Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing may appear confusing in the beginning. Many people still think both are the same. Are they?
Their interchangeable terms often make it’s understanding confusing.
In our previous blog, we have discussed SEO and how it is important. Let’s find out how it is different from SEM and what role both SEO and SEM plays in marketing.span>
Search Engine Marketing(SEM), on the other hand, is internet marketing used for increasing the site’s visibility through advertising and organic search engine results. SEO thus becoming a part of SEM helps you increase visibility in search engines.
In order to get more search engine visitors, it can also use other methods like PPC advertising.
SEM incorporates SEO which adjusts or rewrites the content of the website and its site architecture to achieve higher rankings in search engine results pages.
What are the Components of SEO?
The rules and algorithms after which SEO works keeps updating, however, the thing that remains constant are its two major components – on-page and off-page. These are the two important activities SEO is comprised of.
1. Off-page SEO (off-site SEO)
The off-page technique is used for improving the position of a website in search engine result pages (SERPs). It is used for promoting your website for the purpose of ranking it higher in the search results.
Off-page SEO includes link buildings to attract and acquire high-quality backlinks from other websites. It manages the local listings and directory profiles. When a particular brand’s website is linked with many other websites it reflects that the brand’s website as trustworthy and reliable. Resulting, an increase in your search engine rankings.
Off-page SEO helps you attract the attention for social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, etc. Using high-quality content which is helpful to target the audience like blog articles helps you establish your authority resulting in increased organic website traffic, chances for inbound links and more conversions.
2. On-page SEO (on-site SEO)
On-page includes activities of optimizing individual web pages to get higher ranking and earn more relevant traffic. It helps you optimize individual pages of the website to target specific keywords.
Unlike off-page which refers to links and other signals, it works on the content and HTML source codes of pages. Strategies on which on-page runs are keyword research, content creation, and keyword optimization. It helps search engines understand the content of the page to give it further ranking.
The search engine looks for signals to understand what the page is all about which includes website structure, SEO keywords, title optimizations, headings, internal links, image SEO, structured data markup and other techniques. All these help in improving the usability and credibility of a website.
Recommended Reading: Why Outsource SEO Services In India?
Search Engine Marketing
SEM involves the process of getting traffic either from the free search engines else from the paid search ads. That is, there are two ways to attract attention either you do it organically else you have to do it using the paid campaigns. It works on two basic things – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search Advertising (PSA).
Through paid advertisements, SEM can earn search visibility for websites. These advertisements in common terms are known as pay-per-click ads. You can also use other SEM activities like cost-per-click (CPC) ads, paid search ads and paid search advertising. Relevant ad copy and keywords help you target potential customers and buyers. Giving your business extra opportunities to increase the visibility of web pages, landing pages, blog articles and more.
Why is SEM Important
Before moving ahead, let’s understand how it is beneficial for a website and for people doing online business.
Let’s take an example, whenever you’re asked to search for anything or want to find something the first thing you’ll do is look for it in search engine. Majority of the public use Google as a search engine.
After clicking on the search button what you expect is either a particular answer to your question else a list of sources mentioned separately.
Studying the general human tendency they’ll end up their search with the first five results. Search engines work hard to show up the content or material that is beneficial for users.
However in order to detect and show you the best result search engines works hard. They develop the number of complex algorithms to take variables into account before deciding which website to show at the top.
Therefore, if you want your website to reach a maximum number of people out there you must focus on the ranking of your website.
Benefits of SEM
- SEM search ads will generate traffic to your site, even when SEO and other marketing tactics fluctuate.
- SEM offers brands and companies a chance to make more money from their marketing campaigns.
- It is an important conversion driver for marketing campaigns as the paid ads are commonly linked to conversion-focused landing pages.
- It helps you increase awareness about the brand.
- SEM helps greatly in finding the best result for local marketing.
- SEM is the fastest-to-launch traffic strategy which helps you generate immediate results for your campaigns.
- With the help of search ads, it becomes easier to generate traffic even when SEO and other marketing tactics fluctuate.
- Ads are easy to appear in the top search lists.
- It is great for doing mobile marketing.
Difference Between SEO and SEM
| SEO | SEM |
| It is a part of SEM. | Superset of SEO, it is used for traffic generation. |
| It optimizes a website page content and visibility to gain natural ranking on SERP. | SEM promotes websites to increase visibility and traffic in SERPs. |
| SEO is an organic strategy. | SEM is a paid strategy. |
| It is controllable. | It is doubtful and uncertain. |
| SEO is inexpensive | SEM is expensive |
| Visible to anyone. | Visible to select the targeted audience. |
| SEO result takes time. | The results are immediate. |
| It provides value to your website over time. | Do not benefit you over time. |
| Higher click-through rate. | Lower click-through rate. |
SEO or SEM Which is Better?
In order to build a good online presence, it is necessary to practice effectual search engine optimization. SEM requires organic SEO to get enough success. It helps consumers drive to the specific products they were looking for. Therefore you can easily say SEO and SEM work hand in hand.
If you want SEM to bring good investment for your business it is necessary you have good SEO running in place.
No doubt PPC is a good option to bring immediate visibility but it would not be a good choice to strictly go with PPC and not opt SEO.
It is a matter of personal choice, no matter where you are in the process of online business, be sure to use local SEO to fully optimize your website before making large investments in paid advertising. If you like, you could rent a website that is already visible on search engines and well optimized to let your marketing efforts off to a good start. You can look more into Rank and Rent for Babies to see if it’s worth doing that for you.
Must Read: Things To Consider Before You Outsource SEO
Conclusion
If you wish to guide yourself more into digital marketing and learn to process SEO and SEM for your website feel free to contact Nimap Infotech. We have a highly qualified and experienced team of digital marketers at our firm. With smart contact rank your business website using the most valuable means without spending too much.
