SEO is the abbreviation for search engine optimization. This refers to the process of optimizing your website to rank highly in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. SEO focuses on the visibility and ranking of your website within Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). SEO involves strategies, both technical and creative, that help improve your site’s position and increase overall exposure when your customers are looking for you. There are several ways to ensure that your site ranks highly in the SERPs. One of the best ways is to put links to your site on other websites. That’s called building a backlink profile. Another great way to ensure that your site ranks well is to start a blog and post quality, shareable content on a regular basis. That’s called content marketing. It’s also important to ensure that your site is properly optimized for the various search engines. That’s called “onsite SEO” and typically requires the aid of a tool that crawls all over your site looking for problems that the search engine bots might encounter. SEO takes several different forms, and may require changes to page titles, headlines, body copy, meta descriptions, javascript, server configurations and so much more. Studies have shown that the #1 result on a Google search earns around 33% of all clicks. If you are an online business, this means that it pays to be at the top, because more than half of all people searching for a specific keyword are going to click on that result. The more clicks you get, the more likely you are to convert a visitor into a lead or customer. SEO requires ongoing optimization to your website’s content and pages. Because Google and other search engines frequently update their algorithms, what works one day may not work at all the next. So it is very important to understand what search engines want to see on your website, and update it to match. CMO Solution takes a holistic user-centric approach to building Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies that inspire action towards a purchase decision by combining data, technology and content into experiences that map user search patterns to critical touch points across the customer’s journey.

“SEM” stands for search engine marketing. You might also hear “PPC,” “digital marketing,” or “paid search,” all of which are some variation of the same concept. SEM is the process of gaining website traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. There are a few different factors that go into SEM, but basically, you bid for keyword or phrase (a click). The more you pay, the higher you’ll rank on the page. SEO produces “free,” “organic,” or “earned media” traffic on search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). SEO rankings are determined by each search engines algorithm that weighs things like fresh and original content, relevance, inbound and outbound links, and site architecture to determine where a link ranks for a query. With search engine marketing, on the other hand, you pay to play on the SERPs. Essentially, you pay to show your ads to users who are actively searching for the keywords you’re targeting. You don’t need a high site authority in order to be able to show up on the first page of Google when you’re willing to pay for it. With SEM, you pay to play on the SERPs i.e you pay to show your ads to users who are actively searching for the keywords you’re targeting. SEM has no impact on SEO rankings i.e. you don’t need a high site authority in order to be able to show up on the first page of Google when you’re willing to pay for it. SEM is the process of gaining website traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. Most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis, but some advertising options may also be sold on a CPM basis. CMO Solution help our clients build custom-tailored persona-centric Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies to serve customized Pay-per-Click (PPC) content and experiences that drives conversion optimized high-quality traffic through data-driven predictive insights into audience behavior and search patterns.

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, refers to the advertising you see at the top and along the sides of searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo!). It’s called “pay-per-click” because the companies that place them only pay for the ads when they are clicked—they don’t pay anything otherwise. PPC ads typically represent an affordable way to acquire new customers. However, the cost to bid on specific words and phrases varies. Some keywords may be very affordable, while others may cost up to hundreds of dollars per click, simply because there is so much competition. PPC, SEM, or paid search are some variation of the same concept. With PPC, you pay to play on the SERPs i.e you pay to show your ads to users who are actively searching for the keywords you’re targeting. Most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis, but some advertising options may also be sold on a CPM basis. CMO Solution help our clients build custom-tailored persona-centric Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies to serve customized Pay-per-Click (PPC) content and experiences that drives conversion optimized high-quality traffic through data-driven predictive insights into audience behavior and search patterns.

One of the first questions asked by those new to PPC or SEO is “can my PPC ads affect my site’s SEO?” or “can my SEO affect my PPC ads?” Technically, the answer is no. PPC ads can’t affect your site’s ranking, and your site’s ranking can’t affect your ads. Having said that, there are ways that SEO and PPC can work together to increase quantity of leads, improve conversion rates and drive sales. Although there are no SEO benefits to having PPC ads, there are other benefits that can indirectly affect how well your website performs. Great content, quality links, and well architecture sites drive SEO and the depth of your wallet drives PPC.

What is SEO Link Building?

Google uses links to find websites. In order to rank websites, one of the big drivers is the number of websites and pages are those link to your website. Not only do the number of links make a difference, but the quality or “authority” of a website also has major affect. Link-building is the process of getting backlinks to your website on those high-authority sites. When the Googlebot sees those links, it will pass pagerank to your site and improve its rank. Link building is an digital marketing strategy that refers to the acquisition of links to your website. Major search engines refer the number of links a website has in order to help determine their ranking. If a website has a lot of links from credible sources, it is probably very trustworthy, and should be ranked highly. Gaining inbound links to your website might be easy, if your customers love you and are willing to talk about your products online. However, if you’re a new business, you may have to manually build these links yourself – hence the name “link building. Link building is usually done through a mixture of strategies. You can link your website from your own social media profiles or other pages, ask customers, influencers, bloggers, social media sites, etc. Depending on which keywords you are trying to rank for, you may need to build only a few links to your site. However, you will need high quantity of high quality inbound links to make a difference. SEO and link building are both crucial parts of an digital marketing plan. They don’t require any money to be spent on them, but they can be very time-consuming.

