First, What is Search Marketing to start with?
Marketing on search engines is an essential part of a brand’s online marketing strategy to grow its Brand, gain new customers or to get more traffic on the website. but what it is.
Search engine marketing (SEM), or search marketing refers to all the practices that helps an attention seeking brand to get it by showing up on search engine results.
Such practices include all the efforts to get a better rank on the search engine results and increasing search visibility on search results by using catchy titles, visual content, snippets.
It mainly has two components namely.
Quick Difference between SEO and SEM, SEO vs SEM:
SEM (Search Engine Marketing):
SEM, this term, once refers to both the organic and paid search efforts, but nowadays this term is only mentioned for the paid search ads. Some mention it for just PPC ( pay-per-click ads).
The paid SEM strategy mainly includes to create Ad campaigns and optimizing them. It will make your website get listed on the top of the page. If Ads are not optimized well enough then google might not show them ( even after a higher bid ).
Maintaining the Google Ads account and setting budgets to pay for ad placements is also included in SEM. In these companies Bid for the highest rank on search result page. But keep in mind that, it is not necessary a higher bid will get you a higher ranking.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization):
SEO is the use of any strategy which helps to rank better on the organic search results. Brands don’t need to pay for placement on search results. Instead , the brand has to use a lot of different strategies to get their content on the top of the search engine result page ( SERPs ).
SEO strategy focused mainly on the optimization of websites for better ranking in search results. All the tactics are included under three main categories of SEO namely
ON page SEO:
On-page SEO, as the name suggests, related to optimizing the web pages of your websites to get a better rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). anything you do to your website to get a better rank, all is included in on-page SEO. anything include continuously publishing new blog posts(or simply creating content), and Keyword optimization of the created content.
OFF page SEO:
similarly, as the name suggests, OFF page SEO includes all the activities you do outside or off your website that help in getting a better rank in search results. these activities include sharing content on various social media platforms, maintaining social media and local listing profile.
Technical SEO:
Technical SEO evolves around technical aspects, mainly coding, of your websites to help the search engine to understand your website well and give your website a higher rank in search results
This covers optimizing codes of the website and make it as light as possible to make the website fast. Taking care of site security and mobile friendliness and a lot of other things that are too much to mention.
Many think of SEO as free but It can not be said completely free. It consumes a lot of time and hard work for writing blogs continuously. so, that google’s algorithm thinks of me as a genuine content creator. paying for SSL certificates and other stuff. overall this It took around 15-20 hours to create a single world-class blog and 4-8 hours for graphics you see on the websites and whatnot.
SEO vs SEM:
As you know till now, SEO and SEM are an effective method to promote a brand and increase it’s visibility to the costumers by showing up on search engine result pages (SERPs). SEO and SEM both try to rank on the search results page but in a whole different way. One does it organically with a lot of hard work, but the other goes for a rather easy way to just buy Ads space placement in the search result page.
SEO and SEM are very different components of search marketing.
When to use SEO:
when you have a little amount of money by your hand, but got enough time to spend on your websites, creating content and doing other stuffs. It is best to use SEO for your marketing campaign Ideal for bloggers etc.
Key points:-
- It takes a lots of effort to rank better in SEO.
- It’s better in long run, but could take up to six months to see the significant results.
- No need to pay any monthly charges to keep it there.
When to use SEM:
If you got a continuous flow of money monthly or don’t have much time to spend on creating your websites, then It is recommended to use SEM for your search marketing campaign. It’s is best for an E-commerce store to use SEM.
Key points:-
- Gives nearly Immediate results. hence, making it very experiment friendly.
- Requires a continuous supply of money to pay monthly charges.
- Requires much less effort as compared to SEO.
