How is SEO different form SEM?
How do search engines work?
Why should I optimize my site for both search engines and the people doing the search?
SEO.SEM.SEO.SEM.
They kind of sound the same, so it’s easy to think they really are the same.
But SEO (search engine optimization) works differently from SEM (search engine marketing).
In short, SEO means making small changes to your website that might help it naturally show up in people’s search results.
Meanwhile, SEM means paid search ads.
| SEO | SEM |
| Organic search results | Search results that are paid ads |
| Changing text on your website so it ranks higher in search results | Using your budget to bid on your ad’s search ranking |
SEM uses ads to get a higher position in paid search results. SEO user your website to get a position in organic or main search results.
Like we said earlier, SEO is about priming your website to be the best search engine result it can be. And that’s pretty crucial in the search game.
Think about this: 95% of searchers stick with the listings on the first page of results. So the closer your listing is to that page, the better.
To do this, you need to know how search works. We’ll use Google as an example, but there are obviously other search engines out there.
Google starts by crawling the web. It follows links from page to page, collecting as much of the web as possible.
It puts all these collected pages in an index, sorting them by content and other features.
When someone does a search, Google rank the results for them. It uses algorithms to figure out what the searcher is looking for and servers up the most relevant page form the index.
All that means you should make your site as attractive as possible to both a search engine and a searcher. It helps if you can step into the minds of both and see how they picture search results.
In general, there are 3 main pieces to a search result (though search engines may change these elements over time).
These 3 pieces include:
TITLE – the name of the webpage and the company.
URL – The web address of the site.
DESCRIPTION – A short snippet describing the webpage content.
Search engines will see this information as part of a code.
People will see the information in their search results page. It’ll be organized and color-coded with a clickable title and URL.
Because search engines and people see search results in different ways, you have to prep your site for them in different ways the good news in optimization is usually about tweaking and improving versus a complete site overhaul.
To get your site ready for search engine viewing, make sure it’s easily navigated and structured logically so it can be crawled and indexed accurately.
While optimizing for search engine crawling is about tweaking word and URLs, optimizing for searchers is about crafting for searchers is about crafting content.
Strong, engaging and useful content will probably affect your search status more than anything else.
People love to share great content with other through social media, blogs, emails, etc. All that organic word-of-mouth may help you get more visits and repeat visitors.
While not everyone can be a copy writer, you can follow a few guidelines to help you craft better content. First, you can make your text easy to read and follow.
Organize your content and keep it focused on the topic at hand. Dividing it into logical, short chunks helps people find what they’re looking for faster.
Also pay attention to your images. Write a short caption below each image and put vital info in the text rather than in the image.
Make sure to regularly add new content. It keeps your fans coming back and brings in new visitors.