Author: Admin

Not Posting Images

Are you posting images to your social media accounts? If not, you are missing out on one of the easiest ways to boost engagement. According to a study of 5,000 Facebook pages conducted by SocialBakers, a whopping 93% of the most engaging posts were photos, followed by status updates with 3%, and both links and videos with 2%.

Users Don’t Trust You

You can’t expect people to share your social media posts if they don’t trust your brand. A 2011 study conducted by Edelman Trust Barometer found that just over half of global Internet users (56%) trust brands to “do the right thing.” When consumers don’t trust a brand, they will naturally feel hesitant to purchase its products or services, and share its social media content.

So, how can you create greater trust with your target audience? Be genuine when communicating with customers and potential customers, speaking to them as if they were a friend and not just another a professional acquaintance. This, combined with a consistent, high-quality service, will go a long ways in capturing users’ trust.

Your Posts Aren’t Interesting

When was the last time that you ‘liked’ or shared a boring post on Facebook? The fact is that 99% of social media users will give boring posts the cold shoulder, neglecting to engage with them in any sort of way. If you want users to share your content, you need to focus on interesting, engaging content that really speaks to your target demographic. Posting content such as this will create a viral effect in which users share it with their friends and family, many of whom then share it with their friends and family — and the cycle repeats.

Here are some tips on how to create engaging social media content:

• While photos are the most engaging type of social media content, you should diversify your content with links, text and video.
• Controversial, heartwarming and humorous posts tend to receive a high level of user engagement on social media.
• Post content about topics that are currently trending.
• Identify the demographic of your social media followers and post content that’s relevant to them.
• Avoid posting content that’s dry, dull and/or lacks excitement.
• Use #hashtags so users can find your posts more easily.

Infrequent Posting

Brands that don’t post new content to their social media accounts on a regular basis will suffer from lower levels of user engagement, and subsequently fewer shares. According to BufferApp, brands should publish two Facebook posts per day. Keep in mind that going beyond this amount results in diminishing returns, meaning you won’t receive the same positive benefits. Stick with two posts per day for Facebook, three posts per day for Twitter, and three posts per day for Google+.

Have any other social media marketing tips that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!

We all know that we should be spending more time optimising our Google Ads campaigns to help get the maximum return from investment but for most advertisers the reality is that you just don’t have the time to dedicate to this task. Luckily for you in this article we will look at how you can use Google Ads scripts to improve performance. From broken URLs and low quality scores to poor performing keywords and wasted advertising spend, Google Ads scripts can help you streamline your PPC campaign and supercharge performance.

Getting started with scripts

Worried that you need to learn a programming language in order to start using scripts? Don’t be. There are some fantastic free Google Ads scripts that are simple to use and only need a few simple edits to get them working for you. No coding knowledge is needed and as you get more familiar with scripts, you’ll be able to use them for more and more repetitive tasks to save you time.
Setting up your first script

When it comes to running your first script it really couldn’t be easier to do by following the instructions below:

1. Sign into your Google Ads account
2. Click the Tools icon and go to Scripts under BULK ACTIONS
3. Press the + icon to add your first script
4. Copy and paste the following code into the editor area:

function main() {
  var keywords = AdsApp.keywords()
      .orderBy("Impressions DESC")
      .forDateRange("YESTERDAY")
      .withLimit(10)
      .get();

  Logger.log("10 keywords with most impressions yesterday");
  while (keywords.hasNext()) {
    var keyword = keywords.next();
    Logger.log(keyword.getText() + ": " +
       keyword.getStatsFor("YESTERDAY").getImpressions());
 }
}

5. When prompted, click AUTHORIZE which will allow the script to access your account
6. Click PREVIEW to run the script in preview mode, results will appear in the CHANGES/LOGS panel.

If the script has been successful you should see a keyword report to show the top 10 keywords by number of impressions for yesterday.

Script uses

Now that you have learned the basics of creating and running a Google Ads script, we can start looking at some of the ways that you can use them to improve the performance of your campaigns. From reporting and bid management to labelling and budget management, Google Ads scripts can be used in a variety of ways to help improve and optimise the performance of your ad campaigns.

