Skip to main content

Tag: technical support services philippines

iManila is now a Microsoft Partner!

The year isn’t over for iManila just yet! Recently, we received news that we are now officially a part of the Microsoft Partner Network or (MPN). Being a Microsoft Partner in our industry is important as this gives us more access to tools and information that will help expand our business, the way we engage with customers, and eventually help drive more clients.

This new honor once again only proves that time and time again iManila has stood to withstand the cycle of evolution, by constantly adapting to changing economic situations, market behavior, and consumer preferences. Getting local support from an internationally renowned company such as Microsoft is a huge deal for our company as we consider ourselves a small fish in a big pond in the industry of IT and Digital Marketing.

What are the benefits of being part of the MPN?

First off, as a Microsoft Partner, we’ll now be able to gain instant access to exclusive resources, programs, tools, and connections to foster business growth and possible opportunities. Microsoft offers different business opportunities to help support and evolve the businesses of companies in their Partner Network.

Microsoft is also the best platform to connect with and reach out to other partners through blogs, case studies, stories, and social networks. Being part of the MPN allows our Technical Support team access to different kinds of trainings that will allow us to keep our goals and visions up to date.

There is power in partnership. Moving forward, we know for sure that together, we can accomplish more. We’re looking forward to the resources, programs, and tools that will help train all of us and at the same time build some more innovative solutions, help us connect with customers, and differentiate our company in the marketplace.

We’re excited about what the future brings for us especially now that we’re officially part of the Microsoft Partner community. If you want to learn more about Microsoft’s top-of-the-line and highly secure collaboration tools, business emails and cloud solutions, we would be happy to help! Our dedicated technical support team have the expertise to support your business’ needs. Get help from a Microsoft partner such as iManila. Visit our website at https://imanila.ph/hosting/microsoft-365/ to learn more.

Debunking the Most Common Website Myths

It is always a milestone for a business to have their own website as it’s a great way to expand their online presence. It can be exciting, but there are also a lot of myths about having your own website. 

We’re here to debunk those common myths and help you get on the right track to having the best business website possible!

Once you have a working website, you’ll attract visitors

Getting the website working and online is only half the work. What happens here is that there is a mismatch in expectations with business owners with how websites can give them the results they want. 

The truth is that it takes time, resources, and skills to attract website visitors. There are many factors to consider such as search engine optimization, paid search ads, video ads — in short, a lot of promotional means to get the right amount of traffic to your site. Once you put in the action then effort, that is the only time you’ll be seeing an increase in your website traffic. 

If your website looks good, you will start getting sales

Closely related to the previous one, while a well-designed website may be grabbing the attention of your visitors, it doesn’t necessarily equate to a sale. 

It is true that to attract new people and to give visitors a good user experience you would need a beautiful website, but at the end of the day, it’s still the quality of your products and services and brand reputation that weighs more. If all you are offering is aesthetic but your products or service fail to follow through on its promises, it will fail because people will be able to see through it. A business first and foremost must focus on its own products before worrying about aesthetics and appearances. If you are focused on delivering the right value to your site visitors, your site would work its magic even without the over-the-top designs. In short, your product should speak for itself, your website is merely a tool in helping your message get across to potential customers. 

Once your website is up, the work is done

This again is a mismatch of expectation as websites need ongoing attention much like any other business that needs to be nurtured and maintained. 

Website maintenance is a thing and part and parcel of this is renewing your domain registration on time, protecting your site from any potential threats such as viruses or cybercrime, keeping your design up to date in line with current trends, and investing in promotion to keep the site visitors coming. 

Your website needs to have all the features the other websites have 

There is a misconception that more features means your website will be better. While you may get a lot of inspiration by viewing websites of other brands, you may start to notice some of them have certain elements such as carousels for their headers. But again, it is always important to know the value of each decision as these can hinder your customers from properly navigating your site and getting them to do what you intend them to do. 

For websites, simplicity is key. The bells and whistles would not matter to your customer if they can get their business done on your website in the most direct and simple manner. It is always about the value that the customers get from your products or services. If you are thinking of having a certain feature, know that if it wouldn’t add anything of value to your customers then it’s better left out. 

