Before being able to fully understand the importance of Content Distribution, one must understand the relationship between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process by which a company formulates and tweaks its website to have the appropriate keywords, META tags, internal and external links and content to have Google (and the other search engines) recognize its site as being relevant and important to the topic for which a company wants people to come to its site.
This is a very time-consuming process, as there is no specific formula for knowing exactly what the search engines are looking for and how they are going to recognize a company’s site – or even IF they are going to recognize the given site. However, it is a crucial part of an overall Internet marketing presence.
Search Engine Marketing
The basic concept of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is that large quantities of targeted, keyword-rich, data are provided in a variety of formats (i.e. text in the form of press releases, articles, and blog posts, and audio and video posts) to a vast number of heavily-trafficked websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Posterous, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
Search engines, such as Google, visit these sites on a minute-by-minute basis, adding the newly-posted content to their search results. This continuous indexing of the sites results in a significantly higher opportunity for one’s information to be found when potential clients are searching for information regarding the client’s topic.
Search Engine Optimization vs. Search Engine Marketing
The best way to explain the difference between SEO and SEM is to think of a dart board. When doing SEO, you are asking the customer to hit the bull’s-eye – they need to type in just the right word, or combination of words, to find your website directly.
SEM is equivalent to asking them to just hit the dart board. By sending out vast amounts of data in a variety of formats to thousands of websites with hundreds of millions of monthly visitors, the customer will find your information somewhere on the Internet. Arriving at your main website is simply one click away.
SEO and SEM are not one-time events. They are both necessary for an integrated Internet marketing approach to reaching customers. Effective SEO and SEM campaigns require long-term, steady data dissemination across a wide variety of formats and sites.
Hitting the dart board is far easier than hitting the bull’s-eye!
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