What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
Both SEO and SEM have the same objective: to increase the volume of traffic to your website. One of the main strategies for this purpose is positioning your company within the first results of search engines like Google. Its importance is clear. Nobody carries on reading beyond the first page of the results. Everyone want increasingly fast responses
Although both seek the same objective, these tools work in different ways. The main differences are how they manage to place the websites in the top positions and the time they take to get results.
The conomic investment
While SEO does this in a totally organic way, by the search engines choosing who occupies the top ranking according to a series of internal criteria, SEM requires direct eonomic investment.
However, it is important to point out that both offer improved website positioning and both are online marketing strategies that are carried out by professionals, as you need to design a tactical strategy and possess specific knowledge to create them.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) are the techniques applied to your website to improve its positioning in an organic way, that is, a natural way without any economic influence.
The top places on search engines that are so sought after by all companies are reserved for the SEM campaigns. In this way, in contrast with SEO, they obtain results much more quickly, as your company will appear in the first results of a search related to your brand.
Another feature of SEM is that paid results are always shown under the “Sponsored” or “Ads” tag in the same way as Spanish influencers do when they share content on social networks that has been sponsored by a brand.
The price that you will need to pay for SEM depends on the keywords chosen. If the words are in great demand, the competition increases and so does the investment.
The time it takes to see results
Another fundamental difference between SEO and SEM is the time needed to obtain results. This is where SEM has the advantage, if you are interested in fast growth.
SEM tactics are planned over the short-term. Results are visible on the search page in just two steps: creating the advert and choosing the relevant words for your business.
In contrast, SEO is a long-term strategy. To achieve good results you need put in constant daily work to maintain and optimise the website. Many factors need to be taken into account, among them, the website load-up speed, an excellent navigation experience for the user, valuable content, time dedicated to the website by internet users and the correct choice of keywords.
These results are organic and natural. That is, you construct the content keeping in mind the search engine criteria as users, and as time passes, the search engine will identify it as important, thereby increasing its appearance in the searches of your leads.
The negative part is that visible results are not 100% guaranteed, but when they do come, their effect is major, as the user navigating the website will have trust in the results.
So, SEO or SEM?
As with all marketing strategies, in order to make decisions you need to know what the objectives are. What are you hoping to achieve? Instant sales? Organic traffic to your store? Attracting subscribers to your newsletter?
Alternatively, you need to keep in mind the budget you have, the time the campaign will last, and what type of content you want to disseminate; a timely product, a brand blog, etc.
From these replies, you can organise your priorities. Depending on what you want to achieve, you will find the appropriate answer in an SEM strategy, an SEO strategy, or a combination of both.
