Key differences between SEO and SEM

Published 02/02/2022 by Ingenuity & Solutions in SEO Consulting - Last updated on February 02, 2022

Key differences between SEO and SEM

Suppose you are looking for a formula that allows you to increase your web traffic to bring more visitors and potential customers to your virtual store or business. In that case, you should indeed include the following two variables in the said formula: SEO and SEM.

But do you know what SEO and SEM mean? Have you heard about their importance? Do you know how you can use these two essential pillars of digital marketing in your business? In addition to answering these questions, we want to invite you to read this article to understand some of the strategies you can use if you're going to increase the visibility and traffic of your virtual business.

What is SEO?

SEO can be described as the various strategies and tactics we use to ensure that search engines access our website and improve our chances of being found.

The ultimate goal of successful SEO is to get a good ranking in search engine results like Google, Bing, or Yahoo! Because users focus their attention on the first search results, it is essential to ensure our presence at the top of the rankings to attract the largest number of visits.

The higher the organic growth in the results of a search, the greater the chances that a user will visit you.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consists of the implementation of different actions on our website such as content optimization (content SEO), web optimization (on-page SEO), and obtaining links from other websites (link-building), to improve our position in the search engines, for specific search terms.

What is SEM?

The keyword to understanding the meaning of SEM is marketing. SEM refers to an online marketing strategy that aims to take over the paid spaces offered by a search engine to gain visibility and attract traffic from a specific target market.

But which payment spaces are we talking about? In simple terms, we refer to the banner ads that you come across when you search a search engine like Google.

SEM is all the paid campaigns that we can carry out in search engines or other websites. It is a perfect way to generate visibility to our website quickly.

Do you need SEO or SEM?

When we begin to handle these concepts that are so decisive in digital marketing, we usually ask ourselves, is one position better than another? What strategy should I focus on?

The reality is that both SEO and SEM are equally helpful, and neither supplants the other. Depending on the nature of your company or website, you may have to give more or less importance to one or another positioning. But just like in investments and portfolio management, you have to know how to diversify. It is always advisable to combine both forces.

As expected, each positioning has advantages and benefits. For example, achieving good visibility through SEO allows users to see us as a quality website since we appear in their search engine without the advertising tag.

On the other hand, if we need to test and make changes to our advertising messages, SEM is much more flexible than SEO, which usually involves a slower and sustained work and optimization process over time.

What is better for my business?

It is a complex question and is largely determined by several factors:

the competition

The sector

the niche

The profit margin (which will determine the maximum acceptable cost per acquisition)

So, to answer it, it is necessary to carry out a complete study, not only of your website but also of other companies in your sector, to determine the most intelligent way to make your digital marketing strategy sustainable and profitable.

In an ideal case, it would be best to work with SEO and SEM strategies since they complement each other. Although they have significant differences, they also have points in common that must be worked on within the web. Since its good optimization will improve not only the general positioning of the web but also the quality of the ads, they will optimize the investment.

We are talking about rich snippets (which improve the appearance of organic and paid results), microformats, meta descriptions, URLs, and, most significantly, keyword iteration.

Keywords are the basis of both strategies, SEO and SEM. A correct iteration of them will improve the quality of the ads while making our website more relevant to its relational terms. Working on the web's semantics, we improve the SEO and SEM possibilities for each URL.

Differences between SEO and SEM

We can say that SEO is a process to obtain traffic through natural search results. On the contrary, SEM is a strategy that consists of gaining traffic through purchasing advertisements in search engines. Although they are different things, SEO and SEM seek to achieve the same goal: grab traffic!

Timing of results: With a well-planned SEM strategy, the results are obtained immediately, in the short term, and with the SEO routine, which requires effort, the results arrive in the medium and long term, being maintained over time. Investment In SEM, you pay for each user who clicks on an ad. The more clicks, the higher the cost, and the greater the chances that your visitors will purchase on your website. Now with SEO, you don't pay per click. But this does not mean that you do not have to pay anything because getting your website to the top of the search results takes time, dedication, and a lot of work, of which you have to foresee a sustainable investment.

Keywords: With SEM, you can select all the keywords you need, while with SEO, the number of keywords is limited since you must respect Google's algorithms and the content of your website.

Content: To achieve organic positioning with SEO, the content is presented in a longer and quality format. In campaigns with SEM ads, the content is more direct and has a reduced number of characters focused on commercial objectives and high impact.

Visibility: With SEM, you can generate traffic with ads that appear on YouTube, apps, social networks, and on Google. You can position yourself at the top and to the right of search results. Visibility with SEO strategies, which occupy the central part, is not guaranteed since it is conditioned by how you have outlined your techniques and algorithm updates.

Segmentation

SEO does not allow segmentation at the local level. In principle, we could only segment locally if we include specific keywords with the name of the city, town, etc. This seems to be changing since Google (with its algorithms) is increasingly offering local results based on our location.

However, in SEM, we can select the cities where our campaigns are displayed. We can focus all our investment and direct our movements to a specific area. Segment based on location, interests, demographic data.

These are the main differences between SEO and SEM, although we could highlight some more.

However, we want to leave you with a summary of the main advantages and disadvantages of using one or another web positioning strategy.

At Ingenuity and Solutions, we will help you with your company's digital presence. We can also advise you on the best strategies for positioning your brand through understanding tools such as SEO. If you need help with digital marketing, contact us. If you are interested in more content, do not forget to visit our blog.

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