One of the biggest goals of companies investing in Digital Marketing is to reach the top positions in search engines – after all, who doesn’t want free clicks and more visitors to their site?
But in such a fierce and competitive terrain as the Internet is, making your website stand out among the millions of pages on the web seems like an impossible task. And I say it seems impossible because, in reality, it is not.
However, being on the Internet is not enough to ensure that your site, e-commerce, or blog gets a place on the first page of Google: it is necessary to invest in a specific strategy to optimize the results and ensure that your business achieves a good web positioning for the most important keywords in your segment.
With SEO or Search Engine Optimization you can make your website appear in relevant searches, connecting your content with people who are looking for products or services like the one you offer.
It’s the perfect operation!
But you should know that doing SEO requires a lot of studies to understand terminologies, build strategies and apply practices that will take you to the top of Google’s search results pages.
Don’t worry! Whether you want to take your first steps in the world of search engine optimization, or you want to refresh your knowledge, in this complete SEO guide we will explain everything you need to know about the subject.
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means “search engine optimization”. It consists of a series of techniques, disciplines, and optimization strategies that are implemented on the pages of a website or blog to improve its positioning in search engines.
This marketing strategy is essential for your company to gain prominence, and visibility in the digital world and, consequently, more leads, customers, and revenue for your business.
How?
Optimizing sites and blogs through the use of techniques to improve the web positioning of your pages and positioning your company in the first results of Google, for example, increase (and a lot) your business opportunities.
At the end of the day, 90% of people who search on Google only click on the results that appear on the first page of the search engine.
The main goal of SEO, therefore, is to increase the volume of organic traffic and ensure more visibility for websites.
What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
We do not want to leave out of this article a topic that causes a lot of confusion among professionals who are starting in the world of Digital Marketing and this is the difference between SEO and SEM.
Although at first, they may seem to refer to similar actions given the similarity of their acronyms, you should pay close attention because they refer to completely different actions. Let’s look at them one by one.
SEO = Organic positioning
As you may already know, SEO refers to all those actions you can take inside or outside your website to optimize its positioning in search engines in an organic way. This last point is key since organic means “unpaid”.
With an SEO strategy, you do not pay Google or any other search engine to gain positions in the SERP. It is your valuable content and optimizations that earn those positions in their own right.
SEM = Paid Search Engine Optimization
In contrast, SEM – Search Engine Marketing – refers to those strategies that include the use of paid advertisements.
In other words, with an SEM strategy you create an advertising campaign so that when a user types in a search, your site appears before the organic results in the form of an ad, as long as it matches the user’s search intent.
Which one to choose?
A complete Digital Marketing strategy should not opt for one and exclude the other. That is, you should include in your strategy a combination of SEO and SEM strategies to increase your results.
The use of SEM generates instant results in a short period of time, necessary when you want to increase visibility or brand recognition quickly or when you want to launch products or promotions for a limited time.
In addition, SEO is a strategy that works in the medium and long term, bringing better quality visits constantly.
If you want to learn more about this subject, we recommend you to read our article on SEO vs SEM.
But what are the advantages of this SEO strategy and how efficient can it be? Here are the main ones.