What’s next?

For different people you may ask, websites may mean different things for them. However, it is important to know what it is that your business really needs as everyone has different approaches. Each business works differently. It is nice to research more about how you can create the kind of website that suits the purpose you intend it to and helps you achieve your business goals. Starting with debunking these common website myths, we hope to be able to guide you in creating your dream website. 

Getting the right experts on board can help ease any worries you might have about building a website on your own. Rest assured that you can find the right partner in iManila, who has been in the industry for over 24 years. Learn more about how we can help you build your website and how we can make it work for you. 

‘BER’ Months Marketing Guide for all Digital Marketers

The most wonderful time of the year is coming up! ‘Tis the season to be jolly!

BER months starts from September to December and are the most important months to look at and get excited about as a marketer. These months help fuel up every business to raise more brand awareness, sales initiatives, and engage with customers.

Don’t miss out on the season to grow your brand. Here’s a quick guide to help you during the most anticipated time of the year:

 

  1. CREATE EFFECTIVE SEASONAL OFFERS AND PROMOTIONS

What best way to spark joy and entice customers and potential buyers to buy than by adding the “Best Offer” and “% Discount” tags? Seasonal fluctuations in consumer buying behavior always increase during special seasons, particularly the most loved BER months. It’s best to grab the chance.

There are a lot of offers that are doable but always keep in mind that it should be extraordinary from what is usual. Our situation now is different; your special offers should also be. Start with free shipping, shipping voucher codes, followed by 50% off, cashback deals, additional points/rewards, limited-time deals, freebies, and other promotional bundles to induce the buyers.

You should seize the seasonal advantages as well such as gift card deals, holiday bundles, holiday QR Codes, exclusive holiday treats, promo contests, and the famous, free gift wrapping. Make sure that every seasonal promo that you have will always stand out above all other competitors.

 

  1. CREATE SEASONAL CONTENTS

It is easier to grab the customer’s attention when you create the best seasonal content. Build up your content for the holidays and highlight the products and categories that are traditionally the most popular during the holiday seasons.

We all know that people tend to look at designs more than the texts, so make sure to create content that is in line with the season, showcasing creative trends and highlighting brand innovation and flexibility. Creative and up-to-date content drives awareness and interest, leading and influencing the customers to decide their way into buying.

Brands that are always in line with the season receive the best kind of word-of-mouth marketing. It engages many consumers to take suggestions, reviews, and then relay it to their family, relatives, and, friends especially when shared on social media.

Let your brand, products, and offers be heard through the use of holiday contents that are just as loud as Christmas jingles.

 

  1. KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND TARGET MARKET TO ADVERTISE YOUR BRAND AND PRODUCTS

 

Effective and successful marketing is knowing the right people that will buy your product and the right place wherein you can advertise your seasonal offers, promotions and, contents.

Design your brand and products directed to as many consumers as possible since people are most likely to spend during the holiday season. As marketers, it’s just our job to make them more aware that your brand exists and is something they need to buy during the holidays.

Get to know your target audience’s interests and make use of that knowledge for your branding to be more effective and specific.  Focus on the customers and potential buyers who are actively in pursuit of products related to your industry or who share interest in what you’re selling.

 

To wrap-it-up, it’s time for your brand to rise and be ready for this season. Although the times now are quite different and even though a lot of people say that Christmas this year may not be the same – let’s keep our hopes up and continue to work towards the objective of ensuring that our brands are holiday-ready.

As we continue to stay at home, let’s keep our businesses moving through digital marketing. There are plenty of ways to reach your target market whether it be through Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, through Search Engines like Google, through your website, email and other digital marketing platforms.

iManila is the best Web Development and Digital Marketing Agency, and has helped different brands through Website design and development, Apps Development, and Digital Marketing. We’d love to help your brand sleigh BER months. *wink*

Get in touch with us and Contact us to learn more!

Cloud Hosting Vs Shared Hosting: Which is better?

