Every marketer knows the term SEO, but not as many know about SEM: Search Engine Marketing. Together, they're part of the trinity for getting found on search engines. The third piece? A marketing-focused website.

How can you tell if a website is marketing-focused?

Well, lets take a Columbus Ohio website design firm's website as an example. If a web designer's website talks about themselves more than they talk about what they do for you, they're not  marketing-focused. Because marketing is not about you, but about what you can do for your clients.

Understandably, your prospects and clients simply wants to know "What's in it for me?"  And if a Columbus web design website, as their main marketing tool, doesn't explain how the things they do makes their customers' lives better, easier, helps them sell more of what they're offering, or makes them look better to their friends, family and/or bosses, then their website isn't marketing-focused. The key is to making your website talk about the benefits of what you do for your customers, is to keep it simple. Don't make them have to think, or make a "mental leap" to connect the dots to see how what you  do helps them.

Our website's content centers on educating our prospects about how we can help them have a better website that can be found by their  prospects.

A little about SEO

Pretty much every web design company says they do SEO. Just as we do. But don't take our (or other Columbus website design firms') word for it: ask them to prove it. Any Columbus web design firm should be able to give you an example of a company they've done SEO for, or in lieu of that, how they do it for themselves. However, there are things to keep in mind as they tell you what they've done:

1. Ask what keyword phrase(s) they focus on.
   
   For example, any website design company can be found for a phrase no one uses. So if they say they show up on page one for "purple websites," or more realistically, "the best web design firm in Ohio" don't assume that is a phrase people are actually searching for.
   
   It's hard to be found for the real  search terms audiences uses to find us (or you). As an example, in the home building industry, no one searches for the word "homebuilder" as one word. It's always searched for as two words. So if someone says they're client's website shows up on page for the keyword "Columbus homebuilder," don't be that impressed. They can make that happen because there's no competition for that exact phrase (with "homebuilder" as one word).
2. Do your own Google search.
   
   On Google, search the keywords they say they use for themselves (or a client) and see if that website really shows up on page one of Google. Of course, rankings can change from day-to-day, or even hour-to-hour, so if the website you're searching for isn't at the top of page one when you search, doesn't mean it isn't there at other times.
3. Search Google Keyword Tool to see if they're really using the right keywords.
   
   This, however, is something the average person doesn't know how to do. It isn't hard to do, you just have to know the process. We do it every week for clients, so we're always logged into Google's Keyword Planner looking things up.

What a search for keywords looks like in Google's Adwords/Keyword Planner

Below is what a keyword search in Google's Keyword Planner looks like.

As you can see by the first keyword "columbus ohio homebuilder," (capital letters don't matter in searches) no one has searched for that phrase (with "homebuilder" as one word) in the past 12 months. Unless your business is completely seasonal, if there's no searches shown under the "Avg. monthly searches" column, it's a safe bet that no one  ever searches for that keyword.

You will see, of course, that there are many searches (and more that aren't shown here) where the word "home builder" is searched for as two words.

The "Competition" column tells you how many other websites are using that exact keyword. However, Google doesn't tell you the exact number  of other websites the "High" or "Medium" designations are. There are keywords that have NO competition, though usually not keywords that are searched for (ie: "homebuilders").

The "Suggested bid" column tells you how much you have to pay per click to be at the top of the ads, if you were to run AdWords. There are two numbers to keep in mind when it comes to AdWords:

• the pay-per-click price as shown in the Suggested bid column, and
• the maximum cost per day you want to spend

So if one "click" on your ad in Google AdWords costs you $2.50, you can say you want to max out at, say, $20 a day. So after the first 8 clicks, your ads goes away for the day.

Because more people don't know you than do...

...the real test is to rank well when someone is Googl'ing your product or service, and not  your company name. The goal of SEO and SEM is to literally put you at your customer's fingertips when they're online searching for what your company does. Which is why using a web designer who doesn't know SEO and SEM can hurt your business.

Designing and building websites week in/week out, we're aware of the check list of SEO items to be aware of, but for those of you who DON'T, we offer this checklist to ask your Columbus Oh website design company to make sure they're covering all your bases for optimum SEO on your website.

A little about SEM

SEM is the lengthy, complicated method of creating back links to your website. This is done through trying to get press releases to run on news sites, .gov sites, .edu sites, as well as bookmarking your, and other, social media websites.

It also might include buying Google AdWords, or ads on other websites. This is the only guaranteed way to get the link to your website to appear on  page one. Running Google ads gives you immediate results, meaning you can show up on page one on day one. However, for more details on the difference between SEO and SEM, read this blog which outlines SEM in more detail.

Some last thoughts on web design

And finally, one other very important consideration that you might not  think about is: will your website be better than your competitors' websites? We think it should, because if you're better than your competitors, we think your website should be better than theirs. Because if your website isn't better than your competitor's sites, your prospects would never be able to tell that why you do is different, or better, than your peers in the industry.

And keep in mind, there are several important areas to make your website better than your competition's websites:

• making it responsive,
• having it look better, cleaner and more professional,
• giving it a marketing perspective by having it address the benefits you offer, which means
• not having it talk about your company, but about what you do that makes your customer's lives better.

The above little four-point checklist isn't on the SEO checklist, but it is just as important if you want your website to be more memorable than those pesky competitors of yours.