When you want your website to show up higher in search results, you’ll hear about SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing). What’s the difference between SEO and SEM? And which one should you pay attention to for your business success
What is SEO and how does it work?
SEO means making your website better so it shows up higher on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A good SEO plan can bring more people to your site without paying. It’s about figuring out the words people use to look for your services. For example, a dental clinic in Raleigh wants to be found when people search for ‘Dental Clinic in Raleigh’ or specific services like ‘Teeth Whitening in Raleigh’
Making your website better for these words helps you show up first when people look for services you offer on Google. It brings free visitors to your site without needing to pay for ads. Especially if you’re new, it’s a good way to get people to visit your site for free. Even for bigger companies, SEO is great to keep getting more visitors all the time.
On-Page SEO Strategies
“There are lots of things to do to make a website rank well on Google. Google tries to give the best content for what people search for. That’s why it’s a popular search engine. Your website’s job is to show Google that it’s the best place for the words you want to be known for.
Here are just a few elements of a solid on-page optimization strategy:
- Keyword relevant H1 and H2 texts
- Keyword friendly URL
- Development of keyword-rich content
- Create regular, fresh content
- Optimize images by including keywords in their names and alt
descriptions - Internal linking to other meaningful content on your website
- External links to other authoritative websites
- Social media integration with your other digital properties
- Filling out all metadata
- Scheme Award
- Creating a clear call to action
- Ensuring fast page loading speed
- Be mobile friendly
To get the best results from your SEO work, you need to think about all these things.
Off-page SEO strategies
There are several ways to show Google and potential customers that your website and business are important, reliable, and trustworthy. How can you do that?
- Get your business website listed in major digital and local directories
- Build meaningful social media
- Get quality reviews from customers
All of this tells Google how good your website is and can make it show up higher. Make sure to use these things in a good strategy to make your website even better:
- Create your free Google Business listing
- Develop a high-quality backlink profile
- Engage in guest posting to build your presence on other websites
- Point authoritative websites to your website
- Collect quality reviews for your business, preferably on Google, Facebook and Yelp.
Remembering and using all these plans can really help you with your SEO work.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is about making sure Google and other search engines can read and list all your website pages. It’s about making sure your pages load fast and your website is set up the right way.
What is SEM and how does it work?
Now that we understand SEO, let’s talk about SEM.
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. SEM uses SEO and also paid search, often called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.
Search Engine Marketing covers everything related to search engine optimization, as SEO is just one part of a complete SEM plan. SEM also involves Social Media Marketing (SMM), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), and aspects like reputation management.
However, when people usually mention SEM, they’re mainly talking about paid search, digital ads, and PPC. A well-planned paid search ad campaign can significantly boost your website visitors and keep you competitive.
Types of Pay Per Click or Digital Advertising
- Google AdSense
- Facebook ads and post boosting
- Affiliate links
- Digital advertising in high-traffic web publications or media
How paid search and SEO work together
Using SEO and SEM together can really help your business.
SEO is a vital part of getting free traffic from Google, but it takes time to create enough content to make your website show up on Google. SEO is a long-term plan that improves as your business gets more links, good reviews from happy customers, and adds more pages and blog posts
If you want quick results, SEM is the way to go. You pay for specific keywords, and your website gets a better chance to show up on top of Google. Paid search, like PPC with AdSense, is focused. So, the visitors from PPC ads are more likely to become customers. When you get more visitors and customers, you can also get good reviews and links to your content, which helps with SEO.
Likewise, using paid ads and promoting posts on Facebook can make your business more visible on social media. This attracts more followers. Having more followers sets the base for more people clicking and engaging naturally in the future.
In this way, SEO and PPC can team up to make your marketing plans even better!
