Gervais Group, LLC – Internet Marketing & SEO Company

How is search engine marketing (SEM) different than search engine optimization (SEO)?
Search engine marketing refers to optimization practices that take place off the website. Whereas SEO organizes the pages on the website for both the search engine spiders and the visitors to the site, SEM refers to all activities utilized to generate incoming traffic which is a vital element of moving site pages higher in search engine results pages. (SERPS) Common strategies and tactics include search engine and directory submission and back link development from blogs, ezines, forums, social media sites, and online news media.
If I my site has been search engine optimized do I need search engine marketing?
SEM is an active process of driving traffic to a website and improving search engine page rankings. Without it, a website would much like a bricks and mortar store that doesn’t advertise. Random passersby may find it but not in the kind of numbers required to make a business successful. Search engine marketing is the most cost-effective, fastest growing, and popular new marketing channels available, especially when compared to print and other traditional media outlets
Does SEM work for every kind of site?
Almost any site trying to generate revenues can benefit from a properly run SEM campaign. By raising awareness and driving traffic to your site the chances of purchases and or other forms of conversions increase. If you are in business, you need people to find your site and purchase from you. That is the core objective of SEM. The one instance where results could fall short would be where the cost of an SEM campaign would outweigh what could be expected from generated revenues.

Can I be successful running an SEM campaign on my own?
Running a typical SEM campaign can consume around one hundred hours per month at the outset and, because of that, is normally outsourced to SEO companies. While the do it yourself aspect might be tempting, re-dedicating a hundred hours to an employee or yourself is not going to be the best allocation of labor, especially there isn’t anyone in-house with SEM experience.

How do I know if SEM is working?
Contrary to advertising via traditional media, internet related activity is highly measurable. You will be able to track visits, click throughs, conversion rates, and a host of other metrics. Tracking is normally summarized by SEO companies on a monthly basis. Additionally, you can always check the keywords and phrases that are being optimized to see where your web pages are ranked on the search engines. One word of caution, any SEM campaign will take some time to show results so don’t be frustrated if you’re not on page one after two weeks. The timeline for significant results can vary widely depending on the level of competition for the keywords you are optimizing and your monthly budget.

How do I go about choosing an SEM/SEO company?
You’re going after results and the firm you go with should be able to deliver them. The best way to determine that is to check out how their existing clients are doing, i.e. how they rank, increases in traffic, conversion numbers, etc. If all other things are equal, lean toward a larger rather than a smaller one to ensure continuity should there be some turnover in personnel. Again, this is about results. You’ll have your choice of firms so be ruthless about demanding proof that each company can live up to its own billing.

Search engine optimization carries many benefits beyond the big one; targeted traffic. These benefits can sometimes be overlooked as focus can often be locked on how many visitors come to the site each day but they can prove to be extremely valuable over time. Taking the focus off of targeted traffic, benefits two through six are:

2) Branding – According to search engine user studies, 36% of searchers believe that company pages that rank at the top of search engine results are the top brands in their field. Consider the amount of money it would take for that kind of brand recognition using offline methods and suddenly the money being paid for SEO services looks like a bargain at ten times the amount.
3) Credibility – Running alongside the branding benefits, occupying real estate on page one of the search engines translates into higher credibility with searchers. Multiple listings on page one can lock up the credibility factor even further.
4) Proactive reputation management – SEO that results in multiple listings on the top pages of the engines can act as a pre-emptive reputation management technique by making it difficult for negative content to get to the front pages of the search engines. Compared to the process of moving negative content off of page one once it’s embedded, keeping it from getting there in the first place is a much better outcome. With statistics showing that nine out of ten users never go beyond page one and virtually no one goes past page three, a search engine optimization plan that occupies a lot of listings in the top thirty spots can keep damaging content from ever seeing the light of day.
5) A better user experience – Following basic optimization guidelines should mean that visitors immediately get a sense that they will find what they’re looking for, a key factor in keeping them on your site. Ease of navigation and quality content results in a positive user experience and increases the site’s trustworthiness, keeping visitors coming back to the site which improves the odds for…
6) Conversions – Combine branding, credibility, a great reputation, and a positive user experience and you are going to get conversions at an increasingly higher rate. Continuing search engine optimization and analysis to improve weak spots on the site can further improve the site’s overall performance and conversion ratio.

An experienced SEO company can deliver benefits which go far beyond a high ranking and targeted traffic. In fact, when measured against a typical advertising budget, the money spent on search engine optimization can provide deliverables and a return on investment that dwarfs what could be expected from traditional and offline efforts.

Search engine optimization is the practice of developing search engine rankings for a website. In order to develop good search engine rankings, there are a lot of different things that must happen to an individual website. Everything about a website can be developed a specific way to increase search visibility, although it takes a lot of time and a great amount of energy and research.

A Search Engine Overview

When a search engine user goes to a specific search engine and searches for a specific keyword phrase, a listing of websites will come up in the browser. A good example of a search engine is Google (as they are the biggest and most impressive search engine). Google, MSN and Yahoo! are the big three search engines, and they all have one specific goal in mind. Their goal is to produce the most relevant results for the users of those search engines.

More than half of all Internet users take advantage of the search engines on a daily basis.  With that said, you can see why they are so important. It is the best way to find information quickly and effectively. In order to understand Search engine optimization (SEO), you will need to understand how the search engines work.

A Look Inside SEO

The practice of SEO can be very complex, but has two different main tasks to accomplish. The first is all about keywords. A keyword is a specific phrase that is searched for in the search engines. As someone that would be doing SEO, it would be their job to figure out which keywords (related to the websites topic) people search for. From there, they can pinpoint the keywords they want to rank for in the search engines.

