SEO vs SEM: What's The Difference?
The key difference is that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about optimizing your website to get higher rankings in the organic search results, while Search Engine Marketing (SEM) aims to get traffic from both organic and paid searches.
A typical search engine’s results page (SERP) includes two types of results. The first is the paid search results, and the second is the organic search results.
Paid Traffic
Paid results are usually denoted with the letters ‘Ad’ or 'Sponsored' (and sometimes in a different color) to help users distinguish them from the organic results. They are shown on top of the organic search results.
To get your website to appear on top of the ‘paid search results’, you need to use PPC (pay-per-click) ads to bid and win one of the top positions. You can do this through the different PPC platforms offered to advertisers by search engines, the most popular is Google Ads.
Organic Traffic
To get your website to appear on top of the organic results, you need to use good SEO practices. In summary, this means having an SEO-friendly website and publishing content that satisfies the user's intent for a particular search term.
Both processes (SEO and PPC) make up what is generally known in digital marketing as Search Engine Marketing or SEM. Here is a visual representation of the relationship between SEO, PPC, and SEM.
Let’s examine SEO and SEM in more detail to understand how they work.
What Is SEO?
SEO is the process of optimizing your website to get free traffic from search engines. Traffic coming from SEO is also referred to as organic traffic.
SEO is important because the majority of search engine traffic goes to the top of the organic results. So, if you want to get traffic from search engines without paying for it, your website must appear in one of the top 5 positions.
An SEO-optimized website is easily understood by search engine crawlers, and this increases the chances of ranking higher in SERPs (search engine results pages).
What Does SEO Work?
There are 3 main types of SEO: technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.
Technical SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website for the crawling and indexing phase. With technical SEO, you ensure that search engines can crawl and index your website without any problems.
The main components of technical SEO are:
- XML Sitemaps
- Canonical URLs
- Pagespeed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Site structure
- Website security
refers to rules you can apply on individual pages and content so that they are optimized for specific keywords.
The main components of on-page SEO are:
- Page title optimization
- Meta description optimization
- URL optimization
- Image optimization (through the use of ALT Text)
- H1 Tag optimization
- Content optimization
refers to the process of getting references (backlinks) from other websites to increase your website’s trust in the eyes of search engines.
For beginners, this may not be very clear but try to think about it like a ranking system where the website that has the most references ranks higher. In this case, references are links from other websites to your site. That is also why off-site SEO is referred to as link building.
To avoid any misunderstandings, it’s not only a matter of how many links you have pointed to your website but also from where these links are coming (and several other factors).
Resources to Learn More About SEO
- SEO Checklist - a detailed step-by-step tutorial to learn the important elements of SEO.
- SEO Certifications - a list of great courses to learn the secrets of SEO and get certified.
What Is SEM?
SEM is a digital marketing process to increase visibility in search engines either by getting organic traffic through SEO or paid traffic through PPC advertising.
Search Engine Marketing is over and above SEO, but it’s only a subset of digital marketing.
Digital marketing includes other channels you can use to increase your website’s traffic besides SEM and SEO, like social media marketing, email marketing, video marketing, and content marketing.
How Does SEM Work?
Through paid search advertising, you essentially buy advertising space in the search engine results. So, instead of trying to rank in one of the top positions organically through SEO and get free traffic, you pay to appear in front of the search results.
The most well-known paid search advertising platform is Google Ads. Through Google Ads, you can get your ads to appear in the Google search results, and you pay only for the clicks on your ads.
Here is an overview of the process:
- Create an account with Google Ads.
- Specify for which keywords you want your ads to appear in the search results.
- Create your ads.
- Set your daily budget.
- Run your campaigns and monitor the results.
Once your budget is exhausted, your ads will stop running. An important point to note is that while you pay to get your ads shown on the search results, they are not guaranteed to be shown on the top ad positions.
This depends on the competition and how much you will pay per click to secure one of the top ad placements.
Why is SEM traffic Important?
Search Engine Marketing traffic (either through organic SEO or Paid Search Advertising) is considered the most important source of Internet traffic because it is targeted.
It is widely accepted that people use search engines to find a solution to a problem, an answer to a question, or to learn how to do something.
So, when searchers click on a website from the search results or click on an ad, they are more likely to convert. The relevancy of the displayed websites and ads makes SEM traffic more valuable than any other traffic source.
Facebook and Twitter are trying to optimize their advertising platforms to utilize targeted traffic, but traffic coming directly from search engines still has a better ROI.
