SEO vs SEM What's the Difference?

By Jeff Wotton: 7.01.11

Search Engine Marketing is the process of getting your website to appear on page one of SERPS or Search Engine Result Pages. SEM is somewhat of a blanket term that can incorporate few different tactics.

Local Search Pages - (ie. Google maps / places)

The easiest and quickest way to get your business on page one for local results is my claiming your place page on major search engines like google, yahoo and bing.

Pros:

The account is free and with a little bit of work you can outrank your competitors by filling out the profile, getting reviews, adding videos etc...

Cons:

Place pages are only queried in search engine result pages for very local searches and do not have a far reach for search terms and geographical location.

Keyword Advertising:

Is the process of bidding for key terms on search engine result pages to appear in the sponsored links sections.

Pros:

This is the quickest way to get on page one for important keyword searches.

You only pay for the amount of people who click on your ads.

Highly targeted.

Cons:

The adwords programs for the major search engines are rather complex and time consuming to master.

Only about 30% of people will click on the ads, if you are looking to dominate market share of the traffic you need to be in the organic links.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of making internal changes to your website, link building, content building etc. with the goal of ranking highly in the organic link section of a search engine result page.

Pros:

Click through ratios on organic links are much higher and dominate the amount of traffic.

Highle targeted traffic of consumers who are directly looking for your products or services.

Cons:

Depending on your level of competition, SEO can be costly.

Search engine algorithims change and you can sometimes find yourself fall right off the map.

Beware of black label seo companies who can actually get you black listed from search engines.

All of the above should be incorporated into your internet marketing strategy at some point if you look to outrank your competition online.

Contact us for more information or a free consultation.