Reporting

Drill down into the details easily with custom reports that are simply to run and show you the metrics that matter the most to your business. There is a wealth of reports that can be run using scripts which will help you analyse the performance of your accounts and make decisions based on the data.

Google has a number of free reporting scripts to help get you started which can be found here.

Broken URLs

Run a large ecommerce business? Or have custom parameter tracking in your URLs? It can be easy to forget to update your Google Ads URLs, especially when bulk updating products on your website or adding new tracking and campaign parameters. Luckily you can quickly and easily check all of your ads using the Broken URL/Link Checker script from Google Developers.

This script can be simply setup and has a range of customization options that can be controlled in the included spreadsheet. Results of the script running are stored in a spreadsheet and errors can be emailed to you on completion of the script running.

Keyword performance

Want a quick way to pause keywords that just aren’t performing? This script will automatically pause any keywords in your account that have zero impression. A handy script that can be run occasionally to trim the dead weight from your campaigns and stop them from impacting your quality scores. You can download and copy the Pause All Keywords With No Impressions script here which comes courtesy of Free AdWords Scripts.

Bid testing

Want to know which keyword bids work best for helping to achieve your goals? Google Ads scripts can help you systematically adjust your bids to help you find the best bids for your keywords. Over time the script will adjust your keyword bids and catalogue the performance to allow you to see which bids are the most effective for your keywords.

Bids are adjusted automatically using bid multipliers which can be set to increase or decrease your keyword bids. The script can then be scheduled to run weekly or at other time intervals to suit your campaigns. Once the bid testing is complete the script will log this, and future executions will not make additional changes. You can find this script at Google Developers section by clicking here.

We always come across one piece of advice from all the famous entrepreneurs or thriving business people.

“Look for a problem to solve. Not a product to sell.”

It also connects to the question this piece is being written on.

From the products to the services we use, they have filled a gap in the market we didn’t know ever would be solved.

Let’s first understand the meaning of “Market Gap”

The market gap means when there’s a huge possibility of generating profit from the identified gap in the market.

In other words, a new product or sector of the market which offers an enticing prospect of healthy profitability.

Now let’s dig deeper:

A gap in the market has at least one of the following attributes.

1. It is something original; something new, there is nothing like it in the market.
2. It already exists. However, an upgrade or improvement would boost sales significantly.
3. The product already exists. However, nobody has tried to sell it in a new market. Introducing it to a new market would increase sales considerably.

Now let’s go back to some of the huge companies that made it big by filling the market gap.

1950s & 1960s:

Before markets were dominated by mass-produced items. The huge companies such as Coco-Cola made it big by producing and distributing it to the mass amount of people.

Coco-Cola is a great example of how it filled the market gap by producing a drink and made it easy for people to take it on the go.

Another great example is Dunkin’ Donuts which was founded in the year 1950 by William Rosenburg. The goal was to “make and serve the freshest, most delicious coffee and donuts quickly and courteously in modern, well-merchandised stores.” Their target lies in the mission statement. They have successfully grown and now they have over 12000 restaurants in 46 countries.

The 1970s and 80s

During these years the market started to become segmented and began to target the narrower market.

The other big brand which identified the market gap is Whole Foods. The health-conscious consumers wanted one place to shop for healthy and organic natural food products.

The two friends John Mackey and Renee Lawson borrowed $45000 dollars from friends and family and opened a store named SaferWay. Then they merged with Clarkesville, resulting to open the Whole Foods Original.

Whole foods had many ups and downs but they are one of the most successful brands in this world who have not only managed to fill the gap by bringing out all-natural products but have a partnership with Amazon and many more brands to take it to the next level.

Other than this firm, the big tech giants founded in this decade were Microsoft and Apple were founded in this decade.

The 1990s

In the 90s, pop culture fashion and new technological advancement innovations came into being. The brands and technological giants now saw tremendous potential in the market and grabbed the opportunity to make it a success.

Amazon is one of the biggest success stories. Jeff Bezos first started by selling books online and then over the years toys and music followed and slowly it began disrupting the online shopping model by becoming the consumer central place for people to shop online.

