In this big mighty world, we have a few fine lines between a few things that are at constant war-like UI & UX, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, and SEM & SEO. Majority of people, even professionals confuse them both for being the same thing. But there is a huge difference between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. It’s like comparing two different music genres like Rock and hip-hop with each other. So, if you are a new blogger or you have created your website and looking to market your blog/website. Stop confusing these two terms. Both have their own pros and cons and both are champions in their grounds. Firstly, if you don’t know much about Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing is as deep as the programming industry. SEO, SEM, SMM etc. all these are popular Digital Marketing methods that generate a set of audience relating to your blog/website. So if you are planning to market your blog then this blog is for you!
SEO
Well, SEO is so common these days that even our parents know about it. Putting it simply, SEO is the method of getting free traffic from the search engines. How? Umm… Search Engines have these things named web-crawlers, web-crawler are little million pieces of software spread everywhere on the internet fetching data in exchange of keywords and to make the search results more relevant to the keywords and sentimentally on-point, page ranking kicks in which is basically a method of content filtration. “Doing SEO” consists of making a strategy to optimize your website/blog according to the search engines by adding meta tags, descriptions, backlinks, image captions etc.
SEM
SEM or Search Engine Marketing covers SEO and paid marketing. SEM includes PPC (Pay per click) and CPC (cost per click) which drives a huge amount of traffic to your website. SEM works like a needed extra topping on the ice-cream that is your website. The more you pay search engines to rank your website on top gets you the more of traffic present on the web. However, this ranking implies far by the means of advertisement which accentuates that your website won’t get ranked number one. It will just put you on top with the help of keywords related to your campaign or website. SEM is the subset of the overall strategy of internet marketing. Your website will get visible on the search engines with the help of paid marketing. SEM covers the areas of marketing that SEO doesn’t.
What to do
The reason behind this blog is not to prioritize one method over the other but to accentuate that SEM and SEO work together as a well. A strong marketing strategy requires both SEO and SEM onboard. You cannot just rely on one method to advertise your website. Your internet marketing strategy should incorporate both of them so you’ll be able to cover the lion’s share of your market. SEM goes in the most specific area and it is paid while on the other hand, SEO is free and covers the general audience through tips and tricks.
