Do you search for a clear and complete guideline about search engine optimization? Have some questions regarding what Is SEO And SEM in digital marketing? I tried my best to find out and provide the best and most simply understandable answer here for the beginners of the blogging community. Before discussing this matter let’s try to understand, what is search engine optimization? And what does SEO do at first?
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization is also called SEO in the short term. It is used to publish a web page’s content in such a way that search engines like Google or Bing can easily read, categorize, and store a website’s content for various use.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of making a web page easy to find, easy to crawl, and easy to categorize.
This allows search engines to easily verify and select the information from the specific web page. And show them on their search result page as needed.
When optimizing a website for search what impact?
Importance of Search Engine Optimization
Here comes the importance of SEO.
SEO is the process of optimizing your website to get free traffic from search engines.
The common belief of people is generally open to reading or scanning to look after the elements which they are looking for on the first two pages of the SERPs.
Proper search engine optimization efforts make a website rank on the first page of the search engine result page (SERPs in short terms).
If you can precisely use SEO-optimized text and your content for the search engine then the information described on that web page can quickly get to the search results.
As a result, the organic visitors to that website grow rapidly.
How does SEO Work?
Search engines are not humans but the software that crawls the web page content. So, not like humans, search engines are text-driven.
They complete several activities that bring search results – crawling, scanning, and storing (or indexing).
It exists to discover, understand, and organize the Internet’s content to offer the most relevant results to the questions searchers are asking.
A search engine read a published website’s web page using their technology accurately.
Then the contents of that web page are stored in their database.
Later, if a visitor tries to find something using the search engine’s search option then the search engine searches the keyword provided by the visitor in its database.
From the results that come out, the most relevant and useful information from the web page links is given to the search engine results page (SERP) in front of the visitor.
To publish this information, search engines follow some rules.
It only shows the information on the first row of search results which is basic, unique, and informational text.
Have been taken from a well-written, well-designed website.
Where well-organized topics are presented for the audience so that each visitor can easily find the information which they’re looking for.
How to do SEO?
Read – 11 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Organic Traffic
What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and How Does it Work?
Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of the digital marketing process to increase visibility in search engines either by getting organic traffic through SEO or paid traffic through PPC advertising.
This is the type of thing that you’ll see as Google Ads and usually ends up on the top of a page list.
![SEM technique example](https://oex.lyy.mybluehost.me/website_40fd06f7/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/03833-6998d-seo-and-sem.gif)
SEM is great for brand recognition as it means that you’ll be at the top of the list every time someone searches. It’s also a great way to bring targeted traffic to your website.
Advertisers bid on the keywords which an online visitor searches on Google, Bing, or other search engines to look for certain products or services, which gives the advertiser the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.
These ads, often known by the term pay-per-click ads, come in a variety of formats. Some are small, text-based ads, whereas others, such as product listing ads are more visual, product-based advertisements that allow consumers to see important information at-a-glance, such as price and reviews.
Benefits of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing SEM’s greatest strength is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to put their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re ready to make a purchase.
No other advertising medium or method (except Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads) can do this, which is why search engine marketing is so effective and an amazingly powerful way to grow your business.
The only complication of SEM is that it does require some extra special knowledge and tools (like Google Ads) and it will cost you an extra amount of money to invest to run this kind of digital marketing effort.
If you’re not well enough known to do that then you’ll probably need to hire someone with a significant amount of expertise in digital marketing and ad campaigns to handle this end of things and make it worth your while.
What is the Key Difference Between SEO and SEM in terms of Digital Marketing?
SEM is a paid search strategy. On the other hand, SEO is an organic search strategy.
Organic search engine optimization or SEO is generally the best marketing strategy for long-lasting results.
Websites that rank on the top of search engine result pages (SERPs) with organic results for their target keywords, can get free traffic continuously unless it’s crawlers blocked by the user or content owner for a certain reason like content moved, deleted, or unavailable.
Websites that use paid advertising methods like PPC which is can still get targeted traffic from search engines, but they have to pay for it. Once they stop the paid campaigns, the traffic disappears.
Another major difference between SEO and SEM is that the search engine optimization process takes a lot of time to work and generate results while increasing visitors to a specific website through PPC is almost instant.
SEO VS SEM
So, which is better depends on your overall digital marketing goals.
If you want to get traffic fast or for a certain period then you can start with SEM (search engine marketing). And If you want to create a long-lasting online business without relying on paid traffic then SEO is the best option to choose.
That’s the end for today.
If you need to know more about, “What Is SEO And SEM in Digital Marketing?” then feel free to ask me. Please share it on social media if it helped you a bit.
Editor’s Picks –