Now they sound similar, and many people get them confused (it’s easy to do), so before we get properly into the article lets define what we mean by the terms SEO and SEM.
SEO – Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. (Wikipedia).
SEM – Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. (Wikipedia).
So as you can see, SEO isn’t the be all and end all of your online marketing strategy – or if it is, it shouldn’t be! SEO comprises a part of SEM – it isn’t the whole of SEM.
So, to get back to basic terms, SEO is the tweaking you do to your pages to hopefully increase your performance in SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages). SEM is more your commercial and paid advertising that you can get using services such as Google Adwords.
So, we need to carry on doing our SEO, and if you’re running a personal site, that might be enough to hit the goals and targets you’ve set yourself with regards to visitor numbers and exposure. But if you’re a business, you really need to consider the paid advertising SEM side of things.
However, remember, we said money isn’t everything – putting £10 cost per click (CPC) doesn’t just necessarily put you at the top of the ads on the first page. Remember – quality!! For new advertisers we’d (and Google themselves) recommend setting the ‘auto’ option for your CPC. Google will change your CPC to try and get you an optimum position – and don’t worry, they won’t just hike the price so you spend more money! Every time someone searches for any of the keywords you have specified you go into a ‘virtual auction’ with other people bidding on the same keywords (imagine, a bit like eBay). The ‘winner’ of this auction is on top, and so on. You can set maximum budgets so that Adwords doesn’t spend money you don’t want it to!
Some directories Google consider more ‘link farm’ than directory. For example, if a ‘directory’ is just a big long list of links, with no particular order or sorting, Google tends to consider this more of a ‘link farm’ than a directory – and thus, being listed there doesn’t really help at all. There’s been an explosion in directories in the past which means there are literally thousands available to choose from now. There are some fairly popular directories – which seem to have at least some benefit for websites – such as DMOZ (free), Yahoo! Web Directory (paid, approximately £200 / year) and Scoot (both free and paid listings available). With regards to directories, it’s important to choose wisely. Don’t waste your time by submitting to any and all directories – some, in fact quite a lot, won’t warrant the investment of your time. Choose your directories wisely, like the ones we previously mentioned and other popular and well respected directories. Also, if there are any directories catering for your particular ‘niche’ or business area, then these can definitely be useful to be listed in.
Over the past couple of years, Google has got a bit fed up with some directories who it believes ‘doesn’t make the grade’. Although this seems to be a manual process, Google from time to time do seem to penalise certain directories in its SERP’s and in some cases, purge them completely from their index. This of course, means being linked to from them doesn’t provide as much or any benefit – apart from possible passing trade through that particular directory – which is likely to be a lot lower if they’re deranked or penalised by Google.
So, there you have it, a few tips to get your Search Engine Marketing off to a good start. There’s many interesting articles to read on the Internet regarding this topic – and if you’re serious about business, you’ll definitely want to do some reading.
Image: Dernard Vincente.