SEO vs SEM

I am sure you have seen or heard SEO or SEM thrown around while talking to clients or talking to designers. Do you really know the difference, better yet do THEY know the difference? Well let us take a look and see what we can decipher about the two.

What is SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and what that means is “the process of optimizing your website with keywords you wish to associate with.” Well great I know what that means, now how do I implement it? Brian Woeller from Ezinearticlez has several ways to create great SEO for your website:

• Having Keyword rich web pages
• Having Keywords in the title of your pages
• Having Keywords in your domain name
• Naming the images in your site using keywords
• Naming the Alt tags of images using keywords

What is SEM

SEM stands for search engine marketing, what this means is “the process and the methods used to promote your site to search engines.” As with SEO there are several ways to achieve proper SEM. Brian Woeller has more ideas on how to implement SEM:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Article Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Social Network Marketing
• PPC, or Pay Per Click Advertising

The keyword you are looking for when it comes to SEO and SEM is “Keywords.” To successfully and cheaply implement SEO and SEM you need to have keyword rich content that you is associated with the website. Have links to your website, everybody has a friend out there willing to give a link in their website.

Content Management Systems and SEO



Since SEO is all about good content, adding a CMS to the picture shouldn’t change your SEO or SEM at all should it? Well it can be a little tricky handling SEO with a CMS.

• URLs -Some CMSs create dynamic URLS, search engines don’t like dynamic URLs much since they include special characters like % and =. They prefer good old http:www.google.com type URLs.
• Keyword URLs – Dynamic IPs do not allow for very good keyword URLs, and what is the most important thing when it comes to SEO? Keywords.
• Bad Meta Tags – Some CMSs do not allow users to assign Meta Tags. Meta Tags are critical when search engines are looking for sites.
• Code – When using a CMS they can use special scripts or use codes that are not web standards

In the End

Regardless of whether you are hand coding a website or if you are using a CMS it all comes down to keywords. SEO and SEM are two different things, and both are linked. I recommend content rich articles and meta tags for SEO. Take advantage of any free marketing you can get from clients and friends alike. Most of all make sure your clients know what the differences are, the more you sound intelligent the more the trust you.

Sources:
I Data Technologies
Ezinearticles
Raise my Rank