Search optimisation is an essential marketing strategy for brands trying to attract attention. A good search optimisation strategy drives website traffic, and if done well, expands a business’s digital presence.
But search optimisation can be a difficult strategy to manage if you are unaware of the differences between Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The tactics may sound the same, but they are really two very different approaches to search optimisation.
If you use the terms interchangeably, you will not be able to communicate a clear and effective strategy for improving your visibility in search.
What is Search Marketing?
Search marketing is an online marketing strategy that encompasses search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). It combines marketing with advertising.
SEM and SEO not only helps to generate qualified traffic to your websites but can increase brand awareness too. The higher your products or services rank in search engines, the more likely consumers will visit your website, get to know your brand or even become an advocate for your offerings to their social circles.
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimisation, which is the process of optimising your website to get organic, or unpaid, traffic from search engine results.
In other words, SEO involves tailoring your website design and content to maximise its appeal to a search engine. You do this in hopes that the search engine will display your website as a top result on search engine results when a potential customer makes a search for products or brands like yours.
Though SEO and SEO marketing can seem complex with the different factors that can impact your ranking, the process for search engine optimisation is easier than it looks like.
Search engines want to provide the best service for their users. This means delivering high-quality search results which are relevant to what the searcher is looking for.
In order to do this, search engines will scan, or ‘crawl’ different websites to better understand what the site is about. This helps them deliver more accurate results to those searching certain topics or keywords.
Similarly, the search engines will scan the site to determine how easy it is to navigate and read, rewarding user-friendly sites with higher search result rankings.
Organisations make use of SEO to make sure that their site ranks high in the search engines with relevant keywords and phrases. For instance, let’s look at an article you have about building a birdhouse.
In order to get your content in front of the right eyeballs, you want to optimise your blogpost so that it will show up as a top result for anyone who searches for the phrase “build a birdhouse”.
Don’t settle for low SERP (Search Engine Result Page) rankings when you could be at the top.
There are many benefits of implementing SEO for your business. By adjusting your website and content for greater visibility and readability, you can expand your visibility on the search engines. This helps you reach and engage more potential customers.
Engaging and effective SEO-focused content will support your chances of bringing in more targeted organic traffic.
What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimisation (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.
While SEO optimises your website for a greater chance of a higher ranking in search results, online advertising enables you to send promotional content to the target audience of your choosing.
SEM combines the benefits of both tactics – your content is both optimised for higher search rankings and is placed primarily in front of audiences most likely to become a customer after clicking on the ads.
At this point, you might be asking, “If I can pay for my website to rank higher in search results, how is SEM different from paid search?”
Well, paid search is a major aspect of SEM and specifically refers to pay-per-click (PPC) ads. However, the two strategies are very different.
The key distinction is that SEM is a broader strategy which combines paid search and SEO tactics. If you set up a PPC advertisement, but the ad and the website it points to are not optimised, this is a standard example of paid search.
If you optimise your site and search content with solid keywords, and channel an advertising budget to boost it for targeted keywords and audiences, then you’re dabbling in SEM.
SEM vs. SEO: The Similarities
Both help a brand appear more prominently in search results when users search for specific terms related to the brand’s industry, business, or offerings.
Both are designed to gain visibility on SERPs, but more importantly, drive traffic to a website. Each strategy employs tactics to increase click-through-rates (CTR) and get more users to click on the search results.
Both require a good grasp of your intended audience and how they act. By using buyer personas and psychographic segmentation, you can understand your audience, anticipate what their needs are, and what they wish to know. From this, you can create valuable branded content which appeals to their interests to build awareness and engagement for your brand.
Both use keyword research to uncover popular search terms. The first step for both SEM and SEO is identify the best keywords to target. This includes looking at keyword popularity to determine the top keywords or buying ads for keywords that your ideal audience searches for. It also includes looking at keyword competition to see what other brands are targeting the same keywords and determining what you will need to do to compete with those other companies.
To conduct keyword research, start with Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty Tool. Enter a search term related to your industry, business, products, or services and view a list of related search terms along with scores on their popularity and competition.
When comparing SEM against SEO, be aware that neither is an evergreen strategy – they require continual testing, monitoring, and optimisation to increase performance.
SEM vs. SEO: The Differences
SEM search placements include an “ad” designation. SEO does not. Search results that appear as a result of SEM or SEO look different on SERPs. Paid ads that receive placement through SEM tactics are clearly labeled as an ad, whereas the search results that appear as a result of organic SEO are not marked as such.
While SEM search results have ad extensions, which can add on additional links, phone numbers, and callouts to facilitate customer contact, SEO search results only have featured snippets.
SEM results are displayed to a select target audience you identify during advertisement setup. SEO results rely on keywords a user searches. While successful SEO and SEM strategies are driven by a plan to connect with a select audience, you can only specify that target audience through SEM by assigning filters based on age, location, income, habits, and more. SEO appearances rely on the keywords a user searches, and cannot be targeted.
Each time a user clicks on your SEM ad, it spends a little of your ad budget. This is not the case for SEO. Therefore, you must set aside a budget in your marketing plans for SEM ads and utilising PPC lead generation.
The impact of SEM is immediate, while SEO takes a longer time to help your brand gain traction. Through paid SEM ads, you can start to put your results in front of audiences with just a few clicks. As soon as you launch a campaign, your ads start showing in SERPs. You will also have the option of turning ads on or off for your needs.
Conversely, SEO is a long term strategy you implement with less instantaneous results. It can take months of implementing an SEO strategy before a brand begins to rank organically on search engines.
SEM is better for testing out your intended target audiences than SEO. The flexibility of turning ads on and off, and the availability of insights to monitor the end results makes it a great environment to experiment.
You are able to quickly revise your ad copy, target new audiences, and change landing page content to test your new tactics. This enables you to identify good and poor-performing strategies immediately. You cannot accomplish this through SEO, as it would take too much time to make changes and monitor differences in results.
SEO adds value over time,while SEM does not. SEM only lasts as long as your budget permits. As soon as you turn off your ads, your SEM strategy is over. SEO is the opposite – it grows and compounds over time for lasting results.
SEO has a higher click-through rate (CTR) than SEM…if you can get to the top. The first few organic search results typically have the highest CTRs. So if you can get to the top, you can likely outperform SEM ads. But if you appear on the second page of results or lower, you can probably get more clicks through SEM.
Conclusion
Many marketers debate whether one is better than the other. As an Inbound Marketer, I would argue that organic SEO is the best approach, but as you can see, true SEM cannot succeed without the support of organic SEO.
Additionally, there are many situations where PPC (a component of SEM) makes more sense than SEO. For example, if you are first launching a site and you want immediate visibility, it is a good idea to create a PPC campaign because it takes less time than SEO, but it would be unwise to strictly work with PPC and not even touch search engine optimisation.
Although organic SEO takes longer to show results, in the end it will be less costly and you will establish a search credibility that you might not establish with PPC.
When it comes to choosing the best tactic, it is important to evaluate your specific needs and fully understand the differences and how you will maintain your efforts. A good starting point is Google’s 200 Ranking Factors, an excellent guide on SEO do and don’ts.