The market gap was huge and what needed was ideas and strategies to tap into the online platform that would Jeff knew would be big in the coming decades.

20th century

The rise of the Internet and modern business enterprises came into fruition and then we saw a wave of drastic change in society and all around the world. Niche market followed and Internet marketing is now a cause of successful businesses in the world.

Netflix was founded in 1997 and it started off as selling website-based movie rental service.

It developed as the technology and use of the internet kept changing. It went where the market went and now from selling internet service through mail orders, it came to streaming movies and tv series that we now know today.

Tiktok is another great example of tapping into the potential power of consumer behavior. Tiktok is a big Chinese giant founded by ByteDance which offers a range of video materials and everyone gets to channel their creativity and talent.

It gives chance to everyone from anywhere in the world to have their talent discovered across the world or potentially reach the other side of the globe.

It shows short music or dialogue lip-sync clips of people we don’t even know and has it publicly open to everyone which another platform doesn’t offer unless we choose to.

Bytedance knew it would be huge among millennials and have targeted this generation successfully that now they have announced a special smartphone for tiktok users.

Every huge company has looked at the opportunities and market they are trying to serve. They are thriving through targeting and analyzing consumer behaviors.

There are also those who failed even though their ideas were good but the market was too small or not interested.

One example is Pepsi. Pepsi tried to capture a market that didn’t exist. They tried to sell morning cola with its short-lived, high caffeine drink called “AM”. No one wants to drink cola in the morning no matter how much caffeine it contained to wake our mind. It failed due to this reason.

The other car company called Amphicar, which was launched in the 1960s and ended in the same decade. Because it failed to recognize that the product they were trying to sell contained too small of a market in the US. The goal of Amphicar was to attract US consumers who wanted to drive on roads and rivers.

The unfilled market territory has major opportunities. but the challenge lies in identifying if the gaps are profitable or not.

Still struggling to gain any traction on social media? Brands big and small can use social media to create greater visibility and attract new customers. Here are some simple strategies to get you started on the right foot.

Create (and use) Business Pages

One of the most common mistakes business owners make on social media sites is using their personal page/profile for commercial purposes. Not only is this against most networks’ terms and conditions, but it also limits the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. For Facebook and Google+, for instance, you should create a page that’s dedicated strictly to your business. Pages are created under your personal profile, meaning you can have multiple pages, each of which can represent a different company or brand identify.

Complete Your Profiles

I always cringe when I check out a brand’s social media profile and discover that it contains little-to-no information. Remember, users will often check out your profile to learn more about your business; therefore, you should include as much information in it as possible. Whether certain fields are required or optional, try to complete every field. The more information you include in your social media profiles, the better.

Post Images

According to a study conducted by the marketing firm SocialBakers, images are the single most engaging type of content posted on social media networking sites. The firm followed 5,000 brand pages on Facebook, analyzing the type of content they posted as well as the number of likes, comments and shares they received. SocialBakers found that a whopping 86% of the most engaging posts made by these brands were photos, whereas just 3% were status updates. So, what does all mean? Long story short, you should include photos — lots of photos — on your Facebook page. Just remember to avoid posting photos that are owned by other people or companies, as this could be viewed as copyright violation.

Share Stuff

You don’t have to create all of the content for your social media accounts by hand. Nearly all of the leading social media networks allow users to share other users’ content on their respective profiles and pages. Business owners should take advantage of this feature by sharing content that’s relevant to their target audience. While uploading and using another person’s image is usually a copyright violation, sharing content is not.

Go Beyond Facebook

With more than 1.3 billion monthly users, Facebook is by far the world’s most popular social media network. However, there are plenty of other social media networks that shouldn’t be overlooked, as well. Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram are all powerful social media sites that business owners can use to promote their products and services. Instead of focusing your efforts strictly on Facebook, diversity and branch out into these smaller networks.

Have any other social media marketing tips that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!

You may have set up social media profiles, but are you receiving all of the benefits social media marketing has to offer? Read on to see if you may be making mistakes that are hindering your marketing efforts.

