Many new clients ask us the difference between Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) when they first come to us. There is much confusion and debate on the two terms - even by the experts, however the following should hopefully shed some light on the differences between the two terms…
So…what is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
Search engine marketing is really search engine advertising or “pay per click”. Other methods exist such as buying into trusted feeds and paid inclusion to search directories like Yahoo but these are less common.
Pay per click is the most common and takes the form of paid text adverts such as Google’s sponsored links or Yahoo’s sponsored results. These appear on the right hand side of search results pages or sometimes above the main (organic) search results. They take the form of short text adverts. These adverts are bid for and placed on the page by the search engine. The higher the bid the better the position