you include internal links in your content, using good keyword rich text.
Offsite SEO: Offsite search engine optimisation involves increasing how much ‘respect’ search engines think your website has. The main way to improve this is to increase the number of other high quality websites linking to your website.
Link Building: Link building is one of the best ways to increase your search engine optimisation, and drive more traffic to your website. It involves getting other websites to include links to your website, this leads Google, and other search engines to see that you are a well-respected website.
You can submit your website to a whole host of other websites, but try to make sure that they are well ranked highly, and if possible are relevant to your field of business. So as web designers in Salisbury, we might submit our website to web design galleries.
Another thing you can do is to post on relevant forums, again using as an example, since we are web developers would post in web development forums, both local and national. We can include links in our signature (using good keywords for the text) and post helpful and relevant answers to people’s questions. Not only does this build incoming links, and increase traffic but I can also help to increase your reputation as a helpful resource.
You should also submit your website to local business directories - this can lead to an increase in business, but not just through your website, as they tend to include other relevant details like your phone number and address.
Social Media: Another very important thing to consider now is social networks; there are very few businesses which can’t reap the benefits of a good social media plan. The two things to do here are to include relevant sharing buttons on your website, to make it easier for people to share your website. The other thing to do is make sure you have a presence on social networks, for example we have a Facebook profile & group and Twitter account. Each member of staff also has a LinkedIn profile and Google+ account.
Conclusion:
Search engine marketing is one form of Internet marketing which involves increasing your visibility through the use of contextual advertising. Search engine optimisation is the process of improving how easy your site is for search engines to index by optimising your websites content, and improving how search engines see your site. SEM most often involves paying search engines, or other websites either per impression or per click, whereas SEO is most often “free”.
Some people consider SEM to be a term used to many different activities, including SEO. However we disagree and think that search engine marketing and search engine optimisation are slightly different. However they both have the same goal, increasing business.
We’d love to hear your opinions on this article. Let us know what you think on Facebook, Tweet us or send us an email.