The differences between SEO and SEM

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing is the process of gaining traffic or visibility on, search engines through organic and paid search. A Search Engine Marketing campaign may include the following elements:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Pay per click marketing, eg Google Adwords
• Paid inclusion and trusted feed programs

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation, also called SEO, organic or natural search focuses on search positioning and on-page optimisation as well as link building to get your website ranking on search engines. SEO is a long term strategy and will take longer to get results. Where your website appears on search results will take time, and will depend on industry competition and other factors that search crawlers take into consideration when ranking your site, eg keywords, unique content, meta tag descriptions, link building efforts etc.

What is PPC or paid search?
Pay-Per-Click marketing is when an advertiser bids on keywords associated with an advertisement in order to achieve a higher position on Search Engine Results Pages. PPC ads will appear in the sponsored links section for searches for that particular keyword. Your ad will usually appear on search results within a few hours (once you set up your ad and chose your keywords). PPC is flexible and allows you to adjust your spend depending on your budget and how much you want to spend on keywords. PPC campaigns can be activated or deactivated as you wish.

What is paid inclusion?

Paid inclusion is simply the practice of paying a Search Engine or a directory to add your website to its database immediately, rather than setting up that site so that it will be found by the Search Engine spiders on its own.

The pros and cons of SEO and SEM

Below are some of the key differences between SEO and SEM:

Cost:

• Organic search - it costs nothing to index your website on a search engine, but if you engage the services of an SEO company to assist with your rankings, you will need to pay a monthly fee
• Paid search - you are paying on a cost per click basis. Click prices will vary depending on the keywords chosen and how many people click on your ad each day

Control

• SEO - You can't control where your website will rank and it will fluctuate day to day
• SEM - you have control over where your paid ad appears on search engine results as this depends on how much you are willing to pay per click per keyword

Immediacy

• SEO campaigns take months to get your rankings up on search engines - it is a long term strategy to get your website ranking on search engines
• PPC campaigns are effective immediately

Segmentation

• SEO - your website will show to all markets in the geographic area
• PPC - you can target your ads to appear to a particular geographic area

We believe that using a combination of organic and paid search strategies will help your website perform better. Speak to our marketing consultants on 07 3040 3588 about our SEO and SEM services and how we can help your website rank on search engines.