All businesses desire to rank on top search engine page ranking (SERP) for greater revenue profits. Subsequently, they hire a seasoned digital marketing expert who can improve their brand visibility on the Web. The marketer may choose to deploy SEM or SEO depending on the customer’s requirements. But, what exactly is an SEO and an SEM? Read on to find out.

SEO Vs SEM – Understanding the Basics

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing employed by webmasters to augment a website’s SERP with organic optimization and promotions. Often, SEM uses SEO to achieve

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves writing search-engine friendly (optimized) content to obtain a higher page rank. It thus allows companies to boost their online presence, and penetrate a greater market segment.

Thus, online marketers to improve the lead generation capacity and revenues of a business avidly use both forms of marketing. Making profits is the ultimate aim of any business, isn’t it?

Two Types of SEM Promotions

There are two ways in which a web site will be listed on SERP, either through paid search or through organic search.

Paid search involves paying a fee to the search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo!) for including a web site in their page rankings and in a separate online advertising section. Often referred to as sponsored listings, paid search feature is offered by all major search engines. Pay-per-Click (PPC) and AdWords are fine examples of paid search.

Organic Search is FREE and involves advertising a website by indexing through keywords and obtaining genuine backlinks.

Digital marketers use both types of SEM promotions to improve brand visibility, generate traffic on website, and boost revenues.

That said, which is a better option to use- SEM or SEO?

Difference between SEO and SEM

SEO will improve your website’s ranking in an organic way. It is not like paid search (SEM), the results aren’t instant, however you may realize that it’s greatly helpful for your web site in the longer run.

SEM on the other hand is Internet marketing that uses mostly paid form of advertising to quickly index a website on the SERP.

SEO vs SEM – which is better for business?

Each of these Internet marketing tools have pros and cons. Depending on the type of business, digital marketers can use either of them or use in combination to produce desired results.

If your business website is new, it is advised to spend 90% on SEM activities, while the remaining 10% on SEO. Later when your web site begins to generate desired traffic, you can increase the SEO activities and reduce the SEM. However, since your business is launching new services or products regularly, you need to greatly depend on SEM activities. It can thus, be fairly said that for propagation of your online business, you must equally spend (50-50) on SEM and SEO activities.

Ok…now the question is which is better Pay Per Click vs Seo?

Pay-per- Click (PPC) is a highly effective channel for generating relevant and quality lead generation. Even though the clients will be exclusively local, nonetheless, PPC is a worthwhile investment. By carefully crafting and targeting the website’s campaign, marketers will pre-qualify the site’s traffic based on location and other factors to drive the right people to the site.

Reasons why PPC vs organic SEO is an excellent source of lead generation

• Visitors are attracted to those who are searching for what the business offers
• Immediate rankings of keywords are obtained for achieving potential traffic
• For each funnel phase, the messages are controlled and crafted as per the targeted audience’s requirement

For some businesses, the costs associated with travel are too much to bear, while for others it could be the need for expansion. Regardless of the reasons, organizations today use both paid and FREE Internet marketing tools to promote their websites, generate more leads, improve brand visibility & recognition, and finally improve their sales pipeline.