Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves a combination of free website submissions and paid search engine listings, to ensure your website reaches customers using search engines to research purchase decisions. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art and science of increasing your website’s visibility to search engines for those important keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business.
Search Engine Marketing vs Search Engine Optimization?
It is quite common for people to confuse the terms “Search Engine Marketing” and “Search Engine Optimization”!
Search engine optimization is a one type of search engine marketing. Search engine advertising or search engine analytics are other types of search engine marketing.
One of the most widespread beliefs about search engine marketing (SEM) is search engine advertising equals search marketing. If your online marketing firm runs advertising campaigns on Google, the firm must specialize in SEM, right? Although a common belief, it’s not entirely accurate.
Search engine advertising is only one component of the search marketing process. Marketing campaigns involve branding, sales, social website engagement, customer service, distribution, trade shows, radio, TV, direct mail, and so forth. And advertising, too. So when hiring an SEM company, be sure it provides a variety of services, not only advertising.
Search Engine Marketing encompasses a number of different skills, including but not limited to:
- Search engine optimization
- Search engine advertising
- Link development
- Specialized search engine optimization (video, local, mobile, etc.)
- User engagement marketing
- Content strategy
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.
– Wikipedia, “Search engine optimization”
Search Engine Advertising
Search Engine Advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on Web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published.
Search advertisements are targeted to match key search terms (called keywords) entered on search engines. This targeting ability has contributed to the attractiveness of search advertising for advertisers. Consumers will often use a search engine to identify and compare purchasing options immediately before making a purchasing decision. The opportunity to present consumers with advertisements tailored to their immediate buying interests encourages consumers to click on search ads instead of unpaid search results, which are often less relevant. Unpaid search results are also called organic results.
– Wikipedia, “Search advertising”
Link Development
Some search engines consider the number of relevant high-quality links to your website the single most important factor in determining relevance. A site can improve their ranking by increasing the number of high-quality web pages that link back to their pages.
[Excerpt shortened — the original passage was taken from another marketing firm’s website.]
User Engagement Marketing
User engagement is the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. User Engagement Marketing places conversions into a longer term, more strategic context and is premised on the understanding that a simple focus on maximizing conversions can, in some circumstances, decrease the likelihood of repeat conversions.
– Wikipedia, “Customer engagement”
[Excerpt shortened — full text at the source.]
Content Strategy
Strategic Content’s four-step process begins with a thorough analysis and follows through to publication and beyond. The result is content that enhances the user experience of your site, ensures that content is on-brand and targeted to your audience, achieves business and user goals, and is well organized and managed.
[Excerpt shortened — the original passage combined a content-strategy firm’s description with text from Wikipedia’s “Content management” article.]
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Confused about what strategy will work best for your target markets and brand?