Search Engine Optimization

Marketing, like most industries, has a lot of jargon. For a bunch of storytellers, we also love an abbreviation. They are effective for condensing your message. Until they aren’t. One set you might find used interchangeably is SEM and PPC. They actually don’t mean the same thing, so we thought for today’s post we would make the distinction and give you an idea of when to use each one.

In the flood of extra Internet traffic that occurred this year, how many businesses became pushed out and ignored? Like many of this year’s issues, the browsing habits of 2020 aren't a new phenomenon, but rather a trend that’s been building for years. The trend in question: businesses that optimize for local search traffic.

As long as we've had search engines, we've had SEOs trying to game the results. For search engine optimizers who have been in the business for a long time, it can be hard to let go of the old techniques in favor of the new ones. Even marketers who know "just enough to be dangerous" are at risk of abusing tactics that Google now punishes or ignores.

Whether you're launching a new site or simply trying to get better results from your existing site, you know that a big part of your success will come from ranking well in Google's organic search results. Most web pages won't be able to do that without a lot of behind-the-scenes blood, sweat, and tears in the form of Search Engine Optimization or SEO. SEO is a big and complicated venture, and the rules that determine how your site ranks change on a near daily basis.

Every year, our favorite SEO research tool, Moz.com, surveys hundreds of search engine optimization professionals to get a sense of how they're handling Google's algorithm updates. While the survey isn't collecting factual data on what works and what doesn't, it's a good way to see what reputable SEOs are doing (and avoiding).