SEO or SEM?

You'll hear both these acronyms bandied around extensively when you're getting into the ecommerce. They are both very important factors in your online business, and not understanding them both can cost you in the form of clients and sales.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a very deliberate science of understanding the algorithms and nuances of the various search engines and directories. If your site isn't strong in SEO, meaning it's not a search engine friend, your website will be fairly invisible to anyone looking for your type of product or service on the web. Talk to a professional company with experience in SEO, such as the pros at Merchandizer before you embark on this task yourself.

There's a lot of erroneous information out on the web regarding SEO techniques and many of them involve repeating keyword phrases (spamming) on your webpage in the hopes it will make it more relevant to the search engines, this is almost guaranteed to get your site de-listed or worst case scenario: blacklisted from the search engines.

SEM is not as often mentioned but equally important. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and it is a module of SEO, if you sell something off your website, you'll want to be involved in SEM. Both of these are key in getting your site found. Let's face it, more people go to Google than the local phone book to look up a business or service and if your business isn't show up near the top of the search results then you are not being found by potential customers and that is where a good program of SEO / SEM can jump start your sales on your site by allowing it to become optimized and very search engine friendly so you can reap the rewards of being found by the search engines and new customers.