Hosting is crucial when setting up your website and emails for the first time – but it can also be confusing. Shared hosting and cloud hosting have three things in common: web hosting provider, servers, and websites. Though shared hosting is deemed to be more popular than all hosting plans, understanding the new features of cloud hosting might give you second thoughts.  

In this blog, we will be looking into each of their key features like uptime, support, security, pricing, performance, and other benefits.  

Shared Hosting  

Shared hosting has long been part of the web history. Its main difference from cloud hosting is that multiple websites are hosted together and share all the resources available. Such resources shared includes disk space, storage, bandwidth, and databases all in one server. It generally requires a dedicated web server. Although this is cheaper and easier to use than cloud hosting, it may not be the best option for websites with a lot of traffic and that are content heavy.  

Cloud Hosting 

Since its inception back in 1996, cloud hosting services has been gaining attention – and rightly so! In comparison to shared hosting, cloud hosting allows your website to be hosted on multiple servers. What’s good about this is that if an issue comes along with one of the servers, you’re safe from downtime as multiple servers will allow your information to be accessible online. Cloud computing technology allows numerous machines to work in synchrony. Aside from its proven flexibility, its ultra-fast speed is also one to look out for.  

Features 

Uptime 

Shared hosting, in its very nature, may assure you 99.5% uptimes but you can expect that when you get a spike in website traffic, you’ll probably experience some downtime. 

With cloud hosting, on the other hand, you’re guaranteed impeccable uptimes despite surges in traffic. 

Support 

Cloud hosting has unlimited everything, from storage, bandwidth, and databases. It may only get more advanced in the following years. Shared hosting, in contrast, has many limits. Overusing its limited resources could cause suspensions.  

Bonuses 

Shared hosting could get the upper hand this time. There are always free bonuses waiting for you if you get shared hosting plans. This can range from free domain names to web transfers and website builders – this would all depend on your preferred supplier. But, cloud hosting, alternately, isn’t really that generous.  

Security 

The security protocols of shared hosting are often based on applications and databases as these are the most vulnerable to hackers. 

 

A hacker that has access to one shared hosting server automatically gives him access to all the websites on it. And once a website is hacked into, the intruder could invade the site time and again. 

That being said, you must keep your computers safe by using reliable antiviruses, strong passwords and keeping your cPanel away from any files on your account.  

Cloud hosting, on the other hand, has usually four major security controls: 

  1. Deterrent Controls 
  2. Preventative Controls 
  3. Detective Controls 
  4. Corrective Controls 

Cloud hosting incorporates encrypted algorithms to further protect your data. It also prioritizes data confidentiality, data access control, and data integrity to protect you from traditional security issues like network eavesdropping, invasion and cloud-specific ones.  

Performance  

Most shared web hosts often struggle in selling this feature to clients. Shared hosting’s limited features impede its speed. You also need to be ready with frequent downtimes and outages. 

With cloud hosting, you can guarantee ultra-fast, auto-scalable and customizable platform. High traffic doesn’t budge the servers. In fact, cloud hosting is highly recommended for sites with high traffic.  

Pricing 

Sharing servers always translate to cheaper costs. So naturally, shared hosting services are the most affordable type of hosting services there is around. This is recommended for start-up businesses or for simple informational or catalogue-type of websites that don’t expect too much traffic.  

While, naturally given the difference in technology and the speed as well as the guaranteed uptime, cloud hosting would generally be significantly more costly. Essentially with cloud hosting, you pay more to get more.  

— 

Shared hosting is definitely a go to for those who are on a tight budget. If you are a new industry player, shared hosting could be a start. But if you want to advance your security, features, performance and speed, cloud hosting could do that for you.  

If you have an e-commerce site or looking to expand your website into a full system, definitely cloud hosting is the best decision to make sure that you don’t get any downtime with spikes in traffic. With cloud hosting too, you assure users of a faster loading speed on your website.  

If you are having trouble choosing which is better, we’ll gladly guide you through. Drop us a line or shoot us a message today to know more about our hosting services! For more information, visit our website at www.imanila.ph/hosting/. 

