What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization commonly referred to as SEO, is the process of editing a website to maximize its visibility online. It ensures that when someone searches for your business, your website shows up. These search results are completely organic, meaning that they are not paid ads. This is why SEO is so important and sought after. It is one of the only ways to increase website traffic without paying for advertising.
To make things simpler, SEO can be split into two categories: On-page and Off-page. On-page SEO optimizes web pages in order to have more relevant web traffic and rank higher with search engines. This includes things you can control like site speed and keyword optimization. Off-page SEO improves customers’ and search engines’ perception of the website’s quality, and includes link-building and social media. This side of SEO tells the search engine that your website (and your business) is legitimate and important.
Each search engine crawls websites and indexes their content in order to match what a user is searching for. To improve your website’s relevancy, titles and keywords should be kept in mind- What are potential customers searching for when trying to find a solution that your business can fill? Create headings, titles, and HTML links as if you were a customer searching for one of your products. If you shape your website to the search engine’s algorithm, it is much more likely that your page will be higher in search results.
Factors of an SEO-Friendly website:
The most important part of building an SEO-friendly website is having quality content. Using keywords in headers and writing copy with good readability allows crawlers to index your website efficiently. If your site has well-written code, fast site loading speed, high-quality copy, good website structure, quality links, and social media attention, you’re almost good to go with SEO.
Another important factor of SEO is link-building. The higher the volume and quality of links to your website, the more the site’s ranking will increase on search engines. Google, Bing, and Yahoo all find new and recently updated pages through external links from other websites, and send “crawlers” to go through the links that lead to new websites. These external links include any hyperlink that leads off of your website and onto another. However, internal links are just as important, and include hyperlinks that lead from one page of your website to another. The more internal and external links on your website, the higher your website’s priority and ranking will be in search results.
SEM, on the other hand….
Is paid advertising (Search Engine Marketing) on search engines which causes a website to be the very first link in a search. SEM begins as a marketing campaign that is targeting specific search results. The more common the search, the more expensive advertising space will be. SEM can include search ads, shopping ads, display ads, etc.
SEM is the way to go if you want to see website traffic explode quickly. You can take complete control over your ads and choose when to show them, what location to show them, and what search results to show them under. SEM is worth the money because it gives flexibility and immediate results.
The Difference?
When it boils down to definition, SEO is the process of increasing unpaid, organic search results whereas SEM is increasing website traffic through paid ads. SEO takes a long time and lots of hard work to show results in website traffic whereas SEM is almost instant. However, investing in SEM won’t help a business reach their full potential without good quality content and basic, on-page search engine optimization.
How does SEO and SEM affect your web traffic and online brand reputation?
Both SEO and SEM allow your business to be easily found. The quicker and easier customers can get to your website, the more traffic will come through. The reputation of your business can also benefit greatly from these marketing tactics because if search engines like Google put your website on top of organic searches, it shows the customer that your organization is trustworthy and legitimate.
Why you should care about SEO/SEM
Hundreds of thousands of searches are conducted every day and search engines must sort your site by relevance. If you build your website to play along with search engine algorithms, you can use it to your advantage and have an uptick in website traffic by using SEO, or invest in SEM and be first on relevant searches. Both methods are effective in increasing relevant website traffic which means more potential customers for your business.
How Country Fried Creative can help
We specialize in SEO and SEM so you don’t have to. Our technical and creative staff can optimize your site by creating relevant copy, improving your site speed, and restructuring your data! Our Country Fried experts can make your business stand out on every search engine and improve your website traffic. Look for the Contact Us button on our website and let’s improve your site together!
Digital marketing is the process of reaching new and existing customers through online tools. It is a blanket word for the many sub-categories of internet marketing listed above.
