SEO vs. SEM: What’s the Difference Between the Two?

You’ve likely heard of the hottest marketing tool of the era, SEO. Believe it or not, 70% of businesses still don’t use SEO in their marketing strategies. Well, that’s great news for you, as it means you’ll have an easier time building your search engine strategy.

So, what’s the difference between SEO and SEM, or are they the same? How do you get started with them? Let’s talk about SEO vs SEM and see how you can use them in your digital marketing strategy!

What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization is a digital marketing strategy aimed to optimize your website’s content to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). The benefits of this are enormous, as it will help you become less dependent on paid ads and save money in the long run. Once you rank, there’s no limit to how much traffic you can earn for what you paid for.

However, it needs to be carefully crafted. SEO takes time and consistency to develop, and it mainly comes down to three factors; your website, your content, and your links.

First, you need a quality website. It would reflect poorly on Google as a service if they were constantly offering low-quality sites to their users, so most of their ranking factors are related to website quality. Think of this as the foundation of your strategy.

Next, you need to have a quality content marketing strategy. Google wants to offer its users high-quality, relevant content based on their searches. Starting a blog is the easiest way to do this, and you can discuss plenty of relevant topics on here. If your website is the foundation, this is the house.

Lastly, over time, you will have to build backlinks or links from other sites to yours. This helps establish authority for your website, as each link acts as a vote in your favor. Think of this as the support that ties your home together.

What Is SEM?

Search engine marketing is the umbrella term for your marketing strategies on search engines, paid or organic. On various SERPs, you’ll see paid ads at the top and bottom of the pages and organic results sandwiched in between. All of these fall under the umbrella of SEM.

For long-term growth and sustainability, a well-executed SEO strategy is far superior to paid ads. However, paid ads can help you bridge the gap while you build your SEO strategy, and they both work best when used in tandem. Whatever methods you plan to use, Red Beard Digital can help you with your strategy.