IMPORTANT REMINDER: How To Spot Spam And Phishing Emails

In the recent days, we’ve received a lot of inquiries and concerns from clients regarding spam and phishing emails.  

You’ve probably heard of “spam” or “phishing” before. On a regular basis, companies big and small often send out precautions to their employees and tips on how to avoid this. This is because most of the time, our emails are the targets of these scams and oftentimes, we don’t even know it! A single click of a button may cause big trouble if we unapologetically continue to ignore these types of emails. Here we’ve listed down some important tips to avoid your emails from being compromised and what you should do if you’ve suddenly become a victim!   

Tips on how to avoid being a victim 

By being meticulous with our emails, we can determine which are spam emails and which are phishing emails. Here’s important tips to keep in mind especially if you’re the type who likes to keep a clean inbox on a daily basis:  

  • Check your email account to see if you have a tool to filter out potential spam and phishing emails; if so, channel them into a bulk email folder. 
  • Never reveal personal or financial information in an email as this is an opportunity for criminals to get further into your email account. 
  • Always check the security of a website before entering sensitive or personal information online. If Google Chrome doesn’t allow you to enter the website, it’s probably best that you don’t!  
  • Pay attention to the website’s URL because malicious websites usually look identical and these URLs use variation in spelling or a different domain. 
  • If you’re unsure if the email is legitimate or not, try contacting the company and ask if they’re sending out emails heavily for a large amount of contacts including yours.
  • Diligently inspect the email address of the sender since some phishing emails tend to show that their email address is legitimate. 
  • Do not instantly open emails from unknown or suspicious senders. 
  • Do not open or download suspicious email attachments with suspicious filenames. 
  • Immediately delete suspicious emails and remember to empty your trash. 
  • Use strong passwords, please.
  • Ask your IT Admin to secure your computers with the latest OS versions, patches and security software.
  • If you are using email clients, make sure you are using Secure SSL/TLS settings.
  • Scan your cPanel or hosting account for malware using Virus Scanner tool.

 

What to do if you are a victim 

If you’ve fallen and have unavoidably become a victim of spam or phishing, take these security measures into action immediately to avoid future problems: 

  • When you receive emails from your bank containing activities you haven’t done, call your bank to block your card/s immediately. 
  • Change your password and other confidential information in an instant if you’ve received notifications for an account in an online service.
  • In the event that you clicked a suspicious link or downloadable malicious software, use antivirus software to scan your computer and quarantine any viruses.
  • You may contact the nearest IT professional in your company to help handle the situation and to ask for guidance on how to go about the problem.
  • Report malicious content to authorities if possible.
  • Be an online informer and spread precautionary information to everyone to avoid scams and phishing in the future. 

 

For any clarifications or concerns please do not hesitate to email our Technical Support Team at support@imanila.ph or to contact us in our mobile numbers at +63 947 427 3011 or +63 947 427 3012 or in our new trunkline number at (+632) 8876-1925. Our Technical Support Team is open to help you with your website and email concerns from Monday to Sunday from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM.  

To learn more about how to manage your cPanel and emails, visit our iManila Help Center at https://imanila.ph/help/.  

Pros and Cons of User Generated Content

In today’s modern times, we live and breathe user-generated content (UGC) whether knowingly or unknowingly. It has gotten rapid popularity due to its easy access for users. So what is it exactly? 

User-generated content is any content whether text, video, images, reviews, that are created by the people themselves instead of the brands. The brands will then share these content on their social media pages, websites, and other channels. The platforms that best utilize these are Instagram and YouTube, where users can upload photos and videos on their own profile. 

You may be asking, why do people love creating their own content? Firstly, people like to express themselves, whether it’s making a product review video or taking aesthetic shots of a certain product. Making user generated content is a good way to let them both express themselves while at the same time promoting their personal values. 

As a business owner, it’s important to understand how you can benefit from user-generated content and at the same time, the negatives that come along with it to better your marketing strategies. 

