Blog Updates

Close your eyes. Lets dream.

In this dream, we jump twenty years into the future. We see food that are molecularly decompressed and re-hydrated with a single drop of water, skyscrapers reaching over two hundred floors or gigantic structures housing an entire city, and cars that not only already run on a cheap type of gas, but can also fly. Sweet.

In this dream, Search Engines and their Algos (Algorithms) have tremendously evolved¦ in this dream, they already know how to understand the stuff we write.

The early 2000s saw Search Engine and Internet Marketers devaluate the concept of stuffing web copies with the keywords they would like to compete for. More and more websites have found themselves being found through low-competitive search terms or simply words that they didnt actually optimized themselves for.

In this dream, however, the Search Engines have also fully integrated Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). (For the uninformed, LSI is a type of indexing where Search Engines do their usual word-weight distribution when releasing query matches but pays higher importance to co-occurrences when indexing for true Link Authority.) SEOs were actually able to come up with the scientific art of preparing LSI-friendly documents and both factors transformed the world of Search into a whole new different (ultra modern and uber mathematical) ball game.

For some reason, you feel very old within the dream. Here you are, you keyword-dense writer who makes sure to put your keywords at the beginning or end of all your sentences. Here you are, the keyword-dense writer who never cares for the opinion of your readers about how you present your information to them, who never thinks about visitors clicking on the Back button immediately as long as you get the traffic. After all, thats everything you promise to your clients, right?

The panorama of ten times more modern things scares you. The dream suddenly starts seeming like a nightmare. You wish to wake up immediately so you can go back to your old ways and continue earning money.

Okay then, lets wake up.

Here we are! You can breathe a sigh of relief now because Latent Semantic Indexing simply cannot be considered as Search Engine Algorithms’ final destination today. Were very lucky. It is still inescapable that we need to somehow indicate our keywords within our copies because thats the only guaranteed way that Search Engine bots and spiders will find us and let us be found for the items we sell or the services we offer “ and it will probably be this way for more years to come unless searching stops being about words. But because of your dream, perhaps you can finally wake up to the fact that SEO Copywriting will evolve, maybe at a very slow pace but it will. Search Engines will require more from us, may even be able to determine if were deceiving them and our readers, and worse, punish us for it.

Make a difference. LSI may have yet to truly impact us, but that doesnt mean we stop or never begin to please our fellow humans. After all, it is already an established concept that topical relevance holds more power in the aspect of link building than being associated with just anyone. That quality content is KING. So now, make packaging your QUEEN.

It is already a popular fact that Organic Listings get more click-throughs than Pay-Per-Click Advertising “ Internet users dont usually prefer to utilize the Sponsored Listings for their search needs. While reports say that the click-through rate on Natural Search Results go up to as high as 70%, JupiterResearch says that a whopping 87% of commercial clicks actually happen on major Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs) Organic Listings.

Which brings us to one burning question, is SEO better than PPC or is PPC more advisable over SEO?

Search Engine Optimization

If you want to talk about a value-added discipline that can enhance your ranking on the SERPs, it is a no-brainer that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the way to go. Anyone can benefit even in a one-time engagement with service providers. SEO covers a lot of ground in inviting quality traffic to your website as it can cross over to Copy, Usability, and Social Media to name a few. Many say that it is ideal particularly for companies or site owners that look ahead to long-term profitability or monetization.

Search Engine Optimization, however, requires more effort over a considerably longer amount of time, typically accompanied by stress and results that will test your patience. You will have to involve yourself in Content Build-up, Design, and Link Building. These in themselves are already tedious commitments but ones that are also guaranteed to deliver consistent quality traffic for a long time.
Search Engine Marketing

The practice of Search Engine Optimization for the sponsored search results is technically Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Its best-known method “ unrivaled both in popularity and in effectivity “ is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising. With PPC, you do not avail of the ad space per se; you only pay every time a searcher clicks on your advertisement. Hence, PPC has established a reputation as a low-risk, high ROI optimization endeavor.

Another key benefit to doing Pay-Per-Click Advertising is the traffic it can generate from the exposure particularly for new websites. Since newbies wont immediately show up on the Organic Listings, PPC helps as the sponsored links show up on every search results page, including the first. You place higher as you bid higher. However, this is feasible only for those who have enough capital to spend “ and serious capital at that. In addition, some of the aspects about Pay-Per-Click are not too ideal because of the requirement for training along with getting people to help you (increasing your expenditures further).
Our Take

To conclude, there is no “real winner” between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. Neither can stand (and stay standing) on its own. You can actually make them work together, however, especially when you strike the right balance: keeping the dedication to optimization initiatives and managing a Pay-Per-Click Advertising campaign at the same time. This concept, simply put, means that you can already expect results from your PPC campaign while you strive to nurture your site to its maturity. But thats not all there is to it. All efforts should of course each provide you with high Returns on Investment (ROI). Else, they are plain useless.

There is no doubting the convenience that the Internet brings to audiences from around the globe. Almost every type of business now thrives on the web: from health to travel to flights, fashion, credit, hobbies, news/media, mortgage, home/living, outsourcing, classifieds, and much, much more. For all these businesses, however, there is a common ultimate need: be found.

Internet users typically use Search Engines to look for something. So typical, in fact, that the three major players of web search “ Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft (MSN) “ generates a cumulative average of 7 billion search queries per month in the United States alone (with Google accounting for almost four billion, Yahoo! serving two billion, and MSN close to a billion).

Let’s face it, it is so easy to obtain your own spot in cyberspace nowadays and beautify it, so to speak. But in an age when the competition is excruciatingly stiff for popularity and placement before anything else, SEO or Search Engine Optimization activities help you achieve visibility that allow you to reach places you can only dream of visiting or get in touch with people that can contribute to your success.

SEO gives your products, services, and any other offerings a chance to actually be presented to the market. New websites can engage in Pay-Per-Click (or Per-Impression) campaigns to jumpstart their long-term SEO plans. As one of the cheapest yet most effective ways of marketing, SEO can also delve in web design, usability, cross-browser compatibility, and accessibility through service providers out there“ extending the benefits to the very experience that your website visitors will have while browsing through your pages. Whether your business is a start-up or one that is already mature, Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) overall can ensure that you rank high on Search Engine Results Pages for years to come, deliver targeted traffic to your website (and keep them returning), return every bit of your investment ten-folds, and have a consistently-high number of sales.

SEMLaguna delivers these benefits and more through comprehensive SEO services that wont break the bank. Businesses can choose from a wide array of strategies and methodologies that can fit the nature of their paradigm.

Welcome to SEMLaguna!

We will share our Search Engine Marketing knowledge with you through the experiments and tests that we do “regardless if they are met with success or not. To get things started, we have prepared a Primer for your intellectual consumption; to perhaps ready you for the articles ahead.

==========

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the term used to describe the various practices implemented online and offline to make a website visible on major search engines and consequently attract visits from Internet users. The search engines use sophisticated algorithms (formulas) to give each website a relevancy score based on the search words (aka keywords) used in a website.

I. What is Search Engine Optimization and why do we need it?

Internet traffic is driven by the major search engines: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. They continue to be the best square one of web navigation for most Internet users “ a medium that can make (or break) an organization. Other efforts such as website design, usability, content, and all other services or products you develop have higher odds of actually getting offered to clients and customers with the help of SEO. Simply put, a company or organization can take advantage of the endless traffic opportunities from search engines through SEO.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is first and foremost a discipline that involves changing or improving certain elements of your website and increasing the number of external links (from other websites) pointing to yours. It is further subdivided into two factions: On-page and Off-page SEO.

Read the rest of this entry &raquo