These two different methods are used in Houston SEO digital marketing services to reach customers or target audiences in different ways. They are two strategies that are mostly used for different concepts and can be used wrongly by people who don’t know their differences. While SEO focuses on ranking your website on search engines, SEM is a combination of this SEO and PPC. That means SEM has to do with paid advertising where your website appears as a sponsored advert on Google. Both of them can guarantee you traffic to your website but there are some key differences that you should take note of and we would break it down in this article
What Is SEO?
SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization and it is a targeted digital marketing strategy that focuses on specific actions that would help rank your website on the search engine results page (SERP). This form of ranking used by Pearland SEO professionals would be more beneficial to your website by increasing website traffic and boosting your site’s authority. This type of marketing does not have to do with paid advertising.
What Is SEM?
SEM is also an abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing and it is encompassing. Apart from talking about its main function which is making effective paid adverts that would appear at the top of every first page on Google. It also involves every other digital marketing strategy including SEO. Other digital marketing strategies in SEM include; Pay Per Click (PPC) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Key Differences Between SEO And SEM
One of the main differences as we have seen from both definitions is the method by which they bring more traffic to a website. While SEO has its main focus on Optimization to gain traffic organically, SEM has its own main focus on getting both traffic and visibility from organic and paid searches
- They Have Have Different Features
For SEO, it can be grouped into 4 categories which are ; On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Technical SEO and user interaction signal.
- On-page Seo focuses on adding your target keyword to your title, meta descriptions and URL. This target keyword is what your audience uses or type in when they go on search engines.
- Off-page SEO focuses on building backlinks from other pages and boosting your authority signals.
- Technical SEO deals with making your website technically sound. For example, making sure text and images load quickly and Google is able to crawl each page of your website.
- User Interaction Signal has to do with a user’s satisfaction on your page. If your page doesn’t give users what they are looking for, Google will see that as a red flag and lower your ranking.
SEM on its own part has different groups or categories and they include; PPC, CRO and also SEO.
- Pay-Per-Click is the reason why some of the first results on Google search results have Ad on top of it. This is because the website owners pay an amount of money for every user that clicks on their Ad. PPC can help build your website’s visibility and improve its authority.
- Conversion Rate Optimization has to do with optimizing your page to encourage users to perform a certain action. Some of these actions include filling out your Email on a form. This can help increase your subscribers and improve user experience on your website.
- One of the main differences is that for SEM search results you see “Ad” on top or beside the results.
- SEM brings results very quickly because once your advert has gone live, it begins to appear on Search results and people start clicking on it. In the case of Organic SEO, it may take a while before you start seeing results.
- Your company can build an SEO strategy by monitoring and constantly improving on your website Optimization by finding good backlinks and keywords with less competitors. Overall it involves finding what best works for your company. This can form your strategy. With SEM, there is no strategy. Once your advert has expired, your ad goes down and your website won’t be visible.
- Your goals will influence which digital marketing method to use. If you need to get immediate traffic and test different campaigns, you can go ahead with SEM. If your goal is long term growth you need to go with SEO.
Conclusion
As you keep advancing in the world of digital marketing you will begin to understand that having both SEM and SEO strategies will increase your chances among your competitors. Since SEO is still under SEM, they tend to benefit each other. For example, if you are working on your SEM, you are also benefiting your SEO. If you want to know what strategy to adopt for your business you should always speak to Pearland SEO experts.