 

The Good 

Because it essentially lets users do the content, it can help reduce your content burden. Conceptualizing and creating content is a challenge for any marketer. Add that to the multitudes of available content ideas online, it is hard to come up with something distinctly original. UGC can offer a different perspective to possible customers even with it just being a simple review, or discussions among customers in blog comments sections. Congruent with this is also that you can save time and money as content takes time to create which can leave you free to do other productive things.  

Another reason is to improve your reach and engagement. Campaigns in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that involve the use of hashtags are an example. Each time users put the specific hashtag on their posts, they are able to drive engagement to their network of followers and friends. It is said that effective UGC can generate up to 7 times more engagement than content created by brands, which can trickle down to more sales. 

UGC are made by real people with faces and stories their friends and followers know, which is why it creates trust and authenticity for your brand. Data shows that users are 2.4 times more likely to view UGC as authentic compared to content by real brands which is a good credibility boost for any brand. Modern customers also prefer knowing what they’re getting before they order and that means not just check the official pages of the brand but also customer reviews. 92% of consumers trust reviews from people they know, and 70% from online reviews. 

 

The Not So Good

Just with all positives there are negatives and one of those is having negative content. You can only have so much control over the kind of experience your customer will have and not everyone will like the products or services you are selling. People tend to be biased. It is never a good thing to completely moderate over the bad content and censor them as it can always backfire. 

As mentioned there is also the need to monitor content because although anyone can express what they want freely, people can turn nasty and malicious online. This is also a method to fight back on spam, which is counterproductive to user-generated content. 

There is potential for legal issues to look out for especially as the content is posted by the users, giving them rights to it. Reposting it without the proper attribution is risky, but should you follow through with this, you should not come across any legal problems. 

 

The Verdict? 

While there are disadvantages, the advantages clearly outweigh them. UGC can give you that level of trust and authenticity your own marketing campaigns alone cannot capture while at the same time and money in creating content. Even with the possibilities of getting negative reviews, you are able to have content that is far reaching and can even spark dialogue between potential customers. 

 

It is important to know the upsides and downsides to user-generated marketing because this is a good strategy to have for any business. Unlock the benefits of user-generated content for your business- talk with our experts and see how iManila can help your brand’s digital marketing efforts. Leave us a message or email us at [email protected].

 

Choosing the Right Facebook Ad Objective for Your Business

Setting up a Facebook ad for the first time using an ads manager account will surely make your mind go fuzzy. Every stage of the setup process is crucial to making a successful campaign, especially the objective selection.

Choosing your campaign objective is the first choice you will have to make. It will determine the optimization and bidding options you will have throughout the ad creation process. It’s like dictating to the Facebook system your goals and simultaneously trusting the system to follow through and provide you with the best tools to achieve it.

So how will you know which one to choose especially if you’re a stranger to Facebook advertising? The ultimate rule is that you choose the one closest to your advertising goal.

Facebook Ads Objective

To generate better results, you must understand what each objective means.

In a nutshell, Facebook uses the data it gets from people’s online behavior and targets the ones within your chosen target audience who are most likely to engage or see your ad.

Objectives are broken down into three categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion with sub-objective options each.

Awareness

This objective allows you to generate interest in what you sell. You have two choices in this category.

  1. Brand Awareness

Use this to increase awareness. This objective will help you reach people who are most likely to pay attention to what you promote on your ad.

Instead of boosting your ad for engagements (likes, comments, shares), this is the most recommended objective to take. This does not necessarily get people to engage, click-through, or purchase.

Huge companies like Jollibee, SM, and Coca-Cola may find value in this objective, the same way other companies who are not necessarily aiming to website traffic, sales leads, or increase in purchases. This may not, however, provide the same value to small and medium-sized businesses.

  1. Reach

Use reach if you want your ad to be seen by many people around your target coverage and budget plan.

Consideration

This campaign objective category allows you to reach people who want to know more information about your brand.

  1. Traffic

This objective allows you to drive traffic outside of Facebook like inviting people to read your blog on your website, listen to a podcast, see your app, and more. Facebook will serve your ad to people who are most likely to click through.

