Pittsburgh SEO is a comprehensive set of strategies used to improve the organic ranking of a webpage for certain keywords. However, there are a number of other similar acronyms that many people get confused about. This includes Pittsburgh SEO, SEM, SMM and SMO – all very different strategies that target different consumers and marketplaces using a wide array of complex techniques. Understanding the differences can help your business determine what internet marketing strategies will bring success for your company and exactly how they should be applied.
SEO – Pittsburgh Search Engine Optimization
SEO strategies seek to obtain top organic search rankings for specific keywords and phrases. This is accomplished by the two primary components of On-Page and Off-Page optimization. On-page refers to the usage of keywords directly on a web page, such as the content of the page, the meta data, categories, tags, alternate image tags and descriptions and SEO plugin data.
Off-page SEO refers primarily to building links and developing content through article marketing, blogging, press release distribution, document sharing, private blog networking, guest writing, forum posting, social bookmarking and sharing, video submissions and more.
SEM – Pittsburgh Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing has the same basic goal as SEO – to drive traffic to a website or web page. But while SEO does this organically, SEM does it through paid search. When a user enters a search term, different companies can compete by bidding to have their ads shown to the user based on their search query. In some cases companies pay for each click, while in other cases they pay for each impression.
SMO – Pittsburgh Social Media Optimization
Social media optimization refers to the process of creating accounts on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Digg and then optimizing that content so that users can find your products or services based upon search terms, categories, groups, postings or other user-network specific commonalities. The primary purpose of SMO for businesses is to improve brand awareness and increase brand loyalty.
SMM – Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is to SMO as SEM is to Pittsburgh search engine optimization. SMM seeks to increase the visibility, traffic and level of interaction of a particular social media page/account primarily through paid search options like Facebook Ads. Users are targeted depending upon their interests, associations and interactions. Based on this information, highly-targeted ads are displayed for that individual every time they load a new page or refresh an existing page of that social media network.
The ad networks between search engines and social media are completely separate and unrelated. However, because of popular marketing techniques - especially remarketing - some internet users will see the same types of ads everywhere they go on the internet. This is important for businesses to understanding because capitalizing on the needs of a consumer as they arise is one of the most efficient ways to generate revenue on the web – especially considering that the average web user doesn't remain on any particular page for very long.
Businesses that achieve monumental success on the web understand and aggressively pursue these markets on both the organic and paid search/marketing levels simultaneously. However, most Pittsburgh SEO experts will agree that organic search should be the backbone of any successful campaign.
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