The differences between SEO and SEM

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing is the process of gaining traffic or visibility on, search engines through organic and paid search. A Search Engine Marketing campaign may include the following elements:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Pay per click marketing, eg Google Adwords
• Paid inclusion and trusted feed programs

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation, also called SEO, organic or natural search focuses on search positioning and on-page optimisation as well as link building to get your website ranking on search engines. SEO is a long term strategy and will take longer to get results. Where your website appears on search results will take time, and will depend on industry competition and other factors that search crawlers take into consideration when ranking your site, eg keywords, unique content, meta tag descriptions, link building efforts etc.

What is PPC or paid search?
Pay-Per-Click marketing is when an advertiser bids on keywords associated with an advertisement in order to achieve a higher position on Search Engine Results Pages. PPC ads will appear in the sponsored links section for searches for that particular keyword. Your ad will usually appear on search results within a few hours (once you set up your ad and chose your keywords). PPC is flexible and allows you to adjust your spend depending on your budget and how much you want to spend on keywords. PPC campaigns can be activated or deactivated as you wish.

What is paid inclusion?

Paid inclusion is simply the practice of paying a Search Engine or a directory to add your website to its database immediately, rather than setting up that site so that it will be found by the Search Engine spiders on its own.

The pros and cons of SEO and SEM

Below are some of the key differences between SEO and SEM:

Cost:

• Organic search - it costs nothing to index your website on a search engine, but if you engage the services of an SEO company to assist with your rankings, you will need to pay a monthly fee
• Paid search - you are paying on a cost per click basis. Click prices will vary depending on the keywords chosen and how many people click on your ad each day

Control

• SEO - You can't control where your website will rank and it will fluctuate day to day
• SEM - you have control over where your paid ad appears on search engine results as this depends on how much you are willing to pay per click per keyword

Immediacy

• SEO campaigns take months to get your rankings up on search engines - it is a long term strategy to get your website ranking on search engines
• PPC campaigns are effective immediately

Segmentation

• SEO - your website will show to all markets in the geographic area
• PPC - you can target your ads to appear to a particular geographic area

We believe that using a combination of organic and paid search strategies will help your website perform better. Speak to our marketing consultants on 07 3040 3588 about our SEO and SEM services and how we can help your website rank on search engines.

7 Secrets to Getting More from Google AdWords

Everyone knows that Google's Adwords service, works something like an auction. For example, if your Google Adwords budget is $5,000 a year and you're competing against other larger companies in the same industry as you that have budgets ten times larger, they can bid much more than you on the keywords or phrases where you want your ads to appear. But you're not necessarily out of luck here. By raising your Quality Score, you could spend less, while still getting more customers to your site and compete with the other larger companies.

Google assigns each ad a Quality Score - a number between 1 and 10 that reflects whether Google thinks its users will like your ad and whether it is relevant to their search and the web page it links to. That number influences how high your ad will rank in an auction.

A higher Quality Score means you can outrank competitors with higher bids, and get much more bang for your advertising dollar.

Below are some tips on how you can raise your Quality Score.

1. Don't run ads users won't click on
Let's just try this ad and see if anyone clicks on it. After all, since it's pay-per-click, if they don't click on it, it won't cost you anything. That may seem like good logic, but it's a big mistake. Click through rates (CTR) is one of the most important elements of Quality Score. If an ad for your business runs and users don't click it, it can lower your Quality Score, thus costing you more to run the same ad or even other ads in future.

Google actually assigns Quality Scores to ad groups as well as advertising accounts, so a bad CTR can hurt you in many ways.

Constantly testing slightly different wording and picking the ads with better CTR will help you not only by bringing you more customers to your website, but also by lowering your cost per click.

2. Divide and conquer
Don't just lump all your keywords and phrases into one group of ads that sends people to the same page. What works best is if you divide your keywords into groups that relate to a common theme and then send users to a dedicated landing page. For example, if you are in the holiday accommodation business, instead of grouping 'Hotel,' 'Motel,' 'Affordable Accommodation' and 'Holiday Accommodation' into one ad group, it is best if you break it down. You would have one ad group that relates only to holiday accommodation and if someone who clicked on that ad, they would be directed to a landing page for your various room types. Another ad group would be set up for 'Motel' etc.

3. Get rid of keywords that aren't helping you
Avoid keywords that, although may fit your market, are too general. If your market is very competitive and your keywords used are too general, you may find that bigger companies might outbid you and your ads won't appear on Page 1 of Google. Home in on your market and be specific with the keywords if you want your Adwords campaign to be successful.

4. Add content to your website and landing page
Having useful content is one of the big things that will help your Quality Score. And don't copy and paste content from other sites onto your page as Google will penalise you for duplicate content. Your pages need  unique content, a variety of content, and frequently updated content. This will lead to a better user experience.

5. Give users choices
You may want your landing page to urge users toward a strong call to action, such as "Click here to learn more about our product" or "Sign up for our free e-newsletter." But Google wants users to have a wide array of choices, and having a menu of navigation options on your landing page will improve your Quality Score.

If users go to a landing page, they usually want more information. If they can't find the information they want, become frustrated and leave, this will be reflected in a poorer landing page Quality Score.

6. Tell about yourself
Does your site have prominent links to an "about us" (or "company") section? And does it offer a privacy policy where users are asked to enter information such as their e-mail addresses? If the answer to either question is no, your Quality Score will suffer.

Google recommends transparency. If users are going to give you their data, Google prefers to see a good privacy policy and a no-spam policy in place.

7. Make sure your pages load quickly
If a webpage loads too slowly, that's not a great user experience. Change hosting companies, or change the graphics on the page, so that the page loads quickly.

Site up time is critical. Even small down times that are otherwise unnoticeable are picked up by Google's automatic quality checks. If Google checks a landing page and it's down, by definition it's not relevant and there's a high probability of a Quality Score penalty.

To keep this from happening to you, consider using a site monitoring service, or if necessary, change your hosting provider.

TA Fastrack can assist you with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and  Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services. To find out more, visit www.tafastrack.com.au or call 07 3040 3588 for more information.