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What’s the Difference Between SEO and SEM?

While search engine optimization deals with how a website performs in organic web searches, search engine marketing is about the paid inclusion of your keywords on search engine result pages. Both, SEO and SEM have their strong advantages and in combination are a very strong asset in your Digital Marketing Mix. While SEO takes time and effort but then sends visitors to your website free of charge, SEM allows you to be visible for highly competitive searches immediately but needs an ongoing advertizing budget to be run successfully. Pinpoint Media Design is here to help you set up your SEO and SEM campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO helps your website getting found in the organic search results

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means optimizing your own web pages so that they rank well on the search result pages (SERPs) of the major search engines for given predetermined keywords. Each page can only be optimized for a small amount of keywords. Therefore different pages within a website are optimized for different search terms.

On-site SEO

On-site SEO is the science (and sometimes art) of preparing a web page for a set of search terms. The search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, are very clear about what they consider good on-site Search Engine Optimization. For them, the user experience is most important. A quality website needs to be built with top user experience in mind: Accessibility, availability, quality of content, ease of use. All those are criteria by which your website will be judged in the eyes of the search engines. While keyword research is still very important to figure out what your potential customers will punch into a search engine to find your goods or services, keyword stuffing and other “tweaks” of the 1990s are totally out. Natural flow is the law of search engine land these days. Pinpoint Media Design can help you with:

  • Proper SEO analysis and reports
  • Keyword research
  • Technical optimization of your website
  • Help with proper, relevant content creation
  • Monitoring and progress reports
  • Adjustments and re-evaluation

Off-site SEO

Off-site SEO deals with everything outside the realm of the website that has an influence on how the website ranks in the search engines. Incoming links are seen by the search engines as a vote for your website. One big problem is that Google and other search engines have been cracking down on bad linking practices. People just went and bought themselves links on link farms and spam blogs in the hopes this would increase their rankings. Well, for a while it unfortunately did work, but now Google has been coming down hard on all “unnatural linking”. Your incoming links are expected to grow organically over time, from quality websites. If you have lots of links from “bad neighbourhoods” it is only a question of time when you will be hit with a punishing drop in your rankings. Many unfortunate website owners have lost all their search engine positions basically overnight. The new off-site Search Engine Optimization puts a much stronger emphasis on:

  • Natural link building
  • Organic growth of incoming links
  • Provide quality content to attract links
  • No link farms and link networks
  • No paid links
  • Social media integration

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM helps your website to get found through paid keyword advertising on search engines.

Search Engine Marketing is about getting your website’s visibility boosted on the search engine result pages (SERPS) by running paid ads for a range of targeted keywords. The most famous ad program of this kind is Google Ad Words, allowing you to manage your keyword ad campaigns online.

Google AdWords Campaigns

As one can imagine, competition for high yielding, competitive industry specific keywords can be very high. As the first page on Google for organic search often times is already taken up by the big players who have the resources for intensive content creation and search engine optimization measures, one other way to get seen is by booking your keywords and paying for them. Google is all about the quality of search and for that reason you even have to optimize your landing pages for the keywords you are going after when paying for these keywords. In other words: You can buy the keyword “dogs” when your landing page sells “cats”. Google AdWord campaigns can get costly when you do not pay attention to the details of which there are plenty. You have to set a budget and maximum bids per keyword so that you don’t get jacked up by comeptitors and drained out of your funds quickly.

Setting up your Google AdWord Account:

  • Keyword research
  • Campaign budgeting
  • Optimizing the landing pages for your keywords
  • Lead tracking
  • Return on Investment reports
  • A – B performance tests
  • Monthly reporting and strategic planning sessions

Talk to Us

Search engine marketing is all about proper keyword research, budgeting, onsite-optimization, campaign monitoring and reporting. The great advantage of SEM over SEO is that you can your business, product or service out there and promoted very quickly, even if your website is new and the competition for organic search results fierce. Contact us now for a free consultation.

Search Engine Optimization

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