What’s the difference between paying for advice, or just getting free advice?  That’s basically the same difference in SEM and SEO.  Sure, you’d love to get free advice/traffic via SEO if you can get it, but that doesn’t mean paid search isn’t a bad idea either.  Just like paying for some good advice is worth it, sometimes paying for some good traffic is good too.  SEO, meaning the free organic search, and SEM, the management of bids and placements on search engines, can combine to be part of a very powerful marketing mix.  What is similar between the two, is many people think it’s easy to do, while professionals can do a much better job.  And when it comes to dollars and cents, you want a professional competing against your competitor’s amateurs.

Organic SEO

Somewhere deep inside Google lives some kind of secret algorithm that takes into account different website factors to rank websites whenever you search the web.  Which happens like 13 million times every second.  Some of these factors you can control, some you can’t.  Some are based on keyword relevant information right on your site, and other factors have more to do with other websites.  What is important is that you find someone who puts the time and energy into the research first.

Coming up with a great strategy is the most important factor in having a successful SEO campaign.  Not only do you want to find a keyword that is going to bring in a lot of target traffic, but you also want one that is reasonable for you to achieve based on the time and money you can invest.  If you’ve only got $500 per month to put into an SEO program, you’re probably not going to be able to rank for “buy computers.”  But if you own a computer store in a small city, “buy computers city, state” might make perfect sense for your budget and ability to spend time on it.

Search Engine Management (SEM)

Math. Numbers. Quantitative analysis.  That’s the core behind SEM strategies.  But that’s not all it takes.  Creative strategies and understanding consumer segments is important when it comes to developing testing strategies and executing them successfully.  Whatever kind of sem services the company you are hiring wants to provide, make sure they take a broad, strategic approach to the problem and fully understand your goals before tackling the project.  Being able to increase conversion rates by a few percentages here and there can make a big difference, so definitely choose the company you’d like to work with very carefully.

Want to know how your site usability is?  Are people converting at the rates that they should be?  Take a look at a professional web analytics consulting company to help you increase your profitability in that category.

Tagged with: analytics consulting • Google • sem services • seo rochester ny • web design
 

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.