Does SEM help SEO?
Despite what many people think, SEM does not help SEO. Using PPC to target specific keywords and get search engine traffic does not positively or negatively affect your SEO efforts.
SEO rankings are decided after considering hundreds of factors, and SEM or PPC campaigns are NOT one of them.
Resources to Learn More About SEM
- Digital marketing training courses - a list of the best courses to learn PPC marketing.
- Google Ads Guide - a getting started guide for beginners to the most popular PPC platform.
- SEM Courses - online courses to become an SEM expert.
Which Is Better, SEO or SEM?
Although SEO is one of the two components of search engine marketing, many marketers mean PPC advertising when they refer to SEM. They consider paid search advertising to be the only component of SEM. In this case, we can do a comparison between the two.
Cost
Organic SEO is generally the best marketing tactic for long-lasting results. Websites that rank high in the organic results for their target keywords can get free traffic 24/7, industry recognition, and enjoy all the benefits of SEO.
Websites that use PPC can still get targeted traffic from search engines but must pay for it. Once they stop the paid campaigns, the traffic disappears.
It’s important to note that although SEO traffic is generally considered free, it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to get to the top organic results for popular keywords.
The search space is highly competitive for all industries, and you must invest considerably to secure one of the top positions.
You will have to create high-quality content consistently (which is a very costly process), hire an SEO expert to help with the SEO process and optimize your website with hundreds of SEO rules.
So, which is more effective cost-wise, SEO or SEM? Definitely SEO. It might require an initial investment, but once you get to a point where you rank high for the keywords that matter for your business, you can enjoy the ride and the ‘free traffic’ 24/7 without worrying about advertising budgets.
Time
Another major difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO takes much time to work and generate results, while PPC is almost instant.
So, which is better depends on your overall digital marketing goals. If you want to get traffic fast, then you can start with SEM (paid search advertising) and, in parallel, work on your SEO. If you want to create a long-lasting online business without relying on paid traffic, then SEO is your answer.
Ease of learning
There will be a learning curve for beginners to learn SEO and PPC, but from my experience, you can become a PPC expert faster than an SEO expert.
The reason is that PPC has fewer rules compared to SEO. Once you learn how to use a PPC platform, you can experiment with PPC campaigns. You can run pilot campaigns with a limited budget, analyze results, expand your budget, and create more campaigns.
Plus, with the introduction of artificial intelligence in SEM platforms, your job is easier since many of the complicated tasks we used to do in the past (like manual bidding for ad placement) can be done automatically by the AI algorithm.
On the other hand, to learn SEO, you’ll have to understand how search engines work, particularly how ranking works. If you consider that search engines use hundreds of rules when deciding the order in which the results will appear for a particular search term, you can realize that it’s a lot of work.
The good news is that there are many SEO online courses to speed up the learning process and build your SEO skills quickly.
So, which is easier to learn? PPC is faster and easier to learn for beginners.
Risk
When your business depends on SEM, you need to consider the risks involved with SEO and PPC.
For SEO, the greatest risk is Google's algorithmic changes. Google is the biggest search engine and also the major source of traffic for any website. They release changes that affect the organic results a few times per year. During these changes, losing or gaining rankings and traffic is possible.
If you gain traffic, that’s great, but if you lose traffic, it may take a considerable amount of time to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it (if possible).
For PPC, the greatest risk is advertising costs. The cost per click is increasing yearly, and if you solely depend on paid traffic, you may reach a point where advertising costs go above acceptable levels. You may have to raise prices to stay in business, which may reduce sales and profit.
How do we minimize risks? From my 20 years of experience in the industry, the best way to handle these risks is to use SEO and PPC as part of your SEM campaigns. Depending on your business model, you can get started with PPC as it can generate faster results, but in parallel, you need to work on your SEO.
The ideal scenario is to reach a point where you can get targeted traffic from both channels so that your business will not be affected if something goes wrong with SEO or PPC.
Key Learnings
SEM Marketing has two components: SEO marketing and PPC marketing. Although SEO is technically part of SEM, many people, when referring to SEM, mean the process of using PPC ads to get traffic from search engines.
In general, Search engine marketing is a critical digital marketing channel. If you want to create a long-lasting online business, you need to use both.
PPC can get you faster results but you will have to keep paying for the traffic, SEO takes longer to generate results and requires a bigger initial investment.
Both processes aim to increase a website’s visibility in search engines to get highly targeted traffic.
