Dissimilarity between Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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Dissimilarity between Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In the simplest way possible, SEM and SEO are tools which website creators, especially those who are promoting and selling a specific service or product, use so that you can gain many exposure and better ranking for their website. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the simplicity ends there.

To make it a tad bit complex, SEM and SEO are usually not the same. As suggested from the names, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, deals more with how an internet site is marketed to achieve exposure in the various search engines like google and yahoo available over the internet, while SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, deals with how a web creators develop and re-develop the content, quality and structure of their entire websites to ensure that whenever an internet user types in a particular word within the search tab, their websites have a greater chance of appearing on the very first few search engine results pages (SERPS).

Now, to make it even more complex, although the functions of SEM and SEO seem different, they are surely more effective when used together. Considering that main function of SEM is to achieve more exposure for a website, the greater common means for attraction are online advertisements, blogs, internet articles, partner and sponsored websites, and anything that could catch the attention of the web user. SEM also makes use of PPC (pay-per-click) and paid inclusion to further push a website’s visibility. Lastly, it is usually an important process in SEM to submit the name and URL of a website to different search engines and web directories if only to tell them of the website’s existence. All this is carried out to make sure the recognition of a website.

So how does SEO come along with SEM? Well, despite having all of the advertisements provided by SEM, it is actually the SEO that enables the web user to easily and conveniently find what he’s looking for. Since the function of SEO is to achieve a greater ranking in the SERPS, the web creator needs to constantly optimize his website to be able to cater to the needs of the web user and in making it easier for spiders or web crawlers to evaluate whether the website’s content has relevancy for the word/s being searched. Optimization is absolutely not an easy and straightforward task. It involves having to restructure the website regularly (by editing the html code and meta tags, changing content, reorganizing the site map, developing an easier navigational structure, etc.) in order to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the web user. Still, when done properly, not just does SEO help a website become more useful and thus, more often visited by the web user, it also helps gain more exposure since it increases the website’s possibilities of gaining a greater rank in the SERPS.

Both SEM and SEO success rely heavily on the words or context which Internet users type in whenever they look for something on the internet. Take PPC under SEM, for example. PPC is an advertisement which is triggered by a specific word or context used by a web user. Once a specific word or context is searched, a corresponding PPC ad for a website comes out. SEO works in a similar way. The web creator inputs a specific Meta tag (or keyword) in the html that he believes many internet users will use when looking for information, information which the web creator’s website may contain.

Although all of these processes involving SEM and SEO are tedious and time-consuming, all of it boils down to knowing and serving the target audience. A web creator should be discerning enough to know very well what the web users need and want, and simultaneously he absolutely need the true passion to tell and supply the web users with the best service and product.

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