There is a fine line between the actual execution of search engine marketing as opposed to search engine optimisation.
The truth of the matter is, you need a bit of both to ensure your company’s online success. Let’s take a look at the definition of each and how they both benefit your marketing efforts.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
SEM involves your overall online marketing strategy and can be described as a way to utilise paid advertisements in order to increase your website’s page ranking with the major search engines. Some disagree and state that organic methods of topping the SERPs and other tried and true methods of SEO are also part of SEM.
Regardless of semantics, SEM is a vital part of any online company’s strategy. It is the quickest and easiest way to attract increased traffic to your site and ensure that it receives the maximum amount of exposure to potential customers.
SEM is what drives online traffic. Is it going to cost you? Definitely, but when regarded in terms of ROI, SEM can pay for itself.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimisation is part of SEM, and a vital part at that. SEO is based on techniques designed to attract the attention of the major search engines. This combines with an understanding of how people perform internet searches and what terms they use to find information they are seeking.
A big part of SEO that should be considered is the means of converting visitors to customers. Experts warn against putting too much emphasis on the search engine spiders and not enough emphasis on the user’s experience.
There are many ways to accomplish the goal of getting and converting visitors and overall marketing techniques. Optimising for search engines means that a website should contain keywords relevant to the content and incorporate components that make it easy for search engine bots to index the site. This includes writing keyword-rich content, adding meta tags, alt text and H1 tags, and placing various types of content, such as online videos, audio, and text throughout the pages. HTML source code, design, and a number of inbound and outbound links also help in optimisation for search engines.
Optimising to the people who perform searches is very similar. It is important to make your website user friendly and easy to navigate. You must provide interesting and informative content that offers a benefit to visitors and makes them want to return.
It should be clear that SEM and SEO cannot successfully work as marketing tools without SEO. Pages must first be optimised before any inorganic means of search engine promotion can be effective.
SEM advertising only works to bring customers to your website, marketing techniques will be the reason they stay and make a purchase.
See you at the top of Google!
Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
AussieSEO.com © 2007 - 2010
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the very easy to understand definitions of SEM and SEO. I see search engine optimisation as the foundation for your search engine marketing efforts.
I agree that to have a successful site you need to use both SEM and SEO strategies. I just prefer SEO as I see it more as a skill. I think it’s a lot more impressive to be able to get a page one ranking through search engine optimisation than SEM.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn Competition – This is It =-.
Hi Sean
I had not heard of the term SEM previous to this article so here is something new for me to investigate
I can see that SEO is in fact part of the overall SEM.
To be efficient and effective I would start my site by using all the SEO techniques that I know of and I would be quite convinced, taking into consideration there are so many components of SEO attraction that I would have a pretty high ranking site by the time I had finished anyway, and a wealth of information gathered along the way.
.-= Elly´s last blog .. =-.
I’m a newbie when it comes to SEM. I’ve been involved with SEO in relation to a number of sites and have had a reasonable degree of success. But the concept of SEM is one I’ll have to ponder a bit.
.-= Don White´s last blog ..You Cant Throw That Out- =-.