SEO and SEM: What Is the Difference and What to Use First?

In promoting your business digitally, you can use strategies like SEO and SEM. However, even though both are tactics targeting search engines, they work in a very distinct way. SEO works to increase ranking on search engines organically, and SEM focuses on gaining higher rankings and more traffic using paid ads and organic strategies.

Then, what makes SEO and SEM different? This article will explain the ins and outs of SEO and SEM and which strategy is suitable for your business. 

What Is SEO?

Before we learn the difference, let’s figure out what SEO is. SEO or search engine optimisation is the strategy to increase a site’s ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and is a subset of SEM. The main goal of SEO is to obtain more organic traffic by satisfying what the users need while using search engines. 

It is more likely that pages with the most beneficial and pertinent content will show up in the first few organic search results where users can see them. However, useful material by itself is insufficient. The bots that search engines use to crawl websites must be able to interpret it.

In general, SEO involves four main elements, which are:

• Keyword research: Figuring out what users are looking for on the search engine. 
• Technical SEO: Maintaining site performance and making sure that it can be crawled and indexed by search engine bots.
• On-page SEO: Making content based on users’ intent. 
• Off-page SEO: Gaining site authority and trust from websites. 

What Is SEM?

Search engine marketing or SEM is a tactic including SEO and paid advertising. To make it clear, a site that is optimised with SEM usually appears on the top of search results with a “Sponsored” or “Ad” label above the meta title. 

If you are working with SEM, you will employ some main practices, such as:

• Keyword research: Similar to SEO, it is to find what the users need. 
• Bidding: Choosing the price you need to pay for a click.
• Creating Ad: Producing relevant and interesting advertising. 
• Targeting audiences: Determining the audience characteristics who will view your advertisement.
• Ad assets: Extra components you can use in your Google PPC search ads to present users with more details.

SEO and SEM Differences

Even though they both work for search engines and SEO is part of SEM, SEO and SEM operate in a distinct way. 

SEO focuses on driving organic traffic, and SEM uses paid search (like Google Pay-Per-Click) and organic strategies to increase website traffic. This indicates that SEO is a part of SEM since it concentrates on organic traffic, whereas SEM covers both organic and paid channels. 

To get to know more about how SEO and SEM work, examine the information below:

How Does SEO Work?

In brief, content is crawled by search engines like Google and Bing to determine how well it will draw traffic and offer information. A website will be ranked by search engines depending on a variety of criteria, such as:

• User experience: Marking how easy your website is to use.
• Relevance: Marking how your content aligns with users’ queries and provides valuable content. 
• Quality: Marking trustworthy and authoritative content on your website. 

Keep in mind that it takes some time for Google to identify and reward your website. If your site is freshly made, it is likely going to take some time for it to be noticed.

Then, how to do SEO? Among the four main elements explained above, it can be broken down into many strategies as follows:

1. Keyword research and optimisation: You must find what terms users use to look for a certain thing and use them across the site. 

2. SEO content production: Using the keywords, you can create high-quality and SEO-friendly content that satisfies the search intent. 

3. Link-building: Building authority and trust from other websites through high-quality backlinks. 

4. User experience enhancement: Ensure the pages load fast, are easily navigated, and fulfil the user experience. 

5. Mobile-friendliness: Optimising mobile device websites like phones and tablets.

6. Internal linking: Linking the site's related content to help users and search engine bots navigate your site. 

7. Local SEO: Focusing on enhancing online presence for local searches. 

8. Technical SEO: Optimising your website by creating an XML sitemap, adding robots.txt, fining site structure, rendering, and many more.  

How Does SEM Work?

When SEO focuses on organic tactics, SEM will do the paid ones. Strategies like PPC help you target audiences and increase online visibility in search results faster than SEO. This entails investing effort in creating targeted advertisements and setting aside funds for them. 

To do SEM, you must do the following activities:

1. Keyword research: Identifying the pertinent, low-competition, and high-volume keywords to target audiences. 

2. Creating ad copy: Making a copy that includes keywords, call-to-actions (CTA), and unique selling propositions (USP).

3. Optimising landing page: Making user-friendly landing pages that are suitable to your advertisements.

4. Using ad extension: Utilising ad extension to get more information about the advertisement. 

5. Bidding: Continually modifying your bids according to budget, competition, and keyword performance to optimise return on investment. 

6. Ads A/B testing: Trying various advertising, landing pages, and targeting choices using A/B testing.

7. Device and location targeting: Placing ads in a certain location for specific users, adjust bids based on the location, and customising the ads for various devices. 

8. Tracking the conversion: Analysing user actions after clicking on the advertisements and monitoring the sales, downloads, and sign-ups. 

SEO and SEM, What to Use First?

Talking about using SEO and SEM depends on your preferences and needs. If you need to see leads, traffic or leads quickly, then SEM is the answer. Also, if you plan to elevate your online presence in the highly competitive search results immediately, you can use SEM. 

However, using paid ads in SEM means you must prepare the regular ads budget. This can be a challenge for your brand if you are still starting up your business or have big operational needs.

Therefore, if you do not want to completely rely on ads, in this case, you opt for a more cost-effective strategy, you can use SEO first and SEM later when needed. Additionally, you can use SEO if you want to generate traffic, sales, or leads organically and have time to monitor it since it takes approximately 3–6 months to be effective.
 

Conclusion

Those are the information about SEO and SEM you can learn. In the end, what you want and how quickly you want it will determine whether you choose SEO or SEM. SEM indeed gives you a faster result, but it is not sustainable for your business because it will stop when you halt the funding. 

On the other hand, SEO can be your ace if you want a long-term and sustainable result, although you must wait for months to get effective results. 

However, one of the main keys to doing both is having the appropriate resources, including the budget, team, and planning. 

If you need resources for SEO implementation, working with SEO agencies is a wise move. One of the SEO optimisation companies you can rely on is cmlabs. 

We at cmlabs will assist you in optimising your website in the on-page, off-page, content, and many more in a package called SEO Service by cmlabs. So, book a meeting now and tell us your SEO needs for free!