Not Engaging With the Audience

One of the perks of social media marketing is the simple fact that it allows marketers to connect with their target audience. When users have questions about your brand or product, they can post a message to your social media page. In turn, you should respond by answering the users’ questions. You can also ask questions and let your readers answer them. This simple form of engagement leaves a positive impression on the users asking and answering the questions and on other site visitors. You can also use social media to offer a free product or coupon code.

Ignoring Negative Comments

It never feels good to see negative comments on your social media sites. However, a common mistake is to avoid responding them. If a user posts a negative comment — don’t ignore it or delete it — use it as an opportunity to rebuild the relationship with the disgruntled user.

Here’s an example:

A friend of mine had a poor customer service experience on an airline flight. She used Twitter to express her concern, basically to just vent her anger. To her surprise, the airline responded to her tweet and acknowledged their mistake and her concern. Now, instead of avoiding that airline, she is willing to give them another try — and even more importantly, countless others who may have read the Twitter interaction see that the airline is paying attention and addressing customer concerns.

Using a Personal Facebook Profile

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is hands down the leading platform for social media marketing. However, many entrepreneurs and small business owners fail to take full advantage of everything it has to offer. If you’re still using your personal profile page to market your products and/or services, you’re leaving tons of potential on the table. Users can’t “like” a personal profile page, which is a huge drawback for marketers. Business pages, on the hand, can receive a countless number of likes.

To create a Facebook page (not a profile), visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/create? and follow the on-screen instructions.

Posting Infrequently or Too Frequently

Far too many marketers set up their social media pages, only to let them grow dormant in the months to follow. You can’t expect a social media account to offer any real benefit to your brand unless you are publishing new content regularly. A good rule of thumb is to publish a minimum of two posts per week to keep users interested and engaged.

However, you can go overboard and tweet or post too frequently, which may cause some of your followers to start ignoring you. Consider setting up a schedule for each social media channel you use. This will keep you on track to post often enough and allow you to see when you may be over doing it.

Posting Only Promotional or the Same-Old-Content

The beauty of using social media is it allows you to build relationships with your audience. Only posting content that promotes your product or service will turn readers off and make them less likely to trust you. You should be continually asking yourself, “How will this information benefit my readers?” If you’re not giving them information that is relevant to them, they will lose interest in your organization. Try to also think about which type of information your readers would be most likely to share with their social media networks.

Mix up your content too — don’t post the same type of content over and over. For example, different types of posts could include a new product or service announcement, a discount code or free item, a how-to post, a funny or engaging image, a question for your readers, etc.

Using Too Many or the Wrong Channels

Running a successful social media campaign requires time and thought. Instead of trying to be on every social media channel available, think about who your target audience is. Since Facebook is by far still the most popular, you should probably be on it. If your target audience is college-educated business professionals, make sure you’re on LinkedIn. If it’s women, Pinterest should be a primary channel. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to be everywhere — instead, focus on doing a good job on the sites most relevant to your target audience. Click to read a report about social media demographics from the Pew Research Center.

Not Paying For Traffic

If you really want to take your social media marketing to the next level, you should consider paying for traffic. Facebook Ads offers both cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) payment models for advertisers, allowing you to optimize your campaigns for a higher return. If you’re willing to spend the money, you’ll find Facebook Ads to be a highly lucrative source of traffic for your business. Just remember to keep an eye on your metrics to prevent overspending on bad traffic. The secret to a successful Facebook Ads campaign is a combination of A-B split testing and well-defined targeting.

What social media marketing mistakes are you guilty of making? Let us know in the comments section below!

Your website is an extension of your brand, and as such, it should represent your brand in the most authentic and professional manner possible. If visitors view your website as being just another generic, poorly designed site with no real sense of cohesion, it could hurt your efforts to generate sales and conversions.

How to Make a More Professional-looking Website

1. Use standard fonts

There are literally thousands upon thousands of different fonts, with new ones being designed all of the time. It’s best to stick with a standard font like Times New Roman, Courier or Verdana.

You’re also better off using fonts that are designed for the web and will work on all browsers and devices. A good place to start is with Google Fonts (free) or Adobe Typekit (subscription). Choose a few fonts that go well together, such as a serif font for your headings and a sans serif font for body text.

