SEO vs SEM: How Do They Work Together?

SEO and SEM are amongst the most important digital marketing tactics with a common purpose of driving more traffic to a business website and eventually increasing its revenue. Search engine marketing focuses on acquiring traffic through paid advertisements, whereas search engine optimization focuses on increasing website traffic organically.

Read on to this article to learn more about SEO and SEM and to understand how they work together.

What is SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation that stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving the website's ranking in search engines like Google, Microsoft Bing, etc.

This digital marketing tactic makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site, making your pages more discoverable to visitors and search spiders and providing unique information or solutions through relevant on-page and off-page material that searchers are looking for.

You can hire any competent SEO company to improve your website’s visibility in search results. These SEO companies perform multiple tasks like keyword analysis and research, content creation, link building, and other SEO work to attract more traffic to your website (and ultimately boost your revenue) from organic search.

There are mainly four key types of SEO:

On-page SEO: On-page SEO refers to the practice of optimising the content of a web page for search engines and website visitors. It includes optimising title tags, meta descriptions, meta tags, internal links, content, and URLs.

Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO refers to activities that take place outside of a website to boost its search engine rankings. In this digital strategy, you can contribute high-quality content on various high-authority sites as a guest blogger with a link back to your site.

Technical SEO: It refers to optimising the technical aspects of a website such as page speed, site navigation, sitemaps, URL structure, schema, etc. to augment the search engine rankings of its pages.

Local SEO: Local SEO is a type of SEO that aims to boost the visibility of a business by making it more visible in local search results on Google.

The following are some ways to start with local SEO.

By creating a Google My Business Account for your business

By creating content based on local events or news stories

By getting positive reviews from happy customers

What is SEM?

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. It is a form of internet marketing that drives website traffic by running paid ads on search engines (like Google Ads, Bing Ads, and Yahoo Search Ads). These ads are mainly pay-per-click (PPC) ads that appear above the organic SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) results. Search engine marketing companies can choose targeted keywords according to their sponsored search ads. SEM is also commonly referred to as pay-per-click advertising or paid search marketing.

To create a good SEM strategy, you must know how paid advertising platforms work and how to effectively manage variables that affect the performance of ad campaigns, such as budget (ensure that advertising activities fall within an allotted fund), keywords (as per target demographic), and content copies (compelling and engaging).

The following are the best SEM strategies in 2022 to improve your search engine marketing performance and results:

• Curate relevant ad copy that can provide valuable information, or a genuine solution to your target audience
• Make sure your campaign & business goals are in sync
• Expand your marketing funnel
• Make a dedicated email campaign and landing page
• Personalize your ads according to the type of device and audience

These are some of the SEM strategy examples you can follow to boost your website traffic and drive conversions.

SEO vs SEM: What is the difference?

A lot of people are often confused between SEO & SEM. The major difference is that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses on improving a website's ability to attract traffic from organic search results. While the goal of search engine marketing (SEM) is to acquire traffic and visibility through organic as well as paid searches.

SEO usually takes a long time to get traction on your website, but once implemented effectively, it can provide long-lasting results.

How do SEO and SEM work together?

The primary objective of both SEO and SEM is the same, i.e., to drive more quality traffic to the website. However, when working together, SEO and SEM can be more effective than either would be working alone.

Thus, if you implement these digital marketing tactics together, it will result in a robust digital marketing campaign that produces better outcomes. Businesses that invest in a comprehensive digital strategy that is optimised for quick growth and long-term success will find themselves ahead of their competitors.

Bottomline

SEO and SEM are two of the best digital marketing channels you can choose to optimise your website traffic. If combined effectively, these digital marketing tactics can do wonders for your business.