SEO vs SEM: Understanding the difference

Digital marketing promotes brands and displays their products and services in the best light to diverse online audiences. Different digital marketing strategies help achieve the goal based on the target aim of the client. SEO and SEM are two digital marketing strategies dedicated to optimising and improving the brand’s website and gaining a high organic ranking to improve brand visibility. These marketing strategies are committed to enhancing a website’s organic ranking in different ways. Let us learn more about SEO vs. SEM.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimisation is optimising and configuring a website’s technicality. It is a digital marketing strategy that aims to improve the website’s visibility on the SERP for related queries. The content, graphics, and keyword linking are optimised to enhance the webpage and drive organic traffic to the website. The number of web pages ranking on the first page of the SERP is directly proportional to the brand awareness the website is creating. Therefore, businesses outsource SEO services to improve their website ranking and gain help in generating leads and improving conversion rates. The content, graphics and keywords used in the webpage must be relevant to the values, products and services the brand offers.

Purpose of SEO

1. Business-oriented — Large and small businesses are switching to online modes to increase their business visibility, reputation and influence in the local and global market. For this, they are getting websites designed so that users can know more about their products and services on the website. Building a website is one thing, but making it visible to diverse audiences is crucial. The aim is to achieve as many backlinks as possible to enhance the website’s credibility.
2. User-oriented — Search engine optimisation fulfils targeting potential keywords to present the website to as many audiences as possible. It also helps make the page user-oriented, enhancing their search experience by including relevant keywords, meta descriptions, headings, and interlinks.

What is SEM?

Search engine marketing is another digital marketing strategy that aims at promoting and marketing to improve the website’s rank on SERP. It helps in enhancing brand visibility by running paid ads on the search engine itself. It is also commonly known as paid marketing or pay-per-click service and initiates marketing by bidding on relevant keywords to create an ad campaign. People switching to e-commerce and online shopping has increased the need to rank in paid ad results and allow being discovered by diverse amounts of new audiences. If the paid marketing is done correctly, it yields a great ROI.

Purpose of SEM

Search engine marketing involves paid promotion and marketing of services and products of an organisation to help new customers discover their brand. For example, customers searching for shoes may come across numerous ads right on the top of the search result, and if you play the keyword game right, your website may appear in the top few ads. This makes it easier for new brands to get discovered and explored by audiences globally. It also plays a crucial role in increasing the website ranking and generating organic traffic and genuine leads.

SEO vs. SEM

1. The most fundamental difference is that while search engine optimisation focuses on optimising the website to generate organic traffic, search engine marketing drives organic traffic from organic ranking and paid search advertising.
2. When the SEO-achieved website ranking fluctuates on the SERP, SEM-built paid ads help keep the brand visibility intact.
3. Since SEM entails both these categories of organic and paid ranking, it is the umbrella term, and SEO comes under it.
4. SEO does not require much investment. Businesses can just outsource SEO services from any credible digital marketing company. SEM involves investment in the form of outsourcing and keyword bidding to run paid ads.
5. Since traffic generated through SEO is organic, it stays for a much longer time. On the other hand, traffic generated through SEM is short-lived.
6. Competition is less when trying to optimise the site through SEO since there is a shortage of relevant and unique content. In comparison, many brands with the same product as yours display ads, outranking their competitors.
7. SEO is more directed towards increasing brand visibility and creating a positive brand image and influence. SEM is driven towards making sales and increasing the revenue of businesses.

These points help resolve the conflict of SEO vs SEM and how they work for the same purpose but differently.

Banyanbrain is a leading digital marketing service provider in Gurgaon that offers reliable solutions for your online marketing problems. We analyse your brand to provide the SEO and SEM services that improve your website’s organic ranking.