2. Include images… BIG images

There’s an old saying that goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Adding high-quality, professional images to your website will enhance its visual appearance while making it look more professional in the process. Rather than using small images, you should stick with large images.

From Apple and Google to Wal-Mart and Amazon, companies of all different sectors use this strategy for their websites. Big images improve the aesthetics of a website, making it look cleaner and more professional.

Here are some ideas on where to find high quality, safe-to-use images.

3. Contact information

Does your website feature your business’s contact information?

If not, it should. Some people who visit your site may be looking to contact you via phone or email. Without this information readily available, they may assume your site is “unofficial.”

However, don’t just place an image featuring your business’s contact information on your site, but instead include your contact info in the form of plain text. Search engines can crawl and index text, but they cannot do so for images.

4. Flat web design

The old days of using drop shadows in web design are gone (thankfully).

Now, professional websites are being designed with flat visual elements in which there are no shadows. It’s recommended that you follow a similar approach with your site’s design, opting for flat elements instead of shadows and 3D objects.

5. Mobile-friendly

If you’ve recently tried to view a site on your smartphone or tablet that wasn’t mobile-friendly, you know how difficult it is to navigate and read.

More than half of all Internet users use a mobile device now. The last thing you want to convey to your visitors is that your organization is “behind-the-times,” so make sure your site is mobile-friendly.

6. Include brand elements

When designing your website, be sure to include all of the relevant brand elements, such as business/site name, logo, tagline and color scheme.

It’s probably easier to leave the default header on your site’s template, but this reflects poorly in terms of professionalism. Replacing the default header with a custom header featuring your name and logo will go a long way in creating a more professional-looking site.

Have any other tips for creating a professional-looking website that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!

Would you rather someone create a functional and professional website for you? Contact us here for a consultation about how we can help.

Connect with your customers more easily and start selling your products online with the help of Facebook and Instagram Shops. This new feature is rolling out now and will become widely available to all businesses over the coming months. As it stands around a million businesses can already access this functionality and start selling their products on Facebook and Instagram with no fee. In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can set up your Facebook Shop to start selling your products online.

What you need to know about Facebook Shops

Shops are an easy way for businesses to create a custom digital shop that works on both Facebook and Instagram. At the moment you need to already have a Facebook Page Shop or Instagram Profile Shop setup in order to start taking advantage of the new functionality. Facebook Shops let you showcase your brand and products through the native mobile app giving your customers a full screen and immersive experience.

Once set up they provide a unified presence on Facebook and Instagram which can be updated in one place allowing for simple management. Collections help you to arrange groups of products together into relevant themes to help your customers quickly find the products they are looking for.

Eligible businesses will be sent an email or notification that they can now start using Facebook Shops and may need to create a Commerce Account in Commerce Manager to get started.

How to set up your shop

Setting up your shop is a three-stage process that needs to be done through Commerce Manager on a computer.The steps you’ll need to follow are:

1. Create a collection

Collections are groups of products that you have full control over. Each collection has a name, description, cover media and between 6 and 30 products. To create your first collection simply log into Commerce Manager and click Create Collection. You’ll now be able to add the products that you want to the collection from your catalogue as well as adding details about the collection. It is recommended that you use at least one product image from the collection with a 4:3 image ratio and size of 1080 x 810 pixels. Once you have created your first collection, you’ll be able to create another collection or move to the next step.  

2. Customise your shop

Use the Shop Builder to customise the layout and style of your shop, this can be found under the Shops tab of your Commerce Manager. Use the Shop Preview to see how everything looks before saving your changes. Some of the changes that you can make include:

• Add, remove or arrange collections using the drag and drop editor.
• Choose featured collections for the top of your shop as well as for a carousel at the bottom of your shop.
• Change the size of text and the colours of your buttons and link colours.

3. Publish your shop

Once you’ve made all the necessary changes and are happy with how your shop looks you can publish it. Collections are approved one at a time so if you have recently created collections then when you publish your shop your collections will start to go live one at a time as they are approved. If you’d like to publish everything all at once simply wait until the status of your collections is showing as approved.

