As a decision maker in your organization, it's important to know.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a preparatory process. It prepares your website for proper search engine indexing on Google, Bing and others. “Indexing” means taking inventory of your website’s content, structure, usability, and accessibility to determine relevance to online searches. If your website is effectively optimized using “best practices” specified by search engines, it will be considered relevant to keyword searches for its content. The more accessible, interactive, and user-friendly the site is, the higher ranking you will have on search engines. SEO involves analyzing all of these elements and adjusting your website for more favorable organic search engine placement.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a promotional process. It involves driving visitor traffic to your website. It’s done via “organic” methods or “subscribed” methods (or both). Organic SEM creates relevant content linking to your website and resulting in better indexing by search engines. Subscribed SEM involves paying for traffic via targeted ads for your audience. Each method has its merits and its drawbacks, and your unique marketing strategy depends on a combination of demographics, location, market niche, competitor analysis and more.
SEO and SEM go hand-in-hand. Marketing (promoting) a poorly optimized website yields poor results. It also costs more long-term due to inefficiencies and higher advertising fees based on content relevance. On the flip side, optimizing a website but not promoting it is ineffective. There is simply too much competition to get found for your keywords, so inaction results in a website nobody sees, like a billboard facing away from traffic.
If you want to get found on the web, your SEO and SEM efforts should produce a Return on Investment (ROI) that liquidates their costs. You need a custom plan based on a strategy specific to your needs and budget. And THAT means you need an Internet marketing company that has the skills and experience to know what they’re doing. Reach out to us today and we will get the job done RIGHT!
Get an SEO Audit
What is an SEO Audit? It’s “cheap insurance”. It’s a second opinion. It’s validation that your optimization (and marketing) efforts are properly targeted to work effectively.
If your website has not been optimized, an SEO audit reveals what needs to be addressed. If your website has been optimized, our SEO audit report confirms the job was done correctly and cites where there’s room for improvement.
An SEO Audit costs a fraction of initial (and ongoing) SEO and SEM expenses. It’s a worthwhile investment for peace-of-mind and validates your SEO & SEM. You receive a detailed report objectively explaining our findings in plain English. Then you can decide whether to have your current marketing team make any necessary changes or find another provider.
For more information about why an SEO audit is important, be sure to read about SEO fraud and how to protect your business from getting exploited.
