It's a common misconception that search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are interchangeable terms. Both concepts are fundamental in digital marketing.
They help your website rank higher in search engines, but they differ in several aspects. In this article, we'll tackle those differences and help you understand how to reap the benefits of both SEO and SEM.
What you will learn
- What is SEO and why is it important?
- What is SEM and how does it fit into the digital marketing landscape?
- Crucial differences and similarities between SEO and SEM
- How to leverage SEO and SEM for business growth
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and represents the practice of improving a website so that search engines can 'see' it.
What does 'improving a website' really mean?
The process involves adding relevant keywords and links, improving content quality, and boosting user friendliness. All this while creating high quality pages on relevant topics that readers find useful.
Essentially, SEO covers everything that makes your website better and more appealing to visitors.
But, your website's high quality isn't appealing just to visitors. Google and other search engines use special algorithms that check and rank websites.
If your website ticks all the SEO boxes, the algorithms will pick it up and push it higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). That way, potential customers can find it with ease, which is the primary goal of an SEO strategy.
It's vital to point out that SEO revolves around organic traffic.
In other words, with SEO, you can't buy your way to the first page of search engines.
Instead, you need to focus on aspects that will improve your website's traffic and attract the search engines' attention.
An SEO strategy usually consists of:
- Off-page SEO. Focused on building your website's authority and involves adding relevant links to other websites. Visitors will recognize your website as trustworthy, and search engines will 'reward' you for it with a higher ranking.
- On-page SEO. Involves improving web page elements like URLs, meta descriptions, titles, and keyword optimization. It helps search engines understand your website and provides the context for appropriate ranking.
- Technical SEO. Focuses on site speed, crawlability, user friendliness, indexing, structure, and other elements. These offer a better experience to visitors and allow search engines to understand your pages.
- Content writing. Represents creating blog posts that are relevant, original, and accurate via keyword research and content plans.
What is SEM?
Search engine marketing (SEM) helps your website rank higher in search engines with the help of paid ads. The main goal is, of course, to generate traffic.
Nowadays, SEM focuses on pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
You buy these from advertising platforms like Google Ads or Microsoft Ads (previously known as Bing Ads) to ensure your website appears in highly visible locations on SERPs.
Naturally, this requires a budget for paid advertising.
Considering there's money involved, you need to tailor SEM strategies to be cost-effective.
You must identify your target audience with laser-sharp precision and perform keyword and competitor research.
With careful ad placements, you can ensure your ads appear at the right time to the right people and put your marketing budget to good use.
The beauty of SEM lies in its efficiency—you don't have to wait months to see the results.
Plus, you're in the driver's seat and can make changes on the fly to optimize your SEM strategy and PPC campaigns and drive traffic to your website.
Shopping ads, search ads, display ads, or something else—the choice is yours.
Find a strategy that is in line with your company's aims and responds to the search queries of your target audience.
6 differences between SEO and SEM
SEO and SEM have similar goals—they help you drive more traffic to your website through various strategies.
However, the two concepts aren't synonymous. Let's check out the most important SEO vs. SEM differences and understand how to use them in your marketing campaign.
1. Paid vs. organic traffic
While SEO employs organic methods to drive traffic to a website, SEM is all about paid results.
So, when a person uses a search engine to find something, they'll see paid results (SEM) at the top of the page, followed by organic results (SEO).
A good SEO strategy requires you to improve all aspects of your website, from the content to page speed and user-friendliness.
Search engine algorithms reward this effort and organically rank your website higher. This means you can't take shortcuts to make your way to the top. You need to equip yourself with patience and work hard to create a website that the algorithms will favour.
With SEM, you pay to rank your website at the top of SERPs, i.e., you generate paid traffic. You use PPC ads to ensure your website is the first thing your potential customers see when they perform a search query.
Don't get me wrong—running an ad campaign is by no means easy.
You need to research audiences, manage ad spend, and optimize pay-per-click ads to achieve a decent CPL. But many people prefer websites that appear organically in search results because they seem more genuine.
And well, people just don't have an affinity for advertising, especially online.
Therefore, it's important to be aware of and think about a potential SEO vs. SEM trust gap.
2. Differing time horizons
SEO is a marathon, and SEM is a sprint. In other words, you'll need to wait to see the results with SEO, while this isn't the case with SEM.
We've mentioned that SEO can be divided into four areas:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Content marketing
Optimizing these to ensure search engine algorithms recognize your website as trustworthy and rank it higher doesn't happen overnight.
That's why it's fair to say that SEO is a long-term strategy.
Focusing on high-quality content, backlinks, and a positive user experience isn't easy, but it's absolutely worth it.
Thinking long-term lets you create an evergreen campaign that only requires minor adjustments to keep your website ranked high.
Unlike SEO, SEM gives almost immediate results.
As soon as you launch your SEM campaign, your ads will appear in SERPs, and targeted traffic will find its way to your website.
There's no need to wait weeks or months to get things moving and monitor the progress, and while this sounds appealing, it has its drawbacks.
