What is SEO and SEM? What is the difference between the two?

SEO, HTML, PHP, ASP, XHTML, SEM….the list goes on of acronyms in this industry. It can be exhausting to remember them all and keep them straight! What I want to break down for you today is SEO and SEM. These are two acronyms that you as a business owner probably hear from day to day and are confused as hell about.

We will start with SEO. The acronym SEO translates to Search Engine Optimization. It’s a mouthful (hence the acronym), say it again, Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your “organic” search engine results. Now you are wondering what “organic” means. Look at the image below to help me better explain this:

As you can see I pointed out the organic results that came up in Google when I typed in shoes. The first three websites in the image that come up in the pink shaded box, and off to the right are considered “sponsored links,” which I will explain later. For now, we are talking about the organic results. The organic results are what the search engine finds MOST RELEVANT to what you typed in the search box. This means you will probably find EXACTLY what you were looking for in the organic results.

How do you get to be on the first page in Google for the organic results? Well, it all depends on how search engine friendly your website is. There are several elements that go into making your website more search engine friendly. First and foremost it is important to make sure your website is on a good platform (i.e. PHP or My SQL), you want your website to be database driven. If your website was built in programs that create ASP driven websites there is a good chance that no matter how much money you spend on optimizing your website, in the long run it probably just won’t hold up in search engines. Now I know I threw around a lot of terms you aren’t familiar with, we will discuss them another day, but now you at least know enough to make you dangerous.

Other tactics that make your website search engine friendly is having your Title Tags and H1 tags match, as well as having keywords and your target market in them. You can see your title tag by looking at the very top of your browser and seeing what it says, chances are it says “home (or whichever page you are on).” Your H1 tag is the first header line in the content of your website. Relative content is also very important to have within your website. Put articles into your website that has to do with your business and/or industry. I know some people think it is best to have very little text on your website because people won’t read it, which is true most people won’t sit there and read all the text on your website, but this is for the search engines to read! Also you want to increase your reciprocal link network, which has to do with the amount of websites linking back to you and those websites importance level. Those are just a few tactics...

Now that you absorbed all the information we will move on to SEM. The acronym SEM translates to Search Engine Marketing. Search engine marketing is the act of paying for your search engine listings. To clarify, that means paying for the listing itself (the ones in the sponsored links area), not paying someone to do SEO for you.

When I type in shoes, companies such as Macy’s and Zappos, pay money every time you click on one of their sponsored links, even if you don’t buy anything! Sounds kind of risky huh?! If you are a small business it is very difficult to compete with such large companies as these because, their monthly budget to spend on SEO is going to be much smaller than yours. Now this is just one example of paid marketing on the web, the one that most people are familiar with. There are other types of web marketing out there!

SEO or SEM? Which is better? Well, I think you can tell that I am a little more biased towards SEO. I think that you get a better ROI (Return on Investment). However, I will not say SEO is always the best way to go. I take that back, your website should be optimized even if you are going to do SEM. This way any money you are investing into SEM is overall helping the ranking of your website. For a small local business though, usually SEO is the best route for them. Sometimes both. Still confused? Ask away.