SEO and SEM: What’s the difference?

Improving your brand’s visibility in search results is a critical part of any digital marketing campaign. But there’s more than one way to do this.

Understanding the various options, seeing how they relate to each other and knowing about the differences are essential first steps on the road to search marketing success.

One of the most common tools for boosting your performance is search engine optimisation, or SEO. For many businesses – no matter what size or sector they’re in – this is the bread and butter of their online marketing, so it’s vital you’re familiar and comfortable with these practices.

However, you may also hear about search engine management, or SEM, when looking for solutions in this area. This may look and sound similar, and occasionally the two terms are even used interchangeably, but in fact, they are two distinct aspects of a good search marketing strategy and should not be confused.

So what do you need to know about SEO and SEM before you can start incorporating them both into your marketing mix?

What is SEO?

SEO is all about improving your brand’s positioning in organic search results. Ideally, you want your website to be at the very top of Google’s search engine results pages whenever a user conducts a search using relevant terms. It’s not easy to achieve, but the benefits are immense.

There are a range of factors to consider as part of this. Using the right keywords on your landing pages has long been a major focus in this area, but while this is undoubtedly important, it’s far from the only thing you need to be doing to see success in SEO.

Other aspects to think about include making sure you have high-quality content throughout your site, are using all the correct metadata, tagging and other technical aspects, and have strong links both to and from your site to other relevant pages across the web.

What is SEM?

SEO is all about what you can do to improve organic results. SEM, on the other hand, takes a wider view. It typically includes all the organic aspects of SEO, but also adds paid search – usually pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – to boost your brand’s visibility.

There are many elements to a good PPC campaign that will need to be included in an SEM strategy, from initial research through to tailoring your content creation and bidding to ensure you’re targeting the most relevant users. Understanding best practices for online advertising is essential if you’re to see a positive return on investment for these efforts.

This includes everything from what keywords you should be bidding on to how to craft adverts to raise their Quality Score. It should also cover data analytics to uncover what improvements can be made. 

The differences between SEO and SEM

The most obvious differences between SEO and SEM are the time and money required. If you’re relying solely on SEO for your search marketing, this is often a highly cost-effective approach and doesn’t require a large upfront financial investment. However, the trade-off to this is that it will take time to bear fruit. 

On the other hand, if you need a quick boost to your brand’s profile – for instance, if you have a new product or time-limited campaign to promote – using SEM to manage paid advertising can be a better option. It’s likely to cost more, but it offers the potential for much quicker results.

Does your search marketing strategy need both?

If you want to use SEO and SEM together, there’s no reason not to do so. In fact, as SEO can be considered a subsection of SEM, an effective strategy is likely to include elements of both.

Using both SEO and SEM techniques gives you the best of both worlds. Paid search advertising helps get you noticed quickly and allows you to focus traffic on key areas, whereas SEO helps boost your website’s authority and sets you up well for the long term.

Regardless of whether you’re pursuing an SEO or SEM strategy – or both – there are a few things they have in common that you’ll need to be aware of. Number one on this list is the importance of good keyword research. Knowing what terms potential users are searching for and identifying any gaps you can exploit is critical, whether you’re formulating a paid bidding strategy or an organic SEO campaign.

Leveraging SEO and SEM tactics effectively offers a range of benefits, including better brand visibility, higher website traffic and, ultimately, more conversions. Get it right and you’ll set yourself up well for years to come.