SEO vs SEM

Lately we've been hearing that there is some confusion between SEO and SEM (also known as AdWords or Google Ads). With Google Ads management, KUKUI creates groups and keywords (positive as well as negative), which appear as ‘Sponsored’ in search results. This is also known as PPC or pay-per-click, which means there is a charge when an end user clicks. The ROI with Google Ads is determined by the spend on the ads against the repair orders that were closed by customers that came to the website because of ads.

With regards to SEO, Google’s organic rankings (those that come below sponsored ads) are determined using a proprietary algorithm developed by Google, which is almost constantly evolving. However, it is known that for Organic SEO, unique content is critical. When clients come onboard with KUKUI, we will migrate any unique content from a previous website, if available. If not, we will provide ‘stock’ or non-unique content. These pages are stock, meaning all KUKUI shops that do not have unique content may have these pages. They do not and are not meant to assist with rankings, in fact having them exposed will cause issues with rankings.

This is why any stock pages are “disallowed”, meaning not exposed for crawling and indexing by search engines in order to not cause damage to rankings. They are provided so that shops and their customers or prospects are able to see the relevant services and vehicles that a shop provides service for. The focus for these are User Experience and information, not SEO. When a concern exists about SEO, we recommend unique content, which can be purchased per page, or as a part of an upgrade to our Premium package. Shops are also welcome to provide their own content, which we will optimize prior to uploading to the site.

One key element in this page surrounds what keywords KUKUI uses in its websites. Forcing keywords into pages is a known black-hat SEO technique referred to as ‘keyword stuffing.’ Google has documented that it will penalize black hat SEO techniques, including keyword stuffing. As such, KUKUI recommends content be written according to Google’s recommendations, which is by humans for humans. Any content service provided by KUKUI is taken using this approach.