Quick quiz: What’s the difference between SEO and SEM? (You know, search engine optimization and search engine marketing.)

Not sure? Join the crowd.

In a nutshell, SEO and SEM are strategies used to help companies create effective websites – websites that attract qualified, prospective customers. Customers who hopefully – to put it bluntly – buy lots and lots of stuff.

The strategies take different forms.

SEO can be thought of as things you do within your website to optimize your organic search rankings. That means increasing the chance that a potential customer will find your site using a search engine like Google. It includes things like:

  • Embedding keywords in your body copy, headings, hyperlinks, and tags
  • Building a navigational structure and page structure that can be easily indexed by search engines
  • Using clean code so that search engines can “understand” your content
  • And, of course, including great content that matters to your customers

SEM can be thought of as things you do outside your website to drive web traffic, and customers, toward it. An SEM campaign might include:

The key thing to know about SEO and SEM is that they work best when they work together, with SEO “pulling” traffic to your site and SEM “pushing” it there.

That’s the point of having a website, after all – to help customers find you, learn about you, and buy your goods or services.

Want to talk with us more about the world of SEO and SEM? Contact us anytime.

Here at Atomic, we believe in all the good stuff. Inner beauty. Strength of character. Substance over style.

But when it comes to web design, we know that first impressions are everything.
Ever go to a company’s URL and think to yourself, “Eeeww, that’s their website?” Or spent so long trying to find something on a site that you left it in frustration?

That’s the result of bad design.

Alternatively, ever smile when you open up a website? Don’t you feel good when you see that big orange flower on cuteoverload.com? Or get excited when you go to iTunes to download a song from American Idol? And isn’t it cool that you can find a list of all the tools you need to install a garbage disposal on HomeDepot.com?

That’s the power of good design.

Good design – particularly, good web design – doesn’t just happen. At the macro level, it’s the result of a strong visual presence married to clear, easy-to-use navigation. At the micro level, it’s the result of hundreds of small but important decisions that your web developers make, related to everything from coding and tagging to colors, typography, and white space.

There’s a lot of information out there on why good design is good for business, published by AIGA and others.

But to us, it comes down to one simple thing: you want your customers to smile when they see your website. That’s the result of good design.

As always, contact us if you’d like to talk about your website design. Or, check out some of our recent designs.