What is SEO?

SEO is the digital marketing strategy to boost the organic traffic and brand visibility of your website on search engines. Its about fulfilling the needs of the users by creating relevant and high-quality content. SEO typically has 4 steps – Link building, technical SEO, keyword research, and content creation.

What is SEM?

SEM is the process of using paid advertisements to increase search engine visibility in SERPs. There was a time when this term was used for both organic and paid search activities. But now, it is used exclusively for paid search advertising. Sometimes it is also called PPC.

SEO vs SEM: How are they different?

The ultimate goals of SEO and SEM might seem similar but they have a few key differences that you should know. What are they? Here is the list –

Different targets

Besides having the same goal, the SEO and SEM focus differently on achieving them. SEO pays attention to enhance the webpages for higher search engine rankings. On the other hand, SEM focuses on paid advertisements to reach that goal.

Marketers use SEO best practices to evaluate multiple criteria favored by the search engine algorithms that are –

• Title tags – Title of the page having the main keyword.
• Content quality – Well-written and optimized content.
• Site speed – Ensure to have the fastest site speed as the algorithm prioritizes that.
• Mobile-friendliness – Many people prefer their mobiles to conduct searches. That is why it is necessary that your website is mobile-friendly.

 While SEM uses these two paid advertising techniques –

• Shopping ads – Shopping advertisements take the PPC model into account. It leverages Google Shopping to redirect users to an organization’s e-commerce product page. It builds the audience by including the image, price, and title of the product in the advertisements.
• Search ads – Companies or brands can focus on certain keywords to link their page automatically. This allows them to appear on SERPs for those keywords. Search advertisements use the PPC model, in which users have to pay a set fee every time someone clicks on that ad.

SEO costs more

The next difference between SEO and SEM is that both techniques cost different amounts of money. SEM advertisements cost you per engagement. But if you want better results over a period of time, you need to invest in SEO. Becoming a leading brand by improving your SEO requires you to hire SEO professionals and content writers. You have to wait for a few months or sometimes even years to see the results you are aiming for. That being said, SEO comes with high upfront costs.

Once you are satisfied with the results of your organic visibility, your website can acquire traffic for free. That means SEO is highly profitable if you are thinking for the long term.

While, in SEM, you can witness instant results.

But here is the catch: When you are out of the marketing budget, it tends to drop the organization’s visibility and take it to where it was before the launch of the campaign.   

SEO takes longer to give you results.

You have to sit back and wait for anywhere between 3 months to 2 years to see the results using SEO strategy. On the other hand, SEM has the power to give you results within a few hours. With umpteen people using search engines to satisfy their intellect, the digital marketing industry has become more competitive than ever before. And attaining top rank in the search engines means you should have a content strategy and, a link-building strategy to ensure a positive user experience. Everything mentioned takes time. When it comes to SEM, you start seeing the results as soon as you launch the campaign. Just keep the target audience in mind and build high-quality landing pages for your ads, and you are good to go.