These three terms have been thrown around a a lot, and often used alongside each other. SEO and SEM have often been used interchangeably. So what's the deal with these concepts? How are they alike, and how exactly are they different Popular SMM .

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO refers to the techniques and strategies used to increase the likelihood of a website appearing on search engine results, namely as close to the top of that list as possible.

Search engines prowl the Web, taking notes of everything they encounter. When a user types something into the search engine, making a search query, the engine's algorithms spit out a list of what it thinks are relevant results.

In this situation, search is the deciding factor. It holds the position of strength. All a website can do is insure its content is sound, good, and proper and trust that the search engine will recommend it whenever appropriate. But in today's online market-place there is lots of competition, so it's not even enough to just make the list; a website has to stay near the top. Anything too far down the list of results and that website might as well have never been displayed in the first place. Being buried on page three or later is akin to being completely out of sight, and subsequently out of mind.

So SEO consists of ways a website can make itself as attractive as possible to search algorithms, so that when they output their results the website is as visible as possible. These techniques consist: