WHAT ARE SEO, SEM, AND SMM? WHAT ARE THE BASIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEM?

Are you new to the digital world?

Are you starting your online business from scratch?

Thinking of expanding your established offline business to online?

If these are some of the questions in your mind right now then I am pretty sure you must have heard acronyms like SEO, SEM, SMM, and much more. Your head must be spinning from reading hundreds of articles explain you the meaning of these tools but if you are still reading this, it means you are still clueless as to what are these tools. No need to worry my friend, Techtra Digital is here at your rescue.

We will explain to you what are these tools and how are these vital for your business growth.

WHAT IS SEO?

So, let’s pop-up the big question, shall we? What is SEO?

Starting with something basic SEO is search engine optimization. Now, I am sure you may have a blurry picture as to what is it as the term is a little self-explanatory. Therefore, you would have words like- improving ranking, getting more traffic, Google’s rankings, showing up at the top of the page, etc.

Let me weave these words in a simple sentence for you-

‘Search engine optimization is a process/technique to attract more readers/potential users to your business website which will help you gain customers and expand your business. And these customers are attracted by displaying your website on the first page and preferably on top when someone is looking for the product/service your firm offers’

How Does The Process Happen?

Now how does the process happen? Let me widen your knowledge areas.

Imagine for a minute you are a librarian. You have every single book in the world. People depend upon you every day to find the perfect information they are looking for. How do you do that? You need a system to read every book and how each book is related to the separate search made by different consumers and then display the best information which will cater to the exact need of the customer. It’s not an easy job.

Search engines like google and Bing are the librarians and their systems collect information from every page of the web. And all of them have a secret recipe called an algorithm that turns this information and presents the consumer with the best data.

Now if you own a website search results matter. When your pages have higher rankings more people find you. The key to be found easily is to have all the ingredients that Google’s algorithm can detect. Some of them are –

Google Algorithm Elements:

Long-tail keywords in headings to attract more audience

Words in your article matter. It must connect with or relate to what people search for or which words they typically use when they are searching for something.

Links between website matters. You must have seen while reading several articles there are links in between lines that lead you to the other website relating to somewhat the same thing you searched for. A page with a lot of links always fascinates the algorithm of the search engines like google and Bing.

Words that are used in the link also matter. These words are again recognized by Google’s algorithm and if they are very much near to what the consumer is looking for then there are high chances of your website being on top.

Search engines also care about how they look. That’s why they always opt for fresh and new content which is what most of the readers are looking for. Thus, your page needs to be original and filled with content that most of the audience demands.

Now, this was everything about SEO you need to know. Good SEO is all about ensuring that your website has quality content to attract quality customers.

WHAT IS SEM?

Now that you are aware of what is SEO, it’s time to move forward and tell you what is SEM.

Again, starting with basic SEM is search engine marketing. It is always done in addition to SEO. When a business owner thinks that a natural audience is not enough to support the business or help it stay afloat, they usually opt for the paid audience.

That is to get to the top they buy ads or pay to have an ad at the top of the search engine.

You must have heard of pay-per-click (PPC). Which is in-short you get paid for per click or per view. SEM looks into these matters and the displayed ads help to achieve the owner more traffic and thus more potential customers to grow his business.

This technique is usually opted for instant growth and boost to the business.

Although the investments can be high, if you have quality content on your website then the returns would be higher.

WHAT IS SMM?

SMM is yet another tool to boost traffic to your website. SMM stands for social media marketing. This is just basically using social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and many more to promote your product or the service your firm is offering. In this technique, you pay to have an ad on your website’s social media account or various other pages.

This helps to increase your presence on the internet. As the world is evolving and many people are using social media whether for fun or leisure or for searching for more opportunities or for growing your business, you must realize that most of your target audience is active o social media, and to lure them to do business with your firm, you must develop and nurture their trust.

Social media helps to build a community around you that trusts your firm or has faith in you. This community grows every minute as more and more people show interest in the way you do your business.

SMM broadens your customer base and thus you are finally able to drive more eyeballs to your website.