Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are effective marketing strategies used to grow a business online. SEO focuses on optimizing a website to drive organic traffic from search results. SEM employs SEO and paid strategies to get traffic to a site.
Still confused? Allow me to elaborate on the difference between SEO vs. SEM marketing.
What Is SEO?
SEO is a fixed set of tactics that optimizes your website so it can gain visibility on the search engine result pages (SERPs). When your SEO efforts are successful, your site ranks higher on the search results since the search engines consider it valuable and authoritative. Consequently, more people visit your website, increasing your organic traffic.
SEO techniques can be group into three broad categories:
- On-page SEO: It is the practice of optimizing your web pages by incorporating relevant keywords used by your target audience in search engines. On-page SEO helps search engines understand the page content and rank them accordingly.
- Off-page SEO: It is the process of improving a website’s reputation and authority by acquiring high-quality backlinks and managing local listings.
- Technical SEO: It is the strategy to improve the experience of both users and search engine crawlers by focusing on the site architecture, site-load speed, mobile compatibility, crawlability, indexability, security, etc.
What Is SEM?
SEM incorporates various paid search advertising tactics to gain prominence and higher ranking on the SERPs. It helps you create brand recognition and bring in relevant traffic to your website. It is also referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. However, it is not as simple as paying search engines to view your website.
It requires knowledge and understanding of the keywords pertinent to your web content and creating campaigns that target these keywords explicitly. Consequently, everytime a user conducts a search for your niche, your ad is displayed at the top of the SERPs.
Moreover, you have to write a great ad copy that compels the users to click through. A higher click-through rate (CTR) along with high quality of your keywords and landing pages helps you expedite your SEM efforts.
SEO vs. SEM – What Is the Difference?
Both SEO and SEM have a singular goal i.e. to drive traffic to your website. However, the prominent difference between SEO and SEM is how you approach each technique. Check out the key distinguishing factors between search engine optimization and search engine marketing:
When Can You Expect Results in SEM vs. SEO?
There is a stark difference between the ROI timeline of SEO and SEM.
SEO is a tedious, time-consuming process that requires you to optimize and audit every aspect of your website. Moreover, if you have recently created your website, you need time to create content and generate backlinks. It takes months of meticulously implementing your SEO strategy before you begin to appear on the SERPs.
Therefore, it can take anywhere from three months to two years for your SEO to show results, in the form of increased traffic and subsequent leads or conversions.
Whereas, you can see results from your SEM campaign as soon as you launch your ad. Of course, you need to work on the ad quality to prompt the audience to click on the link and eventually convert into customers. Therefore, you may not get a ROI right away but it is much faster than SEO.
What Are the Platform or Dashboard Used in SEO and SEM?
Search engines have built-in reporting and analytic features to help you keep track of your SEO and SEM performances.
Platforms like Google Analytics and Google Search Control are often sufficient to develop a data-driven SEO strategy. They show the recent trends, bounce rates, average page load time, and other key insights about your website’s health. As a result, you can utilize these factors to grow your organic traffic.
On the other hand, you need a more sophisticated dashboard for SEM, which can incorporate data from other channels to provide you with an omnichannel data analysis and performance report. There are numerous third-party SEM tools to help you visualize and improve your marketing campaigns.
What Is the Cost of SEO vs. SEM?
You require monetary investments to yield results, whether you opt for SEM or SEO marketing. However, SEM usually costs more.
For successful SEO, you may need to outsource for keyword research and content creation, hire an SEO expert for white hat SEO techniques, or buy SEO tools to accelerate your marketing efforts. Once you have done all that and you are able to generate organic traffic, you do not need a lot of money to maintain your ranking.
For SEM or PPC, you have to build a credible website, focusing on the keywords, content, and backlinks and then pay more for every time a user clicks on your ad displayed on the search pages. Thus, you need a dedicated monthly ad budget for long-term SEM.
How Is the Audience Different for SEO vs. SEM?
Your SEO and SEM practices are aimed to resonate with the target audience to improve your CTR and reduce your bounce rates.
However, SEM provides you with greater control over who views your content. You can assign filters and target customers based on their age, location, buying behaviors, and the devices they are using. This tremendously increases the probability of conversion as compared to with SEO.
Which Has a Better Performance Between SEO and SEM?
Believe or not, SEO has a higher CTR than SEM, provided your website ranks high on the SERPs.
In general, users prefer clicking on a link, which appears organically in the search results as compared to ads. Hence, if your webpage appears on the first page of Google results, it will most probably perform better than the SEM ads on the same page.
However, your CTR reduces drastically if you are on the second page or towards the bottom of the first page. According to a survey, websites that occupy the number one position have a CTR of 39.6%, which is double the CTR for the second position on the SERP (18.4%) and almost four times the CTR for third link (10.1%).
Which Is Better Between SEM vs. SEO Marketing?
Now that you know the difference between SEO vs. SEM, which is better for your business model?
Sadly, there is no straightforward answer to this question. There are certain benefits of SEM vs. SEO marketing, but on the other hand you simply cannot ignore SEO. Following are some of the factors to consider when planning your search marketing campaign:
Budget
If you are a small business or a startup with a limited budget, you can benefit from focusing all your resources on SEO. You may not see the results immediately, but it is still a more viable option than spending all your money on PPC ads that may only run for a very short duration.
However, if you have the means, you can invest in SEM, alongside SEO, to launch a multifaceted search marketing strategy. The best thing about PPC is you can set a spending limit, so you can maintain a strict budget
Customer Buying Cycle
If you belong to an industry that targets bottom-of-the-funnel users with a ready-to-buy mindset, SEM would be a great option for you. A short customer buying cycle means that your customers know exactly what they want and are ready to buy it after a quick search. With SEM, you can place your product right in front of the consumers, earning quick revenues.
Sadly, this strategy does not always work. In that case, you need SEO to nurture the remaining users to convert them into customers
Niche
Different keywords have varying cost-per-clicks (CPC) based on the industry competition. Saturated niches usually have a higher CPC.
Therefore, before launching your SEM campaign, conduct a research to determine the average amount you may have to spend to compete for the top ad spots on the SERPs. If the CPC fits your budget, you can adopt SEM, otherwise SEO might be a better fit for you.
Timeline
SEO is a long and slow process, and it takes months before it starts translating into traffic, leads, and sales. Whereas, you can have an influx of users as soon as you put up the ad.
Hence, if you have just launched your ecommerce website, you can benefit from an SEM strategy to drive traffic until you can generate one organically through SEO. Moreover, if you are not sure about your customers’ response to your content, you can consider an SEM campaign to test the convertibility of your landing pages.
Contrarily, if you already have a website up and running and you understand your customers’ needs, you can focus on creating a long-term SEO strategy.
Conclusion
SEO and SEM are two branches of search marketing, each with its pros and cons. Depending on your business model you can use either SEO, SEM, or a combination of both to leverage your search rankings.
While SEO prioritizes generating organic traffic, SEM focuses on paid ads to bring in users. Which strategy works for you depends on your unique business plan, marketing budget, and resources.
Think Orion provides SEO and SEM services to higher education and edtech companies.
We help our clients gain visibility through search engine optimization, social media campaigns, and other online marketing strategies.
