Understanding SEO and SEM
Digital marketing is a very broad industry which means that there are several different approaches that technicians can implement during a campaign. After all, ethical and white-hat methods are the priority of any budding search engine optimiser. Here at SEO Enterprise, we often find that some readers do not understand what SEO and SEM actually are, which is why we’ve decided to set the record straight once and for all. Read on to find out more…
What is SEM?
Search Engine Marketing, often abbreviated to SEM, is the process of directing traffic to a website through the use of purchased advertisements. It tends to cover a range of different marketing avenues including PPC (Pay per Click), CPC (Cost per Click) and generic paid search engine advertisements as the focus of SEM is to increase a websites presence and impact in the SERPS.
What is SEO?
SEO is an initialism that stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it is a branch of internet marketing that uses a range of ethical methods in order to increase the organic traffic that a website obtains. This is different from SEM as websites undergoing SEO are optimised for the search engine in order to encourage natural ranking increases in the SERPs without the use of paid advertisements.
The Similarities
Although SEO and SEM are two very different areas of the internet marketing industry, they do share a handful of similarities. For example, they are both operated in accordance with a budget, however, the use of funds can be easily tracked with PPC methods because the ‘money pot’ is depleted every time a user clicks on a website whereas SEO budgets are much harder to define. In addition to this, both SEO and SEM tend to optimise their campaigns for Google, the most popular search engine on the internet.
From mobile marketing to content marketing, it is important that a well-executed digital marketing campaign makes full use of every relevant avenue. After all, content plays a very big role with SEO as the search engine algorithms tend to favour websites with pages with a user focused philosophy and the ability to deliver high-quality, relevant and original information. To find out more information about the differences between SEO and SEM, get in contact with a member of the SEO Enterprise team today!
