SEO vs SEM
As you become more immersed in the world of digital marketing, you will often hear people talking about “search marketing”. Search marketing is a way for your enterprise to obtain traffic through paid and unpaid efforts, which we call SEM and SEO.
What is search engine optimization?
SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a way to get free (organic) traffic from search results of search engines.All large search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, have search results, ranking pages and content according to what search engines think is most useful, relevant and valuable to users. You can’t pay search engines to get your pages to rank high in organic search results – you have to get it through search engine optimization.
If you can do this, search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most cost-effective methods for long-term online marketing business. If you can top the list of keywords that bring 1000 visitors to your website every month (and you can manage to stay at the top of the list), imagine the possibility that you can top the list for other popular search keywords!
To properly conduct SEO, you usually need to pay attention to three pillars:
Onsite SEO: Creating valuable, useful and optimised content that helps search engines to see your website as a valuable source that people want to find.
Technical SEO: Paying attention to site speed, mobile friendliness and linking structure to ensure your site is as crawlable and indexable as possible.
Offsite SEO: Attracting high-quality backlinks (links from other people’s site back to yours) to build your website’s reputation and authority. Great content is the driving factor for attracting natural links to your site.
Start with these on-site SEO tips to improve your ranking in Google:
Brainstorm potential keywords related to your business and services. You can first write down what you do, what services you provide, and where you serve.
Mix and match these keywords, and add some variants to keyword research tools (such as ubersuggest) to understand how many people are searching for these keywords every month.
Determine the priority of keywords according to the keywords that you think potential customers use when looking for the products or services you provide and the keywords that receive the most searches every month. Create content around these keywords, but make sure the content is engaging, well formed, and easy to read.
What is SEM?
SEM stands for search engine marketing. Unlike SEO, it is mainly a process of obtaining traffic by buying advertising points on search engines. SEM is often referred to as paid advertising, pay per click or “paid search”
In general, the most popular paid search platform used by search marketers is Google AdWords, but “paid search” as an umbrella term can also refer to advertising on major social networks such as Facebook or youtube, or paid promotion on content distribution platforms such as outbrain or taboola.
A simple example is that when you run a search on Google, you see up to four results at the top of the page, marked with a small “advertisement” sign. These are the results of paid search. If you click on one of the links, the company will pay Google for the click.
Use these techniques to target potential customers through SEM.
The customer positioning of paid advertising becomes more and more complex the next day, and you will be shocked by the effect that can be achieved with a few simple clicks. Because Google knows a lot about its audience through their location, search, online behavior and basic demographics, you can use this knowledge to ensure that your ads reach people who are most likely to be interested in your business.
Suppose you are a mechanic in Newtown, Sydney, and you want to develop your business. Here are some convenient options for using SEM.
Position leads by location. Push advertisements to local people in Newtown to let them know your business, or push advertisements to people in Sydney’s inner and western regions to attract more people’s attention.
Targeting potential customers through behavior: here are a few things you can do. You can re market to people who have visited your website. Maybe they have browsed it, but they were too busy to inquire at that time, so you can promote it to them through advertisements to arouse their memory.
You can also create audience segments based on the likes and dislikes of potential customers. For example, as a mechanic, you can create a market segment based on your personal interest in “cars” + “Newton”, or promote a special introductory offer to the audience segment that likes your competitors.
Why should SEO and SEM be combined?
The impact of SEM is immediate, while the impact of SEO may take several months. You can jump in and connect directly with your audience. This is especially good, if you are selling, have a special offer, or want to reach a very specific market, there is no time for search engine optimization. You can