  1. Engagement

If you want people to engage on your ad, use engagement as an objective. The engagements include reactions, likes, comments, and shares. This could also help you increase your page following, event responses, and offer claims.

Choosing engagement will also allow you to retarget people who have previously engaged on your ad for future advertising campaigns.

  1. App Installs

Use this objective if you want people to download your mobile app. 

  1. Video Views

This objective will help you promote your video and target people who are most likely to watch it. The priority is to let them see your content on the video and not to click a link or register.

This objective is also beneficial when you are planning to build a video engagement audience for retargeting purposes.

  1. Lead Generation

This objective will allow you to generate leads right within the ad. It generally invites people to register their names, contact details, and other data you would like to get from them. Additionally, the data you get are auto-populated so you can get essential information out of the sign-ups.

There are only a couple of complex steps when doing this objective. You need to use a third-party tool that should be integrated to Facebook to automatically take all data going to CRM. You can do this within the Lead Set up on Facebook. This is crucial because people would expect to know what you are offering immediately.

Conversion

This last campaign category will get people to register, download applications, purchase, or visit your store.

To optimize for Conversion, you need to have at least 15-25 conversions a week. This is only a bare minimum; the ideal number is between 50-100. This is necessary so Facebook can learn about those people who converted and target the ones who most likely to convert as well within your target coverage. Without this data, Facebook won’t be able to optimize accurately the delivery of your ads.

1.Product Catalog Sales

When you have an e-commerce store you would like to promote, use product catalog sales as an objective. This will require you to have the catalog integrated to Facebook and choose product feeds in creating a campaign.

2.Store Visits

Use this objective if you have multiple business branches and you wish to get people to visit your nearest store to purchase. You will need to set up your business locations on the ads manager before you can use this objective.

—

Choose the most appropriate objective that is aligned to your current goals. Consider your first attempt as an A/B testing so you can know if your chosen objective really works for your business and if the expected results are met.

If all this is too much to take in – don’t fret as we don’t want you to stress out on something you don’t necessarily have to deal with. Get a reliable and experience-heavy agency who can do the job for you. Here at iManila, our expertise will help you build your brand and get more people to talk about your business. Request a quote for our Social Media Management and Social Media Ads now!

Where Should You Spend Your Marketing Budget in 2020

It’s a sad reality that the year 2020 has impacted many businesses in various industries such as retail, tourism, transportation, and many more. The community quarantine has definitely limited the freedom of consumers in purchasing only their needs. Fortunately, there is a way to keep your business afloat despite the ongoing pandemic. Due to this, for the year 2020, businesses should join the hype by focusing on marketing trends and safely investing in different brand strategies to keep your business going.

Here are some areas where you should spend your Marketing Budget in 2020. 

Compelling blog content

Many people rely on blogs if they need answers to their questions. The reason why it is important to post high-quality content is to be able to capture the attention of your website visitors. Your content serves as one of your most important marketing tools and it must not be overlooked. Just as well, the competition when it comes to blog posting is very high that’s why your content should always be compelling to stand out. It is also a must to regularly update blog posts on your website to reach more audience and increase your organic traffic.  

Social Media Marketing

It is known that throughout the pandemic, social media usage has skyrocketed with more people staying at home. With that, and with the majority of online users on social media, no doubt that your brand should be on social media too! Social media marketing helps in improving brand loyalty. Now more than ever, it is the perfect time to invest in a social platform that will help you reach your target consumers and simultaneously build stronger relationships with your consumers. Here are the following areas you need to consider on Social Media Marketing: compelling content, visually enticing images, and paid advertising.

Quality Product Description

Product descriptions play a huge role in your marketing tool. If it is a dry feature your target consumers will surely lose their interest in your product. Product descriptions have many functions than characterizing a product. This answers the questions of your target market about your product. Product descriptions should evoke the right emotion and showcase the ability of the product. It is a must to provide a budget for writing marketing descriptions.

