Recent studies have revealed that about 93% of American adults use the internet regularly. As a result, you might be under the impression that bringing traffic to your website will be easy.
But this isn’t always the case. Many small business owners jump through hoops to set up websites but then struggle to generate as much traffic as they want.
You might be able to begin bringing in more traffic by embracing the benefits of SEO or SEM. But before you can do this, you’ll need to know the difference between SEO and SEM.
So, what are these two types of digital marketing, and which one will be more effective for growing a business website? Learn more about SEO vs. SEM below so you can decide which would be the better option for your business website now.
So, What Exactly Is SEO?
Before we can talk about the difference between SEO and SEM, you need to know each of these things. So we’re kicking this discussion off by first touching on what SEO is.
SEO is short for search engine optimization. It’s a digital marketing strategy designed to attract more organic traffic to your website.
There are a variety of ways in which SEO will help to do this. But generally speaking, it’ll involve adding specific keywords to your website to make it more search-friendly. It’ll also include putting helpful content on your website so that search engines like Google are more likely to recommend it to people.
But that’s not all. Outside of doing these things, those small business owners who use SEO will also attempt to get backlinks to their websites on other reputable sites. This will drive organic traffic to their sites and send them soaring up the search engine results pages.
What Are the Leading Benefits of SEO?
There are so many benefits of SEO that you’ll enjoy when you decide to embrace this particular strategy. First and foremost, you’ll like the fact that, when used properly, it works. When you use SEO, you’ll see an uptick in the amount of organic traffic your website brings in every month.
You’ll also find that you’ll appreciate how your website looks and functions when you use SEO. It’ll be full of valuable content to help your company establish trust within your industry.
Additionally, you can get access to the benefits of SEO without breaking the bank. There are SEO management services that can help you take full advantage of SEO for affordable prices. Therefore, investing in SEO will prove to be a worthwhile investment when everything is said and done.
And Now, What Is SEM?
After hearing about the benefits of SEO, you might be tempted to sink your money into SEO services automatically. But before doing that, you should also ensure you understand what SEM is and how it works.
SEM is short for search engine marketing. It’s a digital marketing strategy that uses both SEO and what is known as PPC, or pay-per-click, to bring in a combination of both organic traffic and paid traffic to a website.
This two-pronged approach will work well for some businesses in a hurry to generate as much website traffic as possible. It’s why so many of them have started to utilize SEM whenever possible.
What Are the Leading Benefits of SEM?
SEM isn’t always going to produce immediate results. But if you use SEM and sprinkle in PPC strategically, it can result in your website getting more traffic than you could have imagined in the beginning.
It can also result in you bringing in more traffic from those who would be most interested in what you have to offer. The people who visit your site will often click on something that shows they’re at least somewhat interested in your company’s products or services.
But with this in mind, you should be aware that some people who click through to your site aren’t going to spend much time on it. So this could lead to you spending money on clicks that aren’t converting into sales. And what this means is that you could bring in more traffic, but it’ll come at a cost and might not always be the best investment.
It all depends on what your company brings to the table. The products and services and how you offer them could help determine an SEM campaign’s success (or result in failure).
What Are the Main Differences Between SEO and SEM?
As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, there are a whole lot of differences that set SEO and SEM apart. But the main difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO only includes SEO services, while SEM includes both SEO and PPC services.
Because of this, SEM might be able to generate more organic and paid traffic for your website. But in the end, you might find that an SEM campaign comes at a cost substantially higher than its SEO equivalent.
Conversely, SEO isn’t always going to produce the results that SEM willat least not immediately. But if you play your cards right and focus on patience, SEO services could work wonders for your website’s traffic. As a result, they may end up being the better deal overall.
You might need to spend at least a few months, if not a year or two, working on your SEO for it to pay off in a big, noticeable way. But the results of a strategically planned, well-executed SEO campaign should also last you a lot longer than the results of an SEM campaignespecially if that campaign is focused more on PPC than SEO.
Should You Use SEO or SEM for Your Website? How to Decide
Every business website is a little bit different, so it would be difficult for us to tell you whether you should go with SEO or SEM without knowing more about what you do and how you operate online. You’ll need to speak with SEO and SEM services to hear what they have to offer and settle on the right option.
However, you should remember the most significant differences between SEO and SEM while doing this. You might find that one of the options will stand out to you based on how they each work.
You might also find that you’ll want to give SEO a try before blowing your marketing budget on SEM. You might be more than satisfied with the results you receive from SEO and not feel the need to invest in SEM just to access PPC.
What Other Types of Digital Marketing Should You Consider?
SEO and SEM are two of the most popular types of digital marketing strategies at this time. But they’re definitely not the only options you have when considering the best ways to market your website and, perhaps more importantly, your business as a whole.
There are also other types of digital marketing you’ll want to consider using due to the benefits they can bring to your bottom line. They include (but are not limited to):
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Public relations
- Content marketing
- Off-line strategies (like trade shows)
When it comes to it, you’ll likely want to use SEO or SEM to your advantage. But you’ll also want to work some of these other digital marketing strategies into the mix to see how they can help you.
Doing something as simple as setting up social media accounts for your business and using them to promote SEO content on your website can prove effective. So can creating an email list for your business and sending out email blasts about the content on your website.
Your goal should be to experiment with different digital marketing strategies until you find out what works best for your business.
Think About Whether SEO or SEM Would Be Better for Your Business
Now that you know more about the main difference between SEO and SEM, you should weigh the pros and cons and choose one over the other. You should also search for a great SEO or SEM company that can lend a hand to you.
By taking these steps, you can decide which digital marketing strategy you want to use to get the ball rolling in the right direction. It won’t be long before your business website brings in more traffic than ever before.
Find out more about digital marketing tips and tricks in our other blog articles.