As well as making it easier for businesses to showcase and manage their products, customers will easily be able to contact businesses using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct messages to helping to ensure all queries are answered as quickly as possible.

Proper keyword research is an essential component in search engine optimization (SEO). You can’t expect to achieve a top search ranking for your website without first identifying relevant keywords. Unfortunately, many first-time webmasters make the mistake of targeting generic keywords, only to realize later that it’s next-to-impossible to rank for them. A smarter approach is to target long-tail keywords — something that we’re going to discuss in today’s blog post.

What Are Long-Tail Keywords?

Keywords — when speaking in the context of SEO and Internet marketing — can be broken down into one of two different categories: short-tail and long-tail.

• Short-tail keywords live up to their namesake of being short, often containing just one or two words.
• Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer and more descriptive.

An example of a short-tail keyword is “weight loss,” whereas an example of a long-tail keyword in the same or similar niche is “weight loss tips for women.” As you can see, long-tail keywords are longer and more specific than their short-tail counterpart.

Benefits of Long-Tail Keywords

Less Competition

There are numerous reasons why you should target long-tail keywords instead of short-tail, the most notable being less competition. Using the same example keywords cited above, there are some 221 million results in Google for “weight loss” but only  42 million for “weight loss tips for women.“ It’s generally easier to obtain a top search ranking for keywords with less competition. You’ll have a significantly easier time ranking your website for a long-tail keyword as opposed to a short-tail one.

More Targeted Traffic

Long-tail keywords also deliver more targeted traffic. If you run a health website that’s aimed strictly at women, for instance, you’ll benefit from using this modifier in your target keywords (e.g., weight loss tips for women vs weight loss tips). Long-tail keywords can yield huge benefits in terms of conversions, whether they are part of an SEO campaign, PPC marketing, email, or any other advertising platform.

Can Be More Cost-Effective in CPC Advertising

Because long-tail keywords have less competition, bidding on them in an Adwords or other paid search marketing campaign will cost you less. Longer, more specific keywords appeal to your target audience as well, meaning you can get higher ad rankings without having to pay more.

Tips for Targeting Long-Tail Keywords:

• Use a third-party tool like Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner tool to uncover long-tail keyword ideas.
• Choose long-tail keywords that are highly relevant to your site’s content.
• A good rule of thumb is to focus on keywords with lots of traffic and minimal competition.
• Build backlinks while using your chosen long-tail keywords as anchor text.
• Analyze your website’s stats to determine which keywords visitors are searching for to reach your site.
• Include your chosen long-tail keywords in articles and blog posts.

Speaking of blog posts, check out this recent and helpful post on blog post SEO.

Don’t have time to find out which long-tail keywords and phrases will help searchers find your business faster? Let us help. Schedule a FREE business growth call here to see how we can connect you with customers in your niche.

Have any other long-tail keywords SEO tips that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!

Lots of people are wondering when it comes to SEO vs SEM, what’s the difference and what is better? The main difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is that SEO deals with organic listings on search engines, and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) deals with paid listings on search engines.

SEO is optimizing a website’s content and link structure so that it will gain higher rankings in search results pages for desired keywords. SEM focuses on bidding on keywords using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising / Search Engine Advertising.

SEO and SEM are often used together, making things confusing for newcomers to search marketing. It’s important to learn about each of these tactics. Learn the differences between SEO vs SEM, and how different they actually are.

Both SEO and SEM important processes to increase the visibility of a website in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo.

What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization is often referred to as “SEO.” It is a complex process which focuses on maximizing the number of visitors to your website. You can take actions that boost the website’s appearance on the list of results returned by search engines like Google and Bing.

If your website’s content is SEO friendly, it will be indexed higher when the search engine’s web crawlers start visiting the site. This will increase the odds of the website ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPS). People also refer to SEO as organic or natural search engine listings.

What’s the difference between On-Site and Off-Site SEO?

There are two primary areas of focus when it comes to doing SEO. Some activities centred around on-site SEO. Other activities are off-site SEO.

On-Site SEO means applying specific changes to your website or blog so that it is more “search engine friendly.” Off-Site SEO is the process of getting backlinks and shares from other websites to increase your website’s value. You can achieve this using certain keywords or terms for when viewed by search engines based on content and context.