How Much Should You Spend on SEO?

SEO is complicated, because it requires a broad range of expertise across analytics, content, strategy, technology, technology, etc. Search engines like Google change their algorithms frequently, and it’s hard to keep up with their lists of acceptable and unacceptable methods. These updates can also have a devastating effect on websites that rely on Google for traffic and new customers. Even if a business is unintentionally doing something wrong, it can take weeks, months, or even years to recover from a search penalty. The cost of hiring an SEO company or SEO professional will vary depending on the scope of optimization needed.. SEO pricing typically depends on the types of services offered, the number of keywords or phrases you want to optimize for, and how many pages your website contains. SEO results take time because there is no magic bullet. We tend to think of SEO as a relationship between you (your website) and the search engines. Like with all relationships, it takes time, sustainability and integrity to produce results. The short answer is: it depends. You can hire a cheap company, but remember the old adage: you get what you pay for. Most of our clients pay between $4,000 a month and $100,000 a month. There are a lot of variables in the costing, such as, target market, target audience, size of website, content, competition, design, copy, etc. If you have little competition, your site is already in good shape, and you have a dedicated marketing department, you may only need to spend a few hundred dollars a month on SEO. However, if your competition is tough, your site is not at all optimized, and you have no employees dedicated to marketing, you should expect to spend much more, at least initially, on SEO. Many companies spend somewhere around $1,000 per month, and find that this is a good amount to start with, as it allows them to scale up or down easily depending on their needs. The ROI on this investment is also typically very high. CMO Solution takes a holistic user-centric approach to building Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies that inspire action towards a purchase decision by combining data, technology and content into experiences that map user search patterns to critical touch points across the customer’s journey.

Does Content Length Matter?

The quality and relevance of your content play a crucial role in the page rankings. Creating content of a certain length is not a silver bullet for SEO. However, pages that rank higher tend to have longer content on average. So, content length is important for your page's success as long as it is valuable, well-written, and optimized, especially if you target high volume keywords. The average length of top ranking pages on Google is 1,890 words. (SearchEnginePeople, 2018)

How Much Should I Bid?

While picking the right keywords is important, if you want your ads to rank well and produce profitable results, you need an effective bidding strategy. All search engine marketing platforms work on a bidding system, where advertisers place bids on certain keywords and target audiences. Whoever bids the highest, ranks the highest. You pay to play and you only need to bid enough to outbid the next highest bid. Example, if you bid $1,000 and the next lowest competitor bids $10, you’ll only have to pay $10.01. However, bidding $1,000 on every keyword and ranking #1 for every search sounds is not practical as you end up paying a premium and can end up in bidding wars with much deeper pockets. If it #1 costs $20 , but you can only afford $10, then bidding $1,000 will end up breaking your budget.

Local SEO differs from traditional SEO in that it’s an effort to rank a website for people in a specific region. Whereas traditional SEO usually involves ranking a site so that people all across the nation (if not all over the world) will find it when they search for a specific keyword or phrase, Local SEO is meant to reach people in carefully defined area. CMO Solution help our clients build handcrafted community-centric Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to dominate location specific rankings across search engines and directories by mapping community and customer search patterns to their unique value proposition and niche industry firmographics.

Retargeting is the practice of serving ads based on prior engagement. Retargeting is a form of advertising that helps brands re-engage users who’ve left their websites before making a purchase. Unlike banner ads, retargeting ads are served up to people who’ve already stopped by your website. As a pixel-based technology, retargeting ads anonymously follow your audience throughout their online journey to later target them with personalized product offers While there is more than one form of this technology, the most frequently used is site-based retargeting. Site-based retargeting is the practice of serving ads to people who visit your website after they leave. These ads appear on a variety of other sites around the web, keeping your brand in front of your bounced site visitors in an attempt to bring them back. Retargeting drops an anonymous, undetectable browser cookie on every visitor that stops by a site. When those same visitors leave the site or browse the web at a later time, the retargeting provider's technology decides which ads to show those shoppers based on their previous behavior and search patterns.

Search Engine Optimization | Search Engine Marketing

SEO Services

Optimize content and experiences with audience search behavior and patterns analysis to dominate search rankings, boost traffic and maximize conversions.

PPC Services

Boost traffic and maximize conversions through remarketing or paid ads that target the most promising customers by their interests, preferences, and buying cycle stage.

Local SEO

Dominate local search engines and directories rankings with offers and paid ads optimized for location, niche industries, and community search and discovery.

Ecommerce SEO

Boost online store traffic, conversions, increase online orders, and reduce cart abandonment with ecommerce-specific optimization tactics for optimal search visibility.