After the keywords have been discovered, the next step would be to implement different methods to rank for these phrases. The most basic concept of SEO is to be sure that these keywords are placed throughout a website in the proper places. If they are, then that is a good first step to having good SEO on the website.

The complexity of SEO

While many think that Search Engine Optimization is just simply adding keywords to your content, it really is much more. The way your site is designed, the quality of your content, the uniqueness of your content and the amount of quality inbound links to your website are all very important factors. Along with that, there are still literally hundreds of other things that could affect search engine rankings both negatively and positively.

The search engines have secret algorithms that they use to decide what websites rank for what keywords. They have a lot of different variables that come into play and nobody knows exactly what they are. This is the main reason why SEO is such a lucrative and high demand service for SEO experts. A very big part of Search Engine Optimization is theory and guesses to what will work and what will not. There are a lot of proven facts out there about SEO, but there are also a lot of secrets. The number one rule for SEO is to simply create quality and value for the Internet. The rest will all fall into play, including search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing, when properly and ethically done, can yield spectacular results for companies that want to have a presence, build a brand, and generate revenues on the web. Much like any competition, there are no short-cuts to long lasting success in either search engine optimization or marketing. Still, shortcuts and tricks are often offered by companies promising guaranteed results at a cost of pennies on the dollar. Being a relatively new industry, there is much that is misunderstood about both the practice of and terminology surrounding SEO and SEM. What follows is a list of the kind of shortcuts and tricks that can backfire on a website, incurring penalties and/or landing it on a permanent blacklist.

* Black Hat Techniques – Black hat SEO is the catch-all phrase used to describe a variety of tricks and shortcuts that are considered unethical by the SEO community and the search engines. Use of these techniques can be tempting because of their lower costs and the fact that they can work temporarily. Basically considered a short sighted solution to a long term problem, these techniques will ultimately hurt the ranking of a website at best, with the worst case being that the website gets banned or blacklisted by search engines.
* Cloaking – A bait and switch technique designed to fool search engine crawlers. This tactic has a site’s server feed keyword rich content to the crawlers but if a visitor clicks on the link he will see completely different content.
* Doorway Page – A doorway page is meant to trick the search engines into thinking that a page is rich in relevant keyword content. These pages typically contain only keywords and are therefore useless for visitors.
* Hidden Text – Relevant or keyword rich content that is programmed into the html code which is invisible to the reader but will be picked up by search engine crawlers.
* Keyword Stuffing – Just like it sounds, the practice involves cramming as many keywords into the text as possible to increase the page ranking. Readers know keyword stuffing when they see it because of the blatant repetition of the same terms throughout the copy on a page. Keywords can also be stuffed in comment tags, alt tags, and in hidden text on the pages of the abusing site.

These are but a few of the unethical practices which describe black hat SEO techniques. The search engines are very aware of “search engine spam” techniques and are always on the lookout for them. Getting caught using them is costly both in terms of rebuilding a site that has been banned, and from the lost sales opportunities as a result of getting tossed out of the search engines. Also hurt in that type of situation would be any branding efforts involving the offending website. Building and marketing websites can be extremely lucrative over the long term when done correctly. Trying to cut corners using black hat techniques is a sure way to turn a short term problem into a long term quagmire.

When using a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, people usually choose to visit the websites closest to the top left of the page.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves moving a website as close as possible to the top of a search list in order to increase the site’s traffic.  Experts in this field often use keywords and phrases as well as the overall design of the site to increase the ranking of that site.

Search Engines

Typically, search engines use numerous factors to rank websites.  The main job of a search engine is to do a keyword search.  This search matches a keyword or keyword phrase and provides the user with the most relevant articles and websites.  Search engines use algorithms with many variables in order to find the most relevant article based on the keyword or phrase.  This does not necessarily mean that the sites featured as most relevant contain the most of the keyword or phrase.  Many variables are involved in ranking sites which produces better results but makes Search Engine Optimization more complicated.

Basic Search Engine Optimization Concepts

In order to implement Search Engine Optimization, a website designer will generally make sure that the site contains many Search Engine Optimization keywords and Search Engine Optimization keyword phrases in strategic locations throughout the website.  He or she may also change the HTML to make the site more search engine friendly.  These concepts are somewhat basic and have been being used since search engines first started being used in the mid 1990s.

There’s More!

Though making sure that the website has many keywords and phrases is very important, there are other secrets to Search Engine Optimization.  Search engines also take into account the uniqueness of the content, the overall design, ease of use, quality of content, and the number of inbound links.  There are numerous other factors as well, although not many people know them.  Google uses over two hundred different factors in determining its rankings.  It should be kept in mind that some things can effect a rating negatively; the search engines do not concentrate exclusively on positive factors.  Experts in Search Engine Optimization know more of these factors than most people but much of their work is based on conjecture.  Search engines add more factors frequently in order to prevent webmasters from promoting unhelpful sites.  Fifteen years ago, filling a site with keywords would be enough to rank high on a search engine’s list.  This is not the case in the present.  Generally, if a website is of a very high quality, it will rank high with the search engines.

Since most people only look at the search results on the first few pages of a keyword search, it is important for websites designers to use Search Engine Optimization concepts in order to move closer to the top of the list.  Many factors are involved, not just the quantity of keywords.  In general, if a site is designed intuitively and contains unique quality information, Search Engine Optimization should not be a problem.