Often, those who approach the world of web marketing and are looking for a winning strategy to position themselves on Google, hear about SEO and SEM.
These are two different techniques that respond to specific needs.
If you’re also confused about SEO and SEM, but need to understand the difference and how to structure the best strategies for your business, you can read this article to clarify your ideas.
First of All, What Does SEO Mean?
SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the set of strategies used in web marketing to increase the visibility of a website on the internet and thus improve its organic positioning without payment on search engines.
What’s important to clarify, and often confused, is that SEO doesn’t work on the “indexing of a site”, but on its organic positioning. What’s the difference? Simple, indexing refers to a series of procedures to add the site to the search engine archives, while positioning refers to the position that a site has within the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages).
When a user types a specific search intent, which can be a phrase or a question, into the search bar of search engines like Google, pages appear in different positions among the results.
The higher a site ranks, the greater the chances of attracting users.
How to Optimize a Website with SEO
When starting to build a digital marketing strategy and focusing on website optimization to work on positioning your business, it’s important to consider two different techniques: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.
While the first methodology works on the content and activities that can be performed within the site’s page, the other focuses on everything that can be improved outside the site.
Here Are All the Activities of Search Engine Optimization
Based on your marketing strategy and the “goal to be achieved, it’s necessary to start with an SEO strategy that analyzes your presence” within the search engine. If possible, it’s better to rely on SEO consulting done by industry experts.
Right after that, you can understand how to optimize the site and alternatively (which is better) combine them together to have better results on Google, thus increasing website traffic.
What Are the On-Page Activities That Affect a Website’s Ranking?
To achieve good SEO, there “isn’t just one rule to follow. There are different elements that combine and only by clearly understanding the difference between one aspect and” another is it possible to develop a successful SEO strategy.
First of all, it’s essential to know everything that can be done directly on the site to be positioned:
- keyword research and insertion within the content on the website pages, without neglecting product cards in the case of an e-commerce. The keywords should also be inserted in the title tag, meta description, heading tags, and alt text of images.
- Work on a clear site structure, which ensures good usability for users searching for specific information.
- Insertion of keywords also within articles published on the site’s blog, always using updated data, essential information about the company and its reference sector with interesting and quality content.
- Correct formatting of the page URL.
- Page optimization, verifying the loading speed.
- Google authorship.
- Insertion of widgets for content sharing.
What are the off-page activities for SEO?
In addition to these listed actions, to increase results it’s important not to underestimate the off-page element, that is, everything that can be optimized outside the site. This includes various aspects, such as:
- a quality and effective link building strategy.
- Content sharing on social media.
- Social bookmarking such as StumbleUpon and Reddit.
Who handles SEO professionally? We’ll explain it to you
“The person responsible for SEO, working on optimizing search engine results, is the SEO Specialist, a figure specialized in Digital Marketing and” search engine optimization.
What does the acronym SEM mean in web marketing
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. But what does it specifically mean?
SEM includes all activities that aim to bring the largest number of users interested in the published content to the site, through search engines like Google.
As we will see, however, the difference between SEO and SEM is that the latter groups together various tools (including SEO) useful for achieving this goal.
Discover how SEM works in a digital marketing strategy
Search Engine Marketing is an activity that integrates various components, such as:
- SEO and search engine optimization to generate organic traffic to the site;
- SEA (Search Engine Advertising), that is, managing paid advertising with pay-per-click campaigns on sites and portals that allow you to reach your target;
- creation of landing pages and special pages for search marketing activities;
- Search Results Monitoring, monitoring activities of the results proposed based on specific search queries.
Let’s see what SEM is used for in your business
To understand the difference between SEO and SEM and the specific characteristics of the two techniques, it’s also essential to understand what the objectives are of Search Engine Marketing.
SEO and SEM, in fact, are closely connected concepts, but let’s consider one at a time the objectives of SEM and why this is an important aspect to work on for your site’s visibility:
- a study of the competitive scenario of the reference sector within search engines.
- Online branding. This way you can increase your brand awareness.
- Brand monitoring to verify the brand reputation within search engine results.
- Database building to collect useful data to feed the essential part of the database for other marketing activities.
- Lead generation, that is, creating lists of purchase-prone contacts, starting from Google results.
- Direct sales with e-commerce through search engines.
- Online customer support.
SEO and SEM: differences between the two marketing strategies
As we have seen, the difference between SEO and SEM is quite clear. Search Engine Optimization is a component of SEM, a larger category. These strategies differ based on the “immediacy with which one wants to achieve the” objective.
While SEO, in fact, leads to medium to long-term results and is structured on a constant publication of targeted content, through keyword analysis and optimization work, SEM works differently.
Using the latter, in fact, it is possible to exploit in a short time span the Search Engine Advertising (SEA), which allows you to advertise and pay for positioning campaigns to be visible in the top sponsored results of search engines.
Which strategy should you choose between SEO and SEM?
Now that you have understood what the difference is between SEO and SEM, it will also be clear to you that you don’t necessarily have to choose, but it is often appropriate to combine SEO with SEA activity to have excellent results in the short term.
However, SEO is an effective choice almost always and this for two reasons:
- it allows you with lower costs to build your presence in the online world and this is a long-term benefit.
- credibility on Google is built through optimization and precise SEO work that includes, as we have seen, many different aspects. This value cannot be obtained only with SEA techniques.
In short, SEO and SEM are two complementary strategies.
When the goal is to position oneself on Google, the answer may not be unique, but each case must be evaluated based on its specific needs.
Do you want to know how to build a winning SEO strategy for your site? Contact us!
