You may think that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are more or less the same things, but they’re not. Though belonging to the same category, these two have different functions.
Here’s a breakdown of what they are and how do they work together.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy. It refers to the processes by which the search engines scrutinize and ‘crawl’ content to see its effectiveness to attract traffic. It studies various things on a website, including keywords, tags, links etc, and ranks the website accordingly for organic traffic. Search engines mostly focus on quality content on the website, frictionless user experience and link building.
Search Engine Marketing
SEM is a technique that includes different types of paid search advertising. SEM is the type that is shown as Google ads and appears on the top of the search engine results page. SEM-based advertising tactics can include targeted and paid ad campaigns, ad copy with selective keywords, applying key performance indicators such as CTR and CPC. Etc.
SEO vs. SEM
SEO at times also includes SEM underneath it. However, SEM is solely about paid advertising. Where SEM is about getting traffic through paid ads, SEO is more about getting the traffic organically and then monitor and analyze it. With SEO, the website is shown to everyone, whereas with SEM, it is shown to a selected targeted audience. SEO takes its time to generate results, but SEM can show results instantly.
How Do They Work Together
Both of the practices are dependent on keywords in order to drive traffic to the website. Despite the techniques used for the both vary; SEO and SEM are both focused on bringing in traffic and marketing the product and/or service.
People usually tend to search a product before buying, hence having a strong search presence can help the businesses and using a strategy combining both SEO and SEM can increase the website visibility, get high-quality traffic, and improve the conversion rates.