On-Page SEO activities include

• Writing high quality and valuable SEO content to your readers (this is the most important)
• Incorporating keyword terms within titles, meta descriptions, headings, alt texts, and other areas
• Website blog posts and web page copy written and optimized for desired keywords
• Cleaning and formatting web page URLs to match keyword values
• Optimizing page load speed times for a better viewing experience
• Organized Internal Link Structures
• Authorship details incorporated to share with search engines
• Integrating social sharing elements within your web page content
•  

 

Off-Page SEO activities include:

• Reaching out and gaining high quality, natural backlinks from other relevant websites
• Posting helpful website pages to social bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon and Reddit
• Creating content that’s worth sharing, to receive more social media signals
• Building up local business citations for Name Address and Phone Number (NAP)
• Writing guest posts on other websites that link back to the target site
• Having other websites reference and link to your content

A ranking system puts the highest voted websites near the top, based on a relevance score calculated by search engines. The more similar websites that link to your page as a reference with high topical content value, the higher your web page will rank for associated keywords. Sometimes, you might even hear of Off-Page SEO referred to as link building, because of its high importance in search engine optimization. You should also take a look at the SEO guide Neil Patel put together, or the Backlink Guide that Brian Dean built.

What Is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a process within digital marketing to promote your website. Gain traffic with more visibility on search engine results pages (SERPS) by advertising on Google Search Ads or Bing Search Ads.

 By using paid search advertising, you can buy advertising space on search engines if your website is unlikely to reach the first page of results. Compare with other websites that have stronger backlink profiles and more relevant content than you’re able to produce. Instead of having to rank higher to get website traffic, you can pay per click to appear at the top of the searches of specific keywords.

The most well-known platform for delivering paid search campaigns is Google Ads. Microsoft’s Bing Ads platform is at a distant second. It still offers many of the same features for advertising on the search engine and other Microsoft properties like Xbox and Skype. By using Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), you can get ads to appear at the top of Google search results for specific keywords you select. You’ll only pay for the clicks that you receive on your ads.

Most of the time, digital marketers will use the term SEM when talking about their PPC campaigns or other paid search activities.

How important is SEM traffic?

SEM traffic is one of the most important sources of web traffic for your business. It can target specific keywords that are likely to generate leads on your website.

Search engines are the most common tools for finding a known solution to a problem. They’re also used to answer a specific question, or when learning how to do something.

If someone clicks on your website from the search results for their question, they are more likely to take the desired action when browsing your relevant web pages. Depending on the relevancy of the displayed web pages, SEM traffic is likely to be more valuable than other sources. This is because it connects searchers with the products, services, or information they are already looking for.

What is the difference between SEO vs SEM?

SEO is a specific set of actions that primarily focus on optimizing your web pages. This can increase the number of website visitors from search results pages, and improve the visitor experience on your site. SEM includes only paid search engine listings.

It is important to know why you shouldn’t confuse these terms. Even though they often work together, they are not referring to the same activities. There are also specialists that perform each of these roles within a marketing team.

Which is better SEO or SEM?

Some digital marketers debate with each other about which tactic is better for bringing in sales: SEO vs SEM. Good long-term SEO is the best approach. Even though quality SEO is worth it, the long-term value of the traffic compounds over time, do the math on what the clicks would cost if you were buying that traffic instead of getting it for free.

You can either do SEO yourself, or you can hire an SEO Agency. If you decide to hire an SEO Agency for SEO services, then make sure to check out reviews first. Also, have them show you “before and after” metrics from current and former clients. We start you off with a list of questions to ask!

If you are launching a new website and want to have immediate search engine visibility, then it would be a good idea to create a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or search engine advertising campaign. You want to reach the first page of search results since it takes far less time than ranking with SEO. It would be unwise to only use PPC campaigns without also doing search engine optimization as part of a long-term strategy.

Even though SEO can take longer to show results, in the long term it will be a far less expensive strategy. Establish credibility that you may not be able to generate using paid search campaigns alone.

Is Google Ad Words SEO or SEM?

