You want to grow your business through online channels, but you need to know one thing before you start: Want to know the difference between SEO and SEM?
The main difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO is an unpaid strategy, while SEM is a paid strategy. With SEO, you focus on bringing organic traffic to your website. In comparison, with SEM, you focus on capturing both paid and organic traffic to your site.
Keep reading to learn more about the differences between SEM and SEO, as well as what strategies will help your business achieve its unique goals. For even more marketing advice, see Revenue Weekly!
Google is the largest search engine in the world and controls 92.42% of search engine market share worldwide.
This gives businesses the opportunity to drive massive traffic through SEO and SEM efforts to convert to sales and sales.
So let’s discuss the differences.
Want to know the difference between SEO and SEM?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM – An online marketing strategy that involves receiving traffic, paid and unpaid from search engines.
According to Wikipedia, SEM is “a form of Internet marketing that involves promoting websites by increasing their visibility into search engine result pages (SERPS) through optimization and advertising.”
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO – a means of optimizing your website so that you get organic (free) traffic from search engines
According to the Google Knowledge Graph, SEO is “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website, by ensuring that the site appears high in the list of results returned by a search engine.”
SEO is a part of SEM!
SEO is also an aspect of search engine marketing. However, SEM goes beyond SEO to include paid traffic.
How much does SEM and SEO cost?
Pricing for SEM and SEO depends on several factors, including:
- Aggression
- the measure
- Industry
- even more
In most cases, however, your average mid-size business will invest in the following SEO and SEM:
- SEO: $ 750- $ 2000 / month
- SEM: $ 9000- $ 10,000 / month
Keep in mind, your company may invest a different amount depending on your industry, goals and overall marketing strategy. This does not mean that you should ignore these numbers. Instead, use them as a reference when making your budget.
How long does SEO and SEM take?
There are distinct differences between SEO and SEM when it comes to how long SEO takes and how long SEM takes:
- SEO: About three to six months
- SEM: Immediately, or as soon as your ads launch
Several factors can affect your turnaround time for results.
For example, your SEM campaign may not produce results right now. Instead, you may need a few weeks of advertising data to improve your targeting to increase your conversion rates. Or, your SEO campaign may require even more time due to creating back-links from SEO audits or fixing issues.
Which is better, SEM or SEO?
SEO and SEM benefit every offer that your business should not ignore. Ideally, you should use both.If you can only select one, however, choose SEO.
There are two types of SEO
Broadly, there are 2 types of SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO – optimizing your own website for maximum visibility in search engines
Off-page SEO – Getting natural back links from other websites
However, it becomes more complicated than that. There is also local SEO, international SEO, multilingual SEO and more. You can learn more about these in our search engine optimization sections.
Examples of on-page SEO:
- Using keywords properly in title tags, headers, and meta descriptions
- Blog posting with quality, easily sharing content that ranks in search engines
- Using clean URLs
- Site optimization so it loads quickly on all devices
- Makes it easy for readers to share their content on social media
- Using schema.org markup to give more information to search bots about your web pages
- Ensuring that robots.txt does not block search bots
- Adding a sitemap that makes it easier for search bots to crawl your website
- Adding internal links so that your website trails itself
- Using HTTPS secure protocol so that your site can get a little boost in SERPs
- Optimize images for size
- Optimizing images with relevant keywords in captions and alt text
- Page Speed Improvement with Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Adding a relevant header tag that includes keywords
- Refresh old content with new information
- Sprinkling relevant keywords across content, but not to the extent that it resembles “keyword stuffing”
- Using latent semantic indexing (LSI) or concepts similar to your keywords so that search bots have a better understanding of the nature of the content
Examples of off-page SEO:
- Creating a natural back link profile from quality websites
- Share your content on social media
- Getting the attention of influencers in your domain
- Guest posting
- Engage in affect marketing
When should I use SEO or SEM?
While SEO is the preferred option for SEO vs. SEM, some circumstances benefit more from SEM vs. SEO.
For example, you should use SEO when:
- You can wait three to six months to see traffic, leads and online sales
- You want to use a digital marketing strategy that does not depend on monthly advertising spend
- You have the time and resources (or your SEO agency) to manage SEO regularly
In comparison, you should use SEM when: - You must generate traffic, leads or sales immediately
- You want presence in high-competition search results without waiting for SEO
- You have time, resources and budget to manage your ads weekly
Overall, the choice between SEM and SEO depends on what you want and how fast you want it.
Get started with SEM and SEO – and make it easy – with 1Weblab
Not sure where to start SEM and SEO?
At 1Weblab, the best digital marketing company in Delhi, we have spent the last 3 years working in SEO and SEM and our web strategy experts would love to know more about your business.If you need more help in determining whether SEO and SEM can help your business grow specifically, we have a team of marketing consultants who can assist you.
To plan your SEO or SEM campaign, contact us online or by phone, phone 8285759111 today!