[AmandaCherry]

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

perlick tobin ellis snippet.pngSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of ongoing best practices used for your website and blog to help you get found online via the top search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. These techniques help improve a website's SERP, or Search Engine Result Page. There are two types of SEO: on-page and off-page. On-page includes using keywords correctly throughout your web pages, including title tags, H1 through H4 tags, URL structure, alt tags on images, among a host of other practices. Think of the Google 'snippet' when you search for something either by typing in the long-tail keyword or speaking it directly to Google or Siri. Good on-page SEO practices will help ensure your company and products/solutions get found by the right people.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing
perlick adwords.pngSearch engine marketing is the process of driving traffic to your website using paid online advertising. In other words, you pay Google for Google AdWords, ideally your content comes up first driving more awareness and traffic. You may have heard of Pay Per Click or PPC. Today, the cost of AdWords and paid campaigns has gone up significantly with the search engines due to saturation of the market, thus leading to the next phase of SEM, paid advertising on social media platforms. See a trend here?

SMM - Social Media Marketing

perlick facebook post.pngInherently, social media marketing (SMM) is part of on-page SEO because of link building. Have you Googled your name lately? Take a look at the first few results. Do you see a link to your LinkedIn profile? Twitter? This applies to businesses, as well. Being on these social platforms helps your company, and your brand(s), get found easier.

The goal of SMM is to drive quality traffic to your website, landing pages, and blogs, to get them to engage with you, and ultimately, drive revenue with a trackable ROI. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. YouTube. Google+. Instagram. And now Snapchat.

The key to engagement is: 1) identifying which platform your buyers are actually on, and 2) fully understanding your buyers (or followers) and providing them personalized remarkable content. For example, if you are bar and beverage manufacturer targeting bartenders, your content strategy should help bartenders. This information will help you to better educate customers, make you a thought leader in the industry, and keep your brand at top-of-mind awareness. At the end of the day, you are creating your cultural voice online with social media marketing.