Like 2 sides on a coin, SEO and SEM have many things in common and also subtle differences. However, understanding the difference between SEO and SEM is key to making the right decisions to boost your traffic. Join Centrix Digital to learn about these 2 terms in today’s article.
Learn about SEO and SEM
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization), also known as search engine optimization, is a process of improving the ranking of a content on search engines such as Google, Bing, Coc Coc,… The purpose of SEO is to make it easy for users to find and access the website through the search results table.
More specifically, try searching for any keyword on Google, the search page interface will display 2 types of results:
- Paid results: Ad search results that pay to be shown
- Organic results: Organic results that match the search term
If you want users to easily see your posts and bring traffic to your website, there are 2 ways to help you do this. The first way is to pay Google to promote the article, or the second way is to perform SEO activities to improve your article’s ranking in the natural search results.
Here are the most popular types of SEO today that any SEO-er must know:
- On-page SEO: The activity of optimizing the website through keywords to reach target customers when they search on Google, Bing,…
- Off-page SEO: The activity of optimizing the website through backlinks leading to that website
- Technical SEO: Optimize the website through adjustments to meet the technical needs of Google, Bing,…
What does SEM mean?
SEM (Search Engine Marketing), also known as search engine marketing, is all activities that help improve the ranking of a piece of content on a search page, including paid content (PPC) and free content (SEO). Thus, it can be understood that SEO is a small branch of SEM.
In fact, when it comes to SEM, most marketers will think of paid activities that help advertising content show up at the top of the search page. Therefore, we will use this definition in the article to easily distinguish SEO and SEM.
The most popular SEM model today is PPC (paid per click), a model that pays ads based on user clicks. PPC’s mechanism of operation is mainly based on bidding applied to specific keywords. More specifically, marketers will set an amount they are willing to pay for each click on their ad through keyword searches.
The ranking displayed on the search page is usually directly proportional to the bidding amount of marketing. If you’re the highest bidder, your ad will show at the top of the results page.
SEO vs SEM Comparison
Similarities between SEO and SEM
Indeed, SEO and SEM have many similarities, making it easy for many people to swap these 2 concepts with each other.
- Purpose: SEO and SEM both aim to increase the ranking of content on the search page, thereby increasing traffic to the website.
- How it works: SEO and SEM both rely on search keywords.
- Requirements: SEO and SEM both require user insights, testing, and constant updates to optimize keywords.
Difference between SEO and SEM
SEO focuses on natural content, SEM focuses on paid content
The difference between SEO and SEM is most visible in the audience of the content they serve. While SEO is deployed to push organic results rankings on search pages, SEM revolves around paid results. As a result, you’ll see the SEM show the Ad or Ads symbol at the top of the content, while the SEO assets don’t.
SEO takes time but brings long-term effects, SEM brings immediate but short-term effects.
The speed of efficiency is also a difference between SEO and SEM. The truth is that SEO takes a long time to see an effect, especially if your website is new and hasn’t built many backlinks.
In fact, on average, a website takes up to 2 years to reach the top 10 searches of Google keywords. In addition, the majority of content on the search front page is 3 years old or more. This doesn’t mean that your content takes 2 years to get a good position in Google’s search rankings. If you target long-tail keywords and use the right SEO techniques, you’ll probably see SEO effects in a few months.
Conversely, if you focus your resources on SEM activities, specifically PPC (Paid per Click), you will see the effect almost immediately. Let’s say you run an ad in the morning, right into the afternoon of the same day, this ad will bring traffic and conversions. Here’s the difference between SEO and SEM that you need to pay attention to.
How to increase the number of traffic on the website both inexpensive and highly effective?
SEM costs per click on ads, SEO does not
With the 100% PPC model applied by many large and small businesses today, SEM activities will cost based on each user click on the ad. You’ll have to pay Google upfront, but at least you’ll have peace of mind knowing that your money will pay off.
SEO, on the other hand, doesn’t require you to pay every time a user clicks on your content. However, this doesn’t mean SEO is completely free. In fact, a business will have to spend a lot of money, time and effort to push its organic content to the top 1 of Google search, including the cost of hiring personnel, SEO tool costs,… Therefore, in the short term, normal SEO costs will be slightly higher than PPC costs.
The biggest problem with PPC is this: When you stop paying, traffic goes back to zero. On the other hand, this isn’t a problem with SEO. Once your content has been ranked on a Google search page, chances are this will be a permanent position in the long run. Therefore, you will no longer have to spend too much money on maintaining website rankings.
It can be said that when considering cost, SEO and SEM both have strengths and weaknesses. The difference between SEO and SEM in terms of cost is also why businesses often apply both of these forms simultaneously to complement each other.
Should the focus be on SEO or SEM?
When to focus on SEO?
Limited marketing budget
If you’re a startup or a small business with a limited marketing budget, you should focus on SEO activities. You may not see tangible results from your SEO investment even if months or years have passed, but this is still more meaningful than wasting on PPC and only running ads for a few weeks.
Your content relies on informational keywords and can rank well
Information keywords are keywords that search for information, such as “What is SEO” or “How to do SEO”. Informational keywords are not highly convertible, but in return the search volume of these keywords is usually very high. Therefore, if you are confident that you can create high-ranking content based on informational keywords, bet on SEO.
You have a link building strategy
Content creation is at the heart of SEO, but that’s not enough. If you’re serious about your content rankings, you’ll need a link building strategy for that content. The backlink system is one of the criteria that helps Google evaluate the trustworthiness and quality of a website. Therefore, you need a strategy for building backlinks from external websites that lead to your content to ensure it ranks as high as it should.
When to focus on PPC?
Have a stable budget to pay for advertising
One nice thing about PPC is that you can set a budget for your ads. This means that the amount you spend will never exceed your budget. Even so, you can still end up wasting your budget if you don’t know what you’re doing. Therefore, it is advisable to plan specifically for your monthly ad spend, including bids, target keywords, ad content, landing pages, and other factors.
You have the ability to manage your AdWords account
Theoretically, PPC is not difficult. You just need to bidding based on keywords, then website traffic will increase on its own.
However, in reality, managing an AdWords account is not an easy task. To do this, you have to control a lot of factors, including target keywords, advertising, quality score, ROI, conversion rate,… Not only that, but you also have to consider all these factors to make a decision on how to run ads most effectively.
You can use landing pages
One of the first things you need to know about PPC is that you’ll need a landing page for every ad run. Therefore, to maximize PPC effectiveness, you will need to know how to use different types of web pages and conduct A/B tests to find out which is the optimal choice.
How to optimize traffic from combining SEO and SEM
Is it possible to combine both SEO and SEM simultaneously? The answer is yes.
Will combining SEO and SEM be more effective? If your ad copy complements your SEO strategy, the answer is yes.
To maximize the effectiveness of SEO and SEM, you’ll need to start with keyword research. This is the most important step in SEO. If you want your content to get traffic and rank high on Google search, you’ll have to use a set of keywords that balance volume and difficulty. You shouldn’t use keywords that don’t have any searches, but at the same time you shouldn’t use high-difficulty keywords as your primary keywords. Therefore, researching and choosing a set of keywords for SEO content is extremely important.
So what results can the combination of SEO and SEM achieve? The most ideal result for this combination is for your website to make it to the top of the organic SERPs, while improving the visibility of the ads you’re running. When ad content is related to organic content or related to keywords users are looking for, they are more likely to click on the ad.
Conclusion
The above is all the overview of SEO and SEM, as well as the cases when you should focus on 1 of 2 activities. Hopefully, the knowledge in this article has helped you understand the difference between SEO and SEM to figure out how to boost traffic based on search engine optimization activities.