SEO vs SEM - How do SEO & SEM Benefit To Your Business?

Differences Between SEO And SEM

Every organization in the world today already has or is trying to build its official website owing to the global reach and clout of the internet. However, just building an official website for your business is not enough. You must apply appropriate website optimization techniques to make your website rank on searches on Google.

Now the questions arise, “Which website optimization techniques should I apply to my official website? SEO or SEM? Which would give me the best results for my website?” We’ll have all those questions answered by the end of this article. So, kindly read on.

The Main Differences Between SEO And SEM

Some significant differences exist between SEO and SEM. Both the website optimization techniques are applied to rank a website on Google but vary in their long-term purpose and working mechanisms. You should choose the one that best suits your interim business requirements.:

SEO

SEO techniques are applied to rank a website organically on Google’s search results over a period of many months.

SEO techniques enhance the DA and PA of a website overtime thus making it more genuine in the eyes of Google.

SEO is an elaborate process, comprising a few sub domains of Digital Marketing. It includes but is not limited to writing high quality and relevant content around the chosen focus and LSI keywords for each blog post and incorporating relevant and informative infographics and videos in each blog post to enhance their readability.

The correct application of SEO techniques give a website owner lasting results. The website will be listed on the first page of Google’s search results for a long time until the next update is needed and will thereby give its owner a high amount of website traffic and online income if the website has been monetized by Google’s AdSense.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) mainly involves running a paid ad campaign on google and listing your website on the ad slots in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Here, you choose a set of keywords you want your website or web page to be listed for in Google. You allocate a total budget for your paid ad campaign on Google and you set a budget for each of the chosen keywords.

You also decide how much you are going to pay Google for each click (Pay Per Click (PPC)) that you get on the chosen keywords. Once your total budget reduces and becomes nil, your website gets delisted from Google and you’ll have to run a new paid ad campaign.

SEM is a relatively shorter process that does not increase the DA and PA (authenticity) of any website.

SEM is only applied to get instantaneous and short term results. Example scenarios of SEM application include a school or a collage advertising its temporary/seasonal vacancies, a private or government organization’s website declaring interim exam results, the website of a shopping mall announcing limited period offers, etcetera.

The PPC model employs an auctioning method. You have to be prepared to set a relatively high budget for your Google Ad campaign and the chosen keywords. If somebody is willing to pay more to Google for the same set of keywords, their website will be listed higher in the ad slots compared to yours.

If your website is pushed down a couple of more slots (total of three ad slots), it will not show up in Google’s SERPs unless the higher bidder’s paid ad campaign gets exhausted. So, fundamentally, SEM is employed to achieve temporary and instantaneous results unlike SEO whose results are long standing but time-consuming.

Benefits Of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) And Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Websites

The Benefits Of SEM For Your Website

Even though the results obtained from SEM are temporary, SEM does give numerous benefits to websites and business owners. They are as listed below.

Instantaneous Global Or Regional Visibility:

If you do not have the time or desire to apply SEO techniques and get lasting results, you can opt for SEM which will give your website instant global or regional visibility.

You can choose the regions where you want your website to be displayed and the keywords you want your website to be listed for in Google Ads. These features enable a person or an organization to reach out to his or her target audience effectively.

You Get High Website Traffic In A Short Time:

SEM techniques will bring a lot of traffic to your website in a relatively short time by making your website globally or regionally visible.

Getting high website traffic will help you achieve your short term goals and is one of the prerequisites to making your website rank organically on Google’s SERPs in the long run. A high amount of online traffic to your official website will also augment your brand awareness.

You Can Get An In-Depth Ad Campaign Performance Analysis:

Google Ads enables you to monitor the performance of your paid ad campaign. You get an in-depth analysis of how many impressions (website visits) and clicks each of your chosen keywords have given you.

Even the Click Through Rate (CTR (clicks/impressions)) of each of the chosen keywords is automatically calculated and displayed to give you an idea of which keywords are performing well and which ones are not.

You can then modify your ad campaign by removing the non-performing keywords and introducing promising ones and even set new Cost Per Click (CPCs) for those keywords if you want to.

Thus, Google Ads is a very feature-rich program that gives ad campaign managers a great deal of operational flexibility, on-the-spot global or regional website visibility, quick results, and precise audience targeting ability.

You Can Schedule Your Google Ad Campaign:

Google Ads enable you to pause and resume your paid ad campaign anytime. You can also set a definite time period for your ad campaign if you want to (usually done based on one’s requirements as described in the previous examples). Both these features allow more operational flexibility.

You Get Value For Money

Once you create a paid ad campaign on Google, your website will be listed on the first page (top three slots) of Google’s search results for free. You pay Google the allotted amount for each of the chosen keywords only if people search for your targeted keywords and click on your website’s link. This way, there is no wastage of money and every penny you spend will count (benefit your website).

The Benefits Of SEO For Your Website

SEO services give the following tangible benefits to websites and make them rank on the first page of Google’s search results.

Global Visibility And Ranking On The First Page:

One of the most important and invaluable benefit of applying SEO techniques to your website is that overtime, it will rank organically on the first page of Google’s search results and thereby gain global visibility and a high amount of web traffic.

Ranking on the first page of Google’s search results is important for a website because these days people rarely have the patience to look beyond the first Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Lasting results can be obtained for your official website if appropriate SEO techniques are applied on it properly.

Increased DA And PA

Websites that rank on the first page of Google’s search results typically have a high Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) or in Google’s terms they refer to the genuineness of a website.

The higher the DA and PA of a website, the higher it’ll rank on Google. The default DA and PA of a website is 1. It can be enhanced upto 100 at max. Various digital tools are available to detect the DA and PA of a website. One such popular tool is Moz.

The DA and PA of a website can be augmented by geting high quality backlinks from relevant sources. Getting high quality backlinks from unrelated sources will hardly augment the DA and PA of a website. So, care must be taken about this fact.

Gives A Great User Experience:

Websites that rank on the first page of Google generally have an appealing and concise layout.

The information presented on such websites is also easy to understand and navigate through plus high ranking websites load in a giffy. Such practices create a great user experience which in turn brings more readers to the websites.

SEO Or SEM, Just Ask Us

If you already have an official website for your business and want to apply appropriate SEO or SEM techniques on it to make it rank on Google’s SERPs, we can do that with pleasure for you as we have become experts in both the website optimization domains.

Even if you want to build an official website for your organization, we can help you with that too. The professional services we offer are very diverse and the best in class. The cherry on top of our cake is that we offer our professional services at very reasonable costs. So, you’ll certainly get value for your money.

Our successful track record in SEO is evident through our exceptional solutions delivered to various industries, including salon applications, restaurant aggregation, courier services, healthcare applications, and other personalized applications. Just knock at our doors and we’ll take your business to the next level.

The Author

Gopinath Murugaiyan

Managing Director