SEM:

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPS). SEM methods include paid placements, contextual advertising and paid inclusion. It refers mainly to the text advertisements or sponsored listings, which appear on the top or the right hand side of search engine results pages. These advertising links are purchased mainly from Google Ad Words or Yahoo.

Search Marketing advertisements, (formerly known as Overture) or MSN (Live Search) are also called Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. This means you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. The ranking sequence is determined by a variety of factors such as bids CTR (Click through Rate), keyword relevancy to the landing page, and competition for a specific keyword. In many instances the top 2 rankings are not necessarily the best positions, while being ranked between 3 and 5 is the optimal position for lead conversions.

SEM is a very controllable form of marketing, in the sense you have complete control over the budget, keywords and websites you wish to target. However, it must be managed closely or you can easily be outbid and spend your entire budget on ineffective keywords that won’t convert.

We periodically find that some customers base their entire strategy on outbidding their competitors in order to increase the value of the words. We don’t recommend this as it is considered to be a black hat tactic and in the case of keywords such as car models and make, you often end up competing against OEMs and local competitors.

SEM also includes any banner advertising or ad placement advertising that is shown on the right panel of the search results. Google offers a full banner advertising service; however, they limit the call to actions.

SEO:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to improving a website’s natural and organic ranking in the search engine ranking pages. This method of achieving high ranking often takes time, usually 60-90 days for the search engines to find you, and is based on 2 main components.
• On-page optimization includes factors such as: keyword density, title tag optimization, keyword rich content meta tags, sitemaps, link structure, index ability of the web page and much more.
• Off-page optimization includes the inbound links, the quality of the site that links to your website, relevancy of sites that link to you, and keywords in the anchor texts.
At the end of the day which method is the best? It really depends on your budget, time, and resources. SEM’s short term advantage is that you can get instant qualified traffic to your website. The amount of traffic you want is dependent on the money you want to spend.

Keep in mind that you will run the risk of burning through your marketing budget very fast and have very low conversion rates if you do not closely research and optimize your keywords, and properly optimize your ads as well as the landing pages from where you direct traffic in Google.

SEO on the other hand is a long-term approach and uses many best practices. The best time to think about SEO is when you start building the website. The website architecture is key to SEO, including error pages, redirects, and even website coding. Original content, that is relevant and optimized and a solid “link-building” campaign will result in a website with a good ranking. SEO requires time and patience as well as a commitment to continually improve.

Lastly, be wary of anyone who offers you a guarantee a #1 Ranking. Contact us to learn more about how SEO works and how it can help you get better results without burning through your entire marketing budget.

Optimizing Website Graphics and Images:

So much has been said about content you’d think content was the only important part of website optimization. But that would simply not be true. Each and every image you use on your site should be optimized for Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). When using an image or graphic file on a website, you must be sure to name the file correctly. Naming an image or graphic correctly can be crucial when a site is scanned or ‘crawled’ by search engines. For example, if you have a site dedicated to Ferrari’s, you wouldn’t want an image on the site to be vaguely called ‘car.jpg’, instead, giving it a proper name will add relevancy and credibility to what the specific page or website site is about. The “alt tag” or alt attribute is a simple code you can add to your image/graphic and is meant to be another option for non-visual browsers when they come across images. This means that the text is used when the image is not visible on the page. Instead, the alternative text or tag is what’s read. In the article, “Describing Your Images for Better Web Accessibility”, Jennifer Kyrnin from About.com lists a few tips on how to successfully use “alt” attributes or tags:
• Be Brief - some browsers will break if the alt text is too long.
• Be Clear - don't be so brief that the context is confused.
• Be Contextual - don't describe the image if it's meant to be viewed in context.

Don't display your site's inner workings just describe the image with useful information.

Don't use it only for search engine optimization - Many websites developers think that if they use “alt” text as an SEO tool, they can "fool" the search engines by using a keyword on the alt tag that is not relevant. However, this can backfire. Because if the search engine decides you are trying to fake your results, your website will be completely removed from the search engine results.
XHTML Title Attributes is another key factor that needs to be added to the different elements on your website such as images/graphics, links, forms, etc. This is a very versatile way to provide more information to visitors or readers on your site. To give you a better example of what this means, if you view sites in modern browsers and hover over images/graphics or links, you’ll see a short title or description come up in a small box. This is a very advantageous way to help optimize your site or specific web page as this will also help that particular page or section of the site become more accessible in search results or page ranking.

If the images or graphics on your current website are not optimized, you are missing out on a very valuable component of Search Engine Optimization.