Reading this blogpost will help you to understand why SEO and SEM are so important for
any brand’s Digital Marketing Strategy, what they are, how they are structured, their
benefits, tools used on each and also their main similarities and differences.
It should take you between 5 to 10 minutes to read.
What you will learn:
1. Why are SEO and SEM so important?
2. Definitions
Search Engine
Examples
Search Engine Optimization
Benefits
On-page SEO
Off-page SEO
SEO tools
Search Engine Marketing
Benefits
SEM Tools
3. The main similarity of SEO and SEM
4. Similarities of SEO and SEM
5. Differences of SEO and SEM
6. Conclusion
7. SEO and SEM related articles
Why are SEO and SEM so important?
As you might have noticed, the importance of social networks in our society is growing
larger and larger, and let me tell you that this fact is not only because of our vanity, but
also because they provide entertainment and information to their users. This is not all
though. For the first time in our history, we are capable as individuals to have our own
channel, just like TV. We are now able to create our content, share it and broadcast it with
the world.
This last idea combined with our growing demand for the internet are the main
arguments of why Digital Marketing has become a thing in the past years. This also
explains why companies of all sizes are including platforms such as TikTok, Instagram,
Facebook and so on into their Digital Marketing Strategies: it’s a very efficient and
effective channel to get to users and consumers.
Speaking of which, SEO and SEM are two essential aspects of any Digital Strategy,
mainly because they drive lots of traffic to our websites and also help us generate leads
and conversions. Yet, they are widely mistaken and misunderstood. They are different
concepts and different techniques as well, but they share a very important similarity,
besides the “Search Engine” in their name.
Let’s start with some definitions!
Search Engine
A search engine is a software program that helps people find the information they are
looking for online using keywords or phrases. Search engines are able to return results
quickly—even with millions of websites online—by scanning the Internet continuously
and indexing every page they find. Or, more simply put, a search engine is a web-based
tool that enables users to locate information on the World Wide Web.
Search Engine Examples
● Google
● Yahoo!
● MSN Search
● Bing
● Baidu
● Yandex
● DuckDuckGo
With this definition we can state our first similarity! Both SEO and SEM are based on
Search Engines! Without them, they wouldn’t exist.
Search Engine Optimization
As you might know already, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s the
organic process of improving the visibility of a website on search engines queries. This
last bit is determined by the website’s rank and authority, two very important concepts in
the SEO world that we will leave for another day, just to improve our focus on SEO and
SEM.
Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from
site to site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index. Think
of the index like a giant library where a librarian can pull up a book (or a web page) to help
you find exactly what you’re looking for at the time.
Even though we already said it, it’s crucial to keep in mind that SEO refers to organic
results, meaning that we don’t pay search engines for this, as we do with SEM. Instead,
we apply some techniques to optimize our positioning on search engines.
SEO Benefits
● It doesn’t include any paid ads for improving website traffic.
● SEO works to target the quality of traffic for the website.
● It can improve the user experience of your website.
● Improves brand credibility and visibility.
● Works as a long-term strategy for the website.
● Your website gets more clicks than SEM.
Also, you might have encountered the concepts on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Each
has their own factors that impact on the SEO itself.
On-site SEO because it covers all the on-site techniques that can be employed for
assuring the quality of a webpage as per the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
rankings, while off-page SEO is a technique to improve the rank of your website in
SERPs. In other words, this technique is beneficial for a website to have more visibility in
the search results.
On-page SEO factors
● URL structure
● Content
● Title tag
● Internal linking
● Headings
● Meta descriptions
● Keywords
● Images
● Page performance
Off-site SEO factors
● Link building
● Social Media Marketing
● Branding
● Customer reviews
SEO Tools
● Google PageSpeed Insights
● Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
● Answer the Public
● Ahref Backlink Checker
● Ahrefs SEO Toolbar
Search Engine Marketing
On the other hand, SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and, as opposed to SEO, we
pay search engines, such as Google, to appear on placements of our choice, like Display,
Search, Discovery and so on (for the case of Google, of course).
Search Engine Marketing can be defined as the act of using paid strategies to increase
search visibility. Brands pay for ads to appear as search results on search engine results
pages (SERPs). They select keywords so that when a user searches for those terms, they
see an ad from the brand. Hence, a precise synonym of SEM is “advertising on search
engines”.
Interestingly, SEM includes SEO! This is because the landing page used on our ads has a
great impact on its own performance, meaning that a poor landing page will decrease
results, while a good landing page will increase the results.
SEM Benefits
● You can reach your target audience instantly.
● Business owners can enhance their brand awareness.
● You can target your audience by optimizing Ads.
● SEM helps to improve traffic by the visibility of the Ad
● You can easily place and maintain ads quicker and easier.
● You have to pay per action.
● SEM can quickly test and measure web page performance.
SEM Tools
● SEMRush
● Google Trends
● Keyword Planner
● Keywordtool.io
● SpyFu
SEO and SEM: the main similarity
Now that we have properly defined what SEO and SEM are, we are ready to know the
main similarity! Well, besides driving traffic to our website as we observed before, there
is an even more important aspect that they both share (In fact, traffic is a result of this).
You might be disappointed though, as it’s very basic and simple.
Without further ado, let’s say it: SEO and SEM are purely based on keywords! In fact,
without keywords there would not be such a thing as SEO. The same for SEM.
To summarize everything, here are the main similarities and differences of SEO and SEM:
Search Engine Optimization is about getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural
search results in search engines, mainly supported by attractive content, while Search
Engine Marketing refers to all the techniques that improve the positioning of our website
through paid ads on search engines for determined keywords.
Similarities of SEO and SEM
● Both are based on search engines.
● Both focus on improving the positioning of websites on search engines.
● SEO and SEM help to grow a website and improve traffic on it.
● SEO and SEM help brands to appear in the search result.
● Website owners require knowing their audience to use both SEO and SEM.
● They both require regular testing and proper optimization to stay on top.
● They both target specific audiences for specific keywords.
Differences of SEO and SEM
● Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses on organic results, while Search
Engine Marketing (SEM) focuses on paid results.
● SEM is a Pay-per-click (PPC) technique, while SEO is free.
● The search results of SEM appear to a user as an advertisement, while the results
of SEO efforts do not.
● SEM results feature ad extensions, while SEO results have featured snippets.
● SEO efforts add value to a website over time. SEM efforts are immediate and
offer no long-lasting value.
● SEO is an Inbound Marketing technique (users comes to us), while SEM is an
Outbound Marketing technique (brand pushes ads to users).
Conclusion
SEO is search engine optimization that works to improve the visibility of a website and
generates organic views. SEM is search engine marketing that also improves the
website’s visibility using ads, and website owners need to pay according to the number of
clicks on their website’s ads. Hence, there are some essential differences between SEO
and SEM.
SEO and SEM related articles
● What is a Search Engine?
● What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
● SEO Blog
● What Is Search Engine Marketing & How Does It Work?
● What Is SEM? A Guide to Paid Search Engine Marketing 7
● Top 7 Best SEM Tools For Search Engine Marketing In 2022
● Differences and Similarities between SEO and SEM
● SEO and SEM: differences and overall strategy
● The difference between SEO and SEM
● 27 Simple and Free SEO Tools to Instantly Improve Your Marketing
● 10 BEST Broken Link Checker Tools To Check Your Entire Website [2022 LIST]
● 11 Best Keyword Research Tools [2022 Review & Comparison]
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