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“Stick to the basics and do it very well.”Did you miss this month’s episode? Or maybe you’re just looking for a short memory refresher? Either way, welcome to the Spark Compass Blog! A place where we summarize the key takeaways from every episode and share some memorable behind the scenes moments. This month’s episode featured Colton Jung, a Digital Lead Generator working for Launch Lab, who helped us explore all things search engine optimization and search engine marketing!SEO & SEM – What are they and why do they matter?In a nutshell, SEO (aka search engine optimization) is the act of setting up a website in such a way that Google understands how its content connects with customer search queries. Lots of things play into how Google analyzes the information on your website such as content headers, meta descriptions, and relevant keywords. So understanding how SEO works is critical to the improvement and ranking of your website. SEM, otherwise known as search engine marketing, is a supporting piece in the process of optimization. When you pay for SEM advertisements, you’re also paying to take up space in Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and other avenues. This can be a great way of ensuring your website gets displayed in front of your target audience. Colton mentions that a rule of thumb is establishing good SEO before moving into paid SEM. Since an optimized website is the baseline (and potential first point of contact for a consumer) you want to make sure that it can be found organically and has all the content that a consumer might be looking for before you start promoting your site. First steps when using SEO?Colton suggested two things everyone should know about when first starting out with SEO. The first is to understand how title tags and meta descriptions work. These are the actual content displayed within a Google search. Since it’s often the first thing people see when a website is displayed, that makes them very important. Title tags let Google and the user know what that website link is all about. The meta description would be the supporting sub-text, a short description outlining what someone can expect to see if they click on your website link. We’ve linked some helpful articles if you want to learn more about title tags and meta descriptions. The second step is image optimization. In short, this is the process of shrinking the file size of images on your website. This doesn’t affect the look or quality of the image, but it will improve the overall speed of your website. If your website has a slow loading speed, potential customers will return to their Google search results to try again elsewhere. First steps when using SEM?Once you’re confident that your website will answer any questions potential customers might have about your business, it’s time to consider SEM. When creating paid ads, it’s important that they represent your brand, your competitive landscape, and honestly describe the product/service you’d be promoting. There’s different layers to SEM but at the core of it, you should always represent your business in a way that is authentic to the brand. Does SEO give immediate results?No! It’s a common misconception that SEO provides immediate results. SEO is an investment. It’s a long-term strategy that comes to fruition over time and requires habitual input from your end. Colton suggests following the pattern of implementation, analysis, and adjusting. Implementation - Launch your website optimizationsAnalysis - Are these changes having the desired effect? Why or why not?Adjusting - Tweaking areas that need improvement SEO isn’t a short-term strategy. It’s a business investment that requires constant monitoring and optimization to keep afloat in the highly competitive search engine environment. Common SEO/SEM mistakesPart of the learning process is making mistakes. So here’s a list of the top three most common mistakes business owners make when investing in SEO and SEM:Automatically Generated SEO When you use a website like Shopify or Wix, placefiller SEO is generated automatically. While this can be a great starting point, the placefiller isn’t always optimized for your business and won’t have the same result as writing it yourself. Remember that a key part of SEO is authenticity and accurate representation of your brand, and who can create customized content better than the person who knows the business best? Insufficient or Inaccurate ContentIf you don’t write detailed title tags and meta descriptions, then you run the risk of encountering this common mistake. If your website doesn’t have enough content, Google won’t be able to link it with search queries. If the information you do have is inaccurate or misleading, then you risk not being ranked at all for future searches. Image OptimizationAs we mentioned in earlier sections, not optimizing your images can drastically slow the loading speed of your website and ...