SEO Vs SEM: What's the Difference?

SEO Vs SEM: What’s the Difference?

With over 3.5 billion searches per day on Google, search marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools businesses have. As a business, optimizing for search is the best way to leverage this tremendous opportunity to reach out and connect to your target audience. Search optimization can help drive website traffic, attract attention, and grow your business.

While SEO and SEM both sound like the same thing; these are two very different strategies for increasing visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). To develop a clear and effective search optimization strategy, you need to understand the difference between these two different strategies. This post will give you a clear understanding of the definition and value of each.

Understanding SEO and SEM

Search engines such as Google have two categories of search results, organic and paid. Organic results are those that search engines consider the best and most relevant to the search query. On the other hand, paid results show when brands pay for ads and often appear at the top or side of SERPs, often denoted with the word Ad and sometimes in a different colour to help users differentiate them from organic results.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is where you optimize your website to get higher rankings in the organic results. SEM or Search Engine Marketing uses both paid and organic methods to gain visibility and drive website traffic. This is often referred to as PPC or pay per click advertising. While SEO focuses 100% on ranking in the organic results, SEM’s goal is to incorporate both PPC and SEO to drive traffic from search engines.

Benefits of SEO

Increased Trust and Credibility

People trust Google to provide them with the best and most relevant search results and, in most cases, rarely go past the first page of results. Potential customers looking for your products and services will find your site more credible and trust it more easily when they can find it on the first page of organic search results. And since users tend to ignore sponsored ads, appearing at the top of organic results can help your site stand out.

Better ROI

Unlike sponsored or paid ads, SEO doesn’t require you to pay for clicks or impressions. This doesn’t mean SEO is free; you’ll still have to invest money and time to get your desired results. But it’s much cheaper than traditional marketing. What’s more, SEO traffic takes time to dry out, so after you accomplish the initial hard work to rank well, you’ll enjoy a return on investment for much longer.

High-Quality Traffic

SEO also helps you earn more high-quality traffic to your website. Top positions on the SERPs receive the most clicks and impressions, so ranking higher can result in more traffic for your site. If you manage to rank for the right keywords, you’ll be able to drive more targeted, ready-to-buy traffic to your site.

Benefits of SEM

Reach Top of Page

One of the most significant benefits of paid search ads is that you can attract your target audiences by positioning your site on top of the search results page. And if your ad is well-crafted and relevant to the keyword, optimized bidding, and appealing ad message, you’ll have better visibility and relevant website visits.

More Control Over Results

SEM is a highly effective means for brands to reach specific prospects based on their search intent. With Search Engine Marketing campaigns, you can directly address potential clients using the right keywords, demographic criteria, geographic location, and even the exact time or days of the week when they are active online. You can adjust and test every small detail of your ad to find what works and what doesn’t and customize every single element of the ad to make it more promotional and persuasive and make sure you get an impressive click-through rate.

Increased Brand Visibility

Since paid ads appear at the top of SERPs, above the organic results, you get more visibility. Whether your targeted audience clicks on your ad or not, they will not miss seeing it. Getting seen by people interested in your brand or niche helps boost your visibility and drive relevant traffic to your website.

SEO Vs. SEM: Which is Right for You?

Both SEO and SEM can help you increase visibility, create brand awareness, and drive traffic. Which strategy you choose will depend on your marketing and business goals. If you want to create a robust online presence, incorporating SEO and SEM into your digital marketing plan can give you the best of both worlds. At Adaptive Marketing, we provide customized digital marketing campaigns designed to help businesses get more leads. Contact us to schedule a consultation and learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.