Video Marketing

Video Marketing is the perfect way to raise brand awareness and reach audiences who have an interest similar to your brand. Consumers watch videos for their entertainment and want to be a part of their interaction with the brand. To make video marketing effective, always have an objective in mind on what you want to achieve and determine the type of video that you will publish.

One way to keep your business afloat this 2020 is to invest in your Marketing Budget digitally (and wisely), in order to reach more audience and raise brand awareness online. The specifics of your business depend on your marketing strategies and investment. iManila is equipped to help your business keep going and to boost your online presence no matter what the situation is. Leave a message and let’s discuss how we can help you with your digital marketing needs.

SEO or SEM: Which Should You Prioritize?

When you hear digital marketing, two of the terms you would come across would be SEO or SEM. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) may sound alike but serve different purposes that both aid in digital marketing. 

Any digital marketing professional should know the difference the same way a business owner should know what kind of digital marketing strategy to apply for his business. Here’s what you need to know about SEO and SEM and which you should use for your business.  

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is when a search engine “crawls” content to see how effective it is in attracting traffic. Things such as website titles, keywords, and tags will be inspected so that the search engine is able to rank them in their capacity to attract organic traffic. Ranking the websites will rely on various factors, some of which are: having great quality content with good link building and keywords, if the user experience of the site can meet the end goals of the site visitors, and link patterns among sites of authority. 

Google is the primary target search engine, amassing 79% of search traffic results across the globe as searched by NetMarketShare. Other search engines in the running are Bing, Yahoo!, and Baidu, but Google takes the market lead. With 66,000 searches per second on Google, SEO becomes such a timely strategy to capitalize on. 

There are two types of SEO activities, on-page SEO and off-page SEO. The former talks about the optimization practices done such as updating the tags, publishing new content, or improving page speed while the latter talks about sharing your profile, outreach, and optimizing social media profiles. Some of the activities related to SEO include: optimizing key titles and descriptions, keyword research and analysis, content creation and optimization, and site and server optimization. 

SEO when done right, can bring in a good amount of traffic and strike up conversations with potential clients and can bring you better brand credibility to search engines that you are a valuable resource. This is a practice that is geared for the long term as changes require longer periods of monitoring, meaning if you are a relatively new site it is likely that Google would ignore you in favor of more established ones at the start. 

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella term for paid search advertising. This has a lot to do with having the right keywords and strategy to be able to appear at the top of search engines. It includes some popular SEM strategies such as: Pay-per-Click (PPC) ads, display advertising, shopping advertising, and remarketing. PPC is the most popular type of SEM and what comes to mind for most people when it is brought up. 

There are many activities that fall under SEM which includes: targeted (paid) ad campaigns, writing ad copy, making sure the ad falls into budget, and making use of indicators and metrics such as cost-per-click (CPC) or click-through-ratio (CTR). 

While SEO is more for brand credibility, SEM is great for brand recognition most especially if you are at the top of the searches. With SEM it is easy to see your ROI because you are getting the results that you paid for, and you are able to monitor the traffic and create campaigns based on that information. SEM requires extra knowledge especially with tools such as Google AdSense. 

Which Is the One for You? 

While SEO gets organic traffic, SEM gets paid traffic through ads, which makes both actually complementary as they both rely on traffic and are accessed by queries on search engines when they try to look for something. Given the consumer pattern that most customers search online before buying, a combination of both strategies can give you the best results with visibility you need in the long term. 

A website should be SEO-friendly so SEM can have a greater chance of working. Having good SEO foundations is always a good start in letting the search engines know you are a credible site.

However, if your site is fairly new, focusing on SEM would be a better choice as SEO rank building does take time. It is still important though to keep in mind that although SEO is a long-term investment, consistently working on your SEO for a long period of time will make it even harder for your competitors to outrank you organically in the long term. 

So which strategy is the right one for you? The answer really depends on your marketing goals. Do you want to drive leads and sales or generate brand awareness? A finely tuned campaign made to address your marketing goals will be of great help in getting started on digital marketing. Not sure where to begin with SEO and SEM? Leave it to the experts in digital campaigns, leave a message and let’s discuss how we can unlock all your digital marketing possibilities.