If you are an entrepreneur or a marketing professional, it is important to understand the various marketing tools available to you. SEO and SEM offer businesses a way to optimize their websites to increase visibility. By reviewing each component, you can decide which strategy is right for your business and start making adjustments for growth.
In this article, we define SEO and SEM, discuss what each strategy entails and compare the pros and cons of each strategy.
Contents
2 What Does SEO Include?
4 What is Included in SEM?
5 SEO and SEM: Which Should You Use?
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a strategy that businesses use to increase the visibility of their websites and web content. This is usually done by combining organic optimization methods such as keywords, linking, and word count to help search engine bots select specific websites to rank higher in search results.
By implementing SEO best practices, businesses can increase consumer engagement and encourage more consumers to continue the buying process.
What Does SEO Include?
There are various elements that can be combined to create an effective SEO strategy. The following components are some of the common ways that businesses apply SEO in their marketing tactics:
Industry-focused content
Industry-focused content can take the form of Submit articles or blog posts, video content, white papers, infographics, or other forms of content that appeal to a specific audience. For example, a clothing boutique could create a fall “look book” video to engage with their retail audience and promote upcoming fall trends.
Keywords
Keywords are terms or phrases that consumers enter in their search criteria. By including keywords throughout your content, in meta descriptions, alternative text, URLs, and other areas, you can ensure that you have an optimized website that ranks higher in search engines.
Backlinks and internal links
Linking is an important part of any SEO strategy. This helps search engine bots build your website as a credible source of information and hence gives you higher search rankings.
A backlink is a link that other websites put in their content that links back to your website. You can do this by forging partnerships with companies that offer similar products and services.
Furthermore, internal links can also improve your search rankings. Insert links throughout your website content to specific product pages, pages about your company, and other blog posts on your website.
Alternative images and text
Images can be a great way to improve your search rankings with search engines. Businesses use alternative text to help describe images embedded in search engine bots.
This allows them to distinguish the written word from the images throughout your content. Furthermore, by incorporating images throughout your content, you increase the chances of appearing higher in search engine results for a topic. Search engines tend to display blog posts, articles, and other forms of content at the top of search engine results pages.
What is Meta description and tags
Meta descriptions and meta tags help summarize your content and set keywords for bots to review. Using these two SEO tools, bots can better assess the relevance of your content and place you higher in the search rankings accordingly.
Mobile compatibility
Mobile compatibility is an important part of any SEO strategy. To increase engagement on your website, you must ensure that your website and its content are mobile compatible.
This allows consumers to access your website and navigate its contents with ease. It can also help determine whether they continue the buying process or not.
Social media
Using your social media platforms to share information about new products, inserting website links, and direct links to product pages are other useful elements of SEO. You can also optimize your social media platforms by posting about trending topics, using hashtags, and increasing your brand awareness through consistency.
What is SEM?
SEM, or search engine marketing, is a type of marketing that allows businesses to pay for better rankings and advertisements that increase traffic to their websites.
SEM allows businesses to select keywords related to their industry, product or service. Then, when a consumer searches for an item that includes that search term, it increases the likelihood of a business’s website appearing in search engine results.
What is Included in SEM?
To engage in SEM effectively, you may need to incorporate some elements into your website marketing strategy. The following list identifies some useful SEM methods:
Landing page
Landing pages are optimized web pages that businesses use to advertise their products and services. Landing pages often include a form for visitors to enter their email or phone number to receive future communications about your offer. The purpose of a landing page is to help a business generate potential leads for their marketing funnel.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that help businesses target very specific search results that consumers enter into search engines. An example of a long tail keyword is “cheap winter red sweater” while the short keyword is “red sweater”. Long-tail keywords are very helpful for businesses looking to generate leads for a particular product or service.
Ad campaign
SEM strategies typically use paid search engine advertising to promote a business at the top of search engine pages. It may link to a specific product page or article, depending on the keywords the business wants to target through the ad.
Depending on the package the search engine provides, a business may be able to run an ad campaign for several months while testing different keywords and strategies.
Ad group
An ad group is an ad group in your ad campaign that uses keywords or similar topics. This SEM element allows you to compare the effectiveness of different ads within the same ad group.
Furthermore, it helps you determine which ads receive the most engagement in your ad group.
Copy ads
Ad copy is an important component of your SEM advertising and overall campaign success. Ad copy should use specific keywords and phrases to ensure better ranking and engagement with consumers.
SEM quality score
Search engines assign SEM quality scores depending on the quality of ad copy, keyword usage and ad group. The higher the quality score you receive, the less you will have to pay your cost-per-click rate.
SEO and SEM: Which Should You Use?
SEO and SEM both have a lot to offer businesses that need web engagement. Here are some differences between the two strategies to help compare which option yields more useful results based on your needs:
Paid and organic
One of the most distinguishable differences between SEO and SEM is how they aim to achieve better search rankings. In SEO, individuals and businesses apply organic methods to improve search engine rankings for their websites.
In contrast, SEM combines organic and paid methods to create better search rankings for websites.
For example, a business using an SEO strategy will work to incorporate keywords and long-form content into their online practices to improve their rankings, whereas a business using an SEM strategy will use paid advertising in addition to keywords and long-form content to maximize their reach. Furthermore, businesses with small or limited budgets can use SEO through SEM to minimize online marketing costs.
Instant and long results
Since SEO focuses solely on organic methods, it may take months to see significant results. On the other hand, SEM allows you to pay for higher rankings and ads that increase the chances of instant engagement with your website.
Therefore, the immediacy of your needs can determine which strategy you choose to implement in your marketing initiatives. SEO can still provide businesses with optimal engagement if they use the right tactics and patience.
Short term and long term
SEO and SEM also differ in the length of time they are used. SEO is usually a long-term marketing tactic because it takes time to improve your search rankings and you constantly need to implement new strategies to maintain your rankings. In contrast, SEM can be used in both short-term and long-term formats.
For example, a business can use SEM to implement a three-month paid advertising campaign with the goal of advertising a new product and maximizing initial sales. Furthermore, SEM can also be used as a long-term strategy to increase the overall ranking of a website in addition to product awareness.
