SEO / SEM

SE(O/M)?

Whoa wait a minute! SEO? SEM?

We’re going to discuss two primary aspects of internet advertising at once. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is often referred to as “organic” where SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is a more direct approach to generating more traffic to a website. Basically SEO involves increasing traffic by getting higher visibility on usual search engine and directory websites and mobile applications, almost always utilizing completely free listings. SEM on the other hand takes a direct approach, online the same resources are used but paid listings can be placed into designated areas of participating websites and mobile applications.

Are you wondering, “How much does SEO cost?” or “How much does SEM cost?”

You may be surprised by the answer. Of course, much like any service, the cost varies from provider to provider. In general a reliable service provider charges around $1500 per month minimum with packages ranging up from there, the sky is the limit. Even still SEO is a new field with many changes sweeping the market simultaneously, what you need is an organization that will work with you on your level, and on the level. We hear that many supposed SEO service providers are polluting the market with scams, fraud, and deceit. This is unfortunately and are sympathetic for any loss, however we feel there is no reason to allow risk to become a part of our business. There is one simple way to tell if anyone is honest and genuine, ask them to explain what they do to you: If you can’t understand exactly what they intend to do, why they intend to do it, how long they intend for it to take them to do it, where they intend to do it, and how they intend to do it… Perhaps they aren’t ready to. At the very least we feel that relationships are an important part of contract work, if we can’t find a connection we’re not going to force it.

Paid listings on the other hand can cost far less to start, generally costs are measured by PPC or Price Per Click. Essentially your links are displayed in a variety of formats, and each time a user clicks the link a certain fee is paid to the advertising network (Google AdWords, Facebook, etc.) with the prices ranging from sometimes less than 1¢ per click, to over $10 or $20 per click. Many other offerings are available as well; basically you can pay some relatively small fee for whatever the action you are looking for: If you want the phone to ring you can pay for phone call leads in a variety of ways. Today you can even find networks offering payment plans using a PPA or Pay Per Action model, essentially a commission only based advertising channel with varying levels of lead qualification.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

are two very important aspects of online sales using a website e-commerce or lead generation tool. You need traffic on your site, and especially want the traffic that is most likely to produce the desired result (e.g. purchase your product/service). Many are unaware of this, but traffic from search engines are far more likely to buy, being pre-qualified by the search engine to be a visitor of your type. This is why SEO and SEM are so very important, but what exactly are they? There is some confusion here, even among professionals and organizations providing services under these titles. The reason for this is simple, both are new concepts, names really for a wide set of practices created to achieve the goal of delivering more, and better, traffic to a given site. The idea of SEM is farm more simple to understand given it’s descriptive acronym; SEO on the other hand, with the reference to optimization, seems to lead to confusion about which search engine and more. Understandable; Most websites have their own search feature, and this technically is just another more simple search engine powering it, however this has nothing to do with SEO at the root of it.

Currently there are two main definitions being used for these terms. In most larger enterprise environments the newer term SEM has been adopted as the conventional description for the use of paid search listings on a third-party search engine like Google. This makes sense, the term is new and it’s too hard to stop using the old SEO term (old for web developers and online marketing gurus) when referring to more advanced tasks like tracking spiders, validating markup, speeding up servers, experimenting with content placement, etc. Many SEO providers, subscribers, and commentators are using the new SEM to refer to everything SEO has been used for and more.

Since the last thing a complicated subject like SEO needs is YAA (yet another acronym) and for that and many other reasons we choose to use the more standardized definition of SEM, and feel that it is a sibling member of SEO in the family of online marketing practices. Many other pieces are very important as well in this field, however let’s stay focused on SEO and SEM and take a look at what is involved in accomplishing these tasks and reaping rewards from them.

SEO is generally described as the practice of making your site more attractive to a one or more third-party search engines. What this means is first learning the algorithmic systems and processes used by each search engine, and then taking the necessary actions to improve the value of each variable as seen by the spiders (small programs constantly monitoring sites listed, on behalf of the search engine). The list of variables is long, and certain ones are more important that others: This simple beginning to SEO is a necessary primer that cannot be skipped, and any SEO firm that cannot name and list in order of importance all of these variables is extremely lacking. This list is also constantly changed, and of course differs for every search engine so be sure that this list is version tracked and references credible sources.

Before you get to checking on these algorithms and find out how vastly complex this process can be (and the first paradox we’ll talk about later) we would like to offer our more simple and real-world explanation of SEO. To preface, our focus is not just on performing SEO/SEM tasks and hopefully receiving an increase  in sales; Our online sales focus is on discovering and implementing the best SEO and SEM processes using algorithmic productivity determination techniques. To do this you must understand the true goal of SEO: To make your site more attractive to the visitors you are looking for. Do this and your goal is actually the same as the search engine company, by skipping the middle man you more directly touch the hearts of your audience. Looking more attractive to a search engine can and will get you more hits and sales, but this should not be your core focus. Take a hint from the leaders and giants, remember that you can be an asset to the search engine just as much as the search engine can be an asset to you and you will do very well in both SEO and business.

So you’ve got a site, and maybe you’ve even been doing some basic SEO. You’ve listed your site in the big three search engines and you’ve verified your domain is listed. Take a look over our process list below for an idea of where you should be going now:

  • Check that robots are not generating errors when visiting your site.
  • Validate your sites pages, correct errors.
  • Customize Title and Description of listings, test different text to discover more effective copy.
  • Use keyword analysis tool, remove overused words, add references to select keywords to pages on the top if possible.
  • Check for and get more inbound links, learn how inbound links work (some are not counted by search engines), consider the many ways to go about this…
    • Directory websites: We do not recommend using paid directory websites, use websites where people go to find resources and where the system allows for a free listing with a search engine followed link.
    • Associates/partners/clients/etc.
    • Forums: Become part of discussions that involve your focus, it’s going to teach you something often, and will lead to connections and opportunities in many forms.
    • Blogs: Simply adding comments doesn’t work, you need to develop relationships with bloggers with related interests. You may at some point work up an opportunity worth directly sharing with them, however stick to simply being a reference point for them and focus on delivering a great resource worth sharing.
  • Constantly analyze page statistics to discover areas of success and areas needing improvement.
  • Expand footprint wherever possible; determine if you have the resources needed to use at least 50% of a given resource of interest, and continue to keep it updated. Start with connected software, if you use MailChimp and they offer connection with a resource you are not using, add it to the potentials list. Here is our basic starter potential list that we start every client off with:
    • Google
      • Search
      • Places
      • Webmaster
      • Analytics
      • Website Optimizer
    • Bing
      • Search
      • Webmaster
    • Yahoo!
    • Groupon
    • Yelp
    • Facebook
      • Pages
      • Forums
      • Groups
      • Events
    • Twitter
      • Account
      • Lists
    • MySpace
    • Flickr
    • Digg
    • StumbleUpon
    • FeedBurner
    • YouTube
    • TalkShoe