As you learn more about increasing your company’s visibility in search, you may come across another term for the process: SEM. And while some marketers use this interchangeably with SEO, it’s important to understand the distinction between the two.
SEM stands for “search engine marketing,” and it refers to anything you do to earn placement in search engine results pages. This means that it’s an umbrella term that includes both SEO and PPC.
So although SEO is a form of SEM, it’s not the only tactic involved in SEM.
Keeping this difference in mind while you learn more about search visibility will make it much easier to spot resources that focus on paid tactics — and determine whether those are resources that you want to spend your time reading.
What Is the Job of an SEO Specialist?
While some basic SEO tasks can be undertaken in-house with the help of some online resources, the best way to maximize your results is to hire an SEO specialist.
But what do these professionals offer that you can’t do yourself?
And what do they actually do that makes hiring them a worthwhile investment?
Their primary goal is, of course, to increase their clients’ visibility in search results for queries related to their industry, products, and services.
But to accomplish this goal, there are a few key steps an SEO specialist will take.
1. Site assessment
The first step in the SEO process is a complete assessment.
Whether a site has ever been optimized before or not, they’ll evaluate all of the factors impacting its rankings, as well as where it stands in the results pages for the company’s most important target keywords.
They’ll also look for any major issues impacting user experience, like page load times, navigation setup, and site structure.
Finally, most SEO professionals will also take a client’s competitors into consideration during their site assessment. They’ll identify other sites targeting similar keywords and the same audience, then evaluate what they’re doing well.
All of this information will help them determine what changes need to be made. Then, they can prioritize these changes based on which will have the biggest impact.
2. Ongoing optimization and testing
After their assessment, an SEO will get to work on the priorities they’ve identified. They’ll do keyword research, optimize pages for the keywords they select, and fix any usability issues.
This initial optimization process alone often takes a few months — but it’s important to recognize that it doesn’t stop there.
That’s because SEO is a long-term strategy.
While they saw some marginal gains in 2015 and 2016, their traffic started to really take off in 2017. And those results were entirely due to their ongoing SEO strategy.
That’s why when you hire an SEO specialist, they’ll identify new opportunities to improve your site on a regular basis.
They’ll optimize your on-page factors, look for ways to earn new links for your site, and continuously test the changes they’re making.
An experienced SEO professional will also make it a priority to keep up with industry changes so that they can make sure your site stays ahead of algorithm updates and up-to-date with the tactics other marketers are finding effective.
3. Reporting and analysis
Finally, an SEO specialist will regularly monitor and analyze their results.
From a client standpoint, this helps you make sure that you know exactly what kinds of results you’re getting for your investment.
But beyond that, regularly checking in on key metrics like traffic and conversions helps them get a clearer understanding of what’s working — and what isn’t — so that they can continuously improve their strategy.
For more details on our products and services, please feel free to visit us at: Online Marketing Companies, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing, Search engine marketing.