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What are the main differences between SEO and SEM?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has often been thought of as a component of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), including both paid and organic tactics. Nowadays, SEM is more typically used to refer exclusively to paid search.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is an organic search strategy
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is defined as
“the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial or natural search results.”
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is a paid search strategy.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is
“the process of gaining website traffic by purchasing ads on search engines.”
For the best results, it’s important that BOTH strategies should be a part of your company’s online search marketing arsenal.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Overview
SEO strategies need to continually evolve to keep up with Google’s ever-changing algorithms. But one thing is constant: SEO is made up of on-page and off-page (i.e., “on-site” and “off-site”) activities as its two main pillars.
Elements of On-Page SEO
- Optimized meta data, including the page title tag, meta description, heading tags, and image ALT tag, which incorporate target keywords
- Well-written and optimized page copy through strategic keyword research
- Simple and well-formatted page URLs with selective keywords
- Optimized page speed
- Social sharing integration within your content
Elements of Off-Page SEO
- Link building to attract and obtain quality inbound links (these backlinks help make up the majority of off-page SEO)
- Social signals (e.g., increasing traffic to a website from social media sharing)
- Attracting attention from social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg and Stumbleupon
Create valuable, high-quality content that your target audience will find useful such as blog articles and web page copy. This helps establish your authority over time and results in increased organic website traffic, more opportunities for inbound links and, most importantly, more conversions.
Pay attention to these on-page and off-page tactics to ensure your landing pages, web copy and blog articles are optimized for search.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Overview
SEM involves buying search visibility through paid advertisements on search engines like Google, Facebook or LinkedIn, and are commonly referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) ads. There are many other terms used for SEM activities including cost-per-click (CPC) ads, paid search ads and paid search advertising.
PPC advertising allows you to target potential buyers through relevant ad copy and keywords that match their search queries. PPC ads show up in search engine results pages (SERPs) next to organic listings. They give your business the opportunity to increase the visibility of its web pages, landing pages, blog articles and more.
Google AdWords is currently the most popular search engine platform for hosting ads, but you should consider other opportunities too, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Bing or Yahoo search ads.
Key Strategies for Successful SEM
- Launch ad campaigns with a specific audience (e.g., geographic, industry, etc.) in mind
- Create ad groups that consist of target keyword variations
- Write relevant ad copy using those selected keywords
- Set an ad budget
- Monitor metrics like clicks, impressions, click through rates and average cost-per-click
There are other considerations when launching and maintaining an effective paid search ad campaign, but these five are especially important for the basis of any successful campaign.
If you want to ramp up your SEM efforts to complement organic search engine optimization, take a look at our managed PPC ad packages.
So, Which is Better? Should I Use SEO or SEM?
Experts on either side could argue that one is more effective than the other. However, the CMYK [SEO] Team view high-quality SEO as a foundation for high-quality SEM, and for the best results, both strategies should be implemented.
When to Focus on SEO
SEO lays the groundwork for SEM through well-optimized content that prospects and customers find helpful. Without landing pages, web pages and blog content optimized for search, your SEM efforts will fall flat due to poor quality, and gaining visibility in SERPs will end up being extremely difficult as a result.
Organic SEO is less costly over the long term and helps establish search credibility. But it’s important to maintain it with the consistent creation of quality content and social media sharing. In other words, you need to have something worth searching for.
When to Focus on SEM
If you are just launching your first website and creating your initial online footprint to promote your product or service, then you’ll likely need immediate visibility in search until you build up your organic credibility.
With a strategic PPC campaign, you’ll be able to achieve this. What you shouldn’t do, though, is rely strictly on PPC over the long-term while ignoring organic SEO. You still need to create great content that visitors will want to engage with once they get to your website.
Evaluate what’s best for your specific needs, but make sure you fully understand the differences between SEM and SEO and how you’ll maintain your efforts going forward.
For a successful, profitable, integrated SEO campaign, both SEO and SEM are necessary and should be part of your inbound digital marketing strategy.
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