SEM and SEO Basics

When you launch your website, it doesn’t naturally sit at the top of the search engines. It takes time, creativity, due diligence & sometimes cash.

SEM, SEO, HOW?

Let’s start with SEM.
SEM = Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing is the process of purchasing ads to get your site to the top of the search engines. Ads always display first, so this is the quickest way to get your site noticed, but it can get VERY expensive! So instead of going straight to Google, which is the most popular search engine and the highest cost, start with smaller lower cost search engines. But do your research & check what the costs are for each one.

With ads you pay per click. So you need to stay on top of your ads and monitor them closely, because they can be quite the cash drainer. So think about how much you can afford to pay each month, and setup your ads to only pay that amount each month. Many ad services allow you to pay up to so much, and then once you reach that amount, the ad will automatically stop until funds are available for the next month.

Google Ads – Google ads and adsense. These are two separate things. But for what we are talking about here, Ads is what you want. Google is used by over a billion people every month!
Bing Ads – Bing and Yahoo are combined, so you get more bang for your buck. Bing & Yahoo are used by over 300,000,000 each a month, so that is around 600 million users per month!

There’s more to check out, so do a search for most popular search engines and check out if they have available advertising space. Some search engines use Google’s ads or Bing’s ads, so you get even more coverage across those search engines if you advertise with one of those.

If paying for top spots doesn’t seem like something you are willing to watch over, maintain and work on, plus you don’t have the extra funds for it, then SEO would be the next option for you. I personally recommend both, or pay for ads and work on your SEO and then cancel your ads!

SEO = Search Engine Optimization, this is the process of optimizing your site with the right keywords so your site is relevant for what someone searched for.

Basic SEO is choosing popular keywords & phrases that describe what you are offering and placing them on your site in your content to engage readers. Always be careful with how you do this, because if you are spamming keywords, the search engines don’t like that and will penalize you for it.  For instance, you can list out keywords in your meta tags, but don’t list keywords on your site in a big paragraph, they must be embedded in your content. So make a list of keywords and stick to those keywords in your meta tags and your content. You may also try to look for  to assist you on this.

Meta Tags: Google’s Keyword Planner is perfect for finding a multitude of keywords, and the number of searches for those keywords. For example, do you sell soy candles? Then your keywords would be things like.. soy candles, scented soy candles, vanilla soy candles, home fragrances,  soy wax candles, pillar soy candles and etc. Look at keywords that have more than 1000 searches per month, and use those keywords in your meta tags.

Site Content: In your site content, you don’t want to have big paragraphs of keywords. So in your product descriptions, just make sure that those keywords are repeated in your content.

For example, if the product is a soy vanilla scented pillar candle, my description would be;
Ahh, the lovely scent of vanilla! Enjoy these scented soy candles in every room of your home for a refreshing & calming home fragrance. Our scented soy wax candles come in a variety of sizes; Pillar Soy Candles, Taper Soy Candles and Votive Soy Candles.

That’s just a basic example, if it were my site, I would probably have more to say about it! But this gives you a good idea. So you can see that I used 6 keywords, just in that very small 2 sentence paragraph! So writing your own product descriptions to match your site keywords and of course to add your own personality, is very important!

Have some SEM & SEO tips for our readers? Comment below!