SEM is all about paid ads, so after you stop paying, your website's ranking will plummet.
3. Long-term benefits
The apparent advantages of SEM, which don't require as much time and effort as SEO, have blinded many people.
But, SEM isn't a long-term game.
Your SEM strategy vanishes as soon as you stop paying for ads.
At that moment, you break the paid ad spell, and your website disappears from the top positions on SERPs.
On the other hand, SEO is all about acting now to see fantastic results in the future.
If you're meticulous and thorough and understand how search engine algorithms work, your SEO campaign can become almost completely self-sustaining over time.
In the beginning, things move slowly. You spend time building links, improving the nitty-gritty of your website, and writing quality content.
Once your web pages reach top positions, the incoming organic traffic turns into revenue.
As your website gains authority, it evolves into a well-oiled SEO machine that runs itself with minimal help on your end.
4. Short-term vs. long-term results
This builds up on our previous point. SEM is about immediate but temporary results, while SEO is here for the long run.
With SEM, you have an upfront investment because you need to pay advertising platforms for your ads to work.
If you don't pay, you lose your spot at the top of the page.
SEO is technically free in the sense that you don't pay for organic search rankings.
But, that doesn't mean it's investment-free.
If you want results, you'll need to put your money into a quality campaign. This often involves hiring SEO experts, creating content and conducting keyword research.
The initial cost may be high, but the investment pays off, as your strategy will work for months and even years.
As both SEO and SEM have their pros and cons in this sense, it's important to choose your battles.
Let's say you want to promote an event or have just launched your website. SEM can be the booster shot you need.
If you're all about quality and want to build a strategy that the almighty algorithms will push forward, SEO is the way to go.
Combine SEO and SEM for the best results.
5. Return on investment
Both SEM and SEO require varying investments.
For SEM campaigns, you will pay every time a user clicks on your ad.
You can track your return on investment (ROI) by subtracting the money you spent on ads from your revenue.
You can start monitoring results as soon as the first ad is launched, so you'll be able to calculate ROI almost immediately.
When you stop investing in SEM and paid search platforms, your ROI essentially stops.
With SEO, you will need to invest initially but you won't see results right away.
SEO is a long-term game and your ROI will only become apparent after a few months.
Unlike SEM, a well-tailored SEO strategy continues to accrue value even once you stop pouring money into it.
With a little maintenance, you can continue to generate organic traffic.
This is why SEO has a higher ROI than SEM.
In fact while Profitworks estimates that SEO has an average ROI of 175%, paid Google ads have an ROI of 100%.
6. SERP listings
The final SEO vs. SEM difference is the visual difference in SERP listings.
With organic search results (SEO), your website appears 'naturally' at the top of the page.
Websites that rank highly thanks to a good SEO strategy look visually the same—you don't see any letters or signs next to them.
With paid search results in Google, you can see Sponsored written in bold above the listing.
With this label, Google creates a visual distinction.
Thanks to this, you can immediately tell which websites took advantage of search engine advertising and who focused on organic traffic.
Many people are more prone to trust organic search results than paid ads.
Why?
Because if a website ranks higher organically, it often conveys a more genuine recommendation.
A sponsored label, on the other hand, indicates that a website invested in its ad campaign but may not have a worthy product since it's pay to play.
SEM and SEO: What are the similarities?
We've discussed the SEO vs. SEM differences, but let's take a step back and see what makes these two terms similar.
Both improve website visibility
Both SEO and SEM help you spread the word about your website by making it more visible in search results.
Whether you're reaping the benefits of organic search (SEO) or paid search (SEM), it's undeniable that both can be very effective if you know how to use them.
Both drive quality traffic toward your website
SEO and SEM help your website rank higher in SERP, so consequently, more people visit it.
This increased traffic means you have better chances to sell your product or service, share relevant information, promote an event, or get your visitors to take certain actions.
Both require continuous testing and optimization
It would be amazing to launch an SEO or SEM campaign, set it up for success, and sit back and relax while the campaign runs itself, wouldn't it?
But the reality is different.
Both SEO and SEM require testing and optimization to ensure maximum success.
You need to keep an eagle eye on your campaigns to spot areas of improvement and work on them to enhance efficiency and functionality.
Key takeaways
- SEO focuses on organic search results, while SEM revolves around paid search results
- SEO offers compounding value in the long run, while SEM has immediate but temporary value
- SEO has a higher long-term ROI
- Both SEO and SEM aim to enhance website visibility and drive quality traffic
- Using both can be effective in a well-crafted digital marketing strategy
Conclusion
We can say that SEO and SEM use different means to get to the same finish line—ensuring your website gets more visibility and traffic. While there are many SEO vs. SEM differences, it's vital to emphasize that they aren't mutually exclusive.
In fact, a quality digital marketing campaign reaps the benefits of both. Learn the ins and outs of both, ensure you're using them in the right context, and you'll be able to grow your website's ranking and reach.