Google Ad Words, now known as Google Ads, is SEM.

Where should I start with SEO?

Start with web design best practices. 

Then think about the questions that your potential clients ask. Write a list of the top 20 clients your potential clients are asking, and then you’ll have a list of 20 blog topics.

Search engines are very intent driven, meaning that people ask the questions and you should answer them with your content.

A potential client approached us the other day. They asked us to break down the differences and tradeoffs between Google’s paid and natural search results. Which should they invest more in and why?

So, we decided to put out a blog post that explains the differences and tradeoffs between SEM and SEO. As a result, we could explain when it makes sense to focus on one over the other or on both.

The question and follow-up conversation prompted us to revisit some of the touchstones of digital marketing and SEO. We felt it made sense to share widely with our blog followers.

The conversation pivoted around the differences between Google Natural search and Google Paid search. To explain the difference, it makes sense to start with the fact that Google Natural and Google Paid search are completely different programs. And they are driven by different, unconnected, algorithms.

SEO, or organic search, is the art of driving up a website’s rank in the results directly below the Google search bar. Organic does not include those marked as ads. These results are called “natural,” “organic,” or “unpaid” because Google does not charge for referrals to your web property when it is found in this section of the results page.

SEM (search engine marketing) however, refers to helping businesses perform optimally in the “non-natural” Ad Rank. Ads are found with the highlighted results under the search bar and running down the right-hand sidebar of the Google results page. There is a very different science driving the ranks and there is no direct connection.

Is There a Connection Between SEO and SEM?

We must stress this last point – there is no direct link between Google’s paid and unpaid algorithms. At first glance, the amount you spend on Google AdWords has no bearing on your natural rank. SEO and SEM are decoupled in this respect. However, an indirect benefit may exist. The increase in traffic generated from paid ads can translate into improved natural rank via an increased click-through-rate (CTR) within the natural section of the rankings.

SEM drives natural traffic to your site, increasing your SEO in that respect, in all other material respects the two ranks are disconnected. In this important sense, SEO and SEM are only lightly connected at best. And it is in your interest to work with a digital marketing team that comprehensively understands both or work with different groups – one specializing in SEO and the other in SEM.

Tradeoffs Between SEM and SEO?

The process for optimizing natural search (i.e. getting your site higher in the unpaid rank) can take time. Google’s natural algorithm looks at a plethora of factors to ranking your website on a given query and awards points that leapfrog you over your competitors.

On the other hand, SEM sends your site to the top right away (assuming you have setup your AdWords account optimally). In the SEM world, there is no waiting for Google to take notice of your efforts and to then re-index your website. In this sense, SEM is akin to the “expedited shipping” option you have to pay a bit more but you move to the top quicker.

In the SEM world, there is no waiting for Google to take notice of your efforts and re-index your website. In this sense, SEM is akin to the “expedited shipping” option, you pay a bit more but you move to the top quicker. And, if a SEM professional has optimally setup your account you should only have to pay a small price per visitor. It is only when the account isn’t optimized that you can pay a lot per click.

The Path Off Paid – Hybridizing SEO and SEM

One of the practices that we have seen significant success with is what we call the “Path off Paid.” In this scenario, we recommend clients deploy paid campaigns so that we can discover what keywords perform best. Another benefit here is that our clients’ websites are occupying coveted top real estate on Google searches that matter.

Time to Reap the Benefits of SEO

At the same time, we optimize naturally for keywords that clients request. And, we adjust our SEO campaign based on the feedback we get from AdWords. Once our SEO efforts gain traction, we recommend clients wean off paid results and start reaping the benefits of SEO.

There is no better bargain in digital marketing than being found for free, but it takes time to achieve. In the interim, it’s okay to pay a bit for traffic and knowledge. In time, the lessons learned from these efforts will translate into natural traffic. Traffic that flows freely on the most important keywords for your business. As an additional benefit, enjoy being right at the top.

In time, the lessons learned from these efforts will translate into natural traffic. Traffic that flows freely on the most important keywords for your business. Additionally, you get to rank on the terms that matter most, while learning about what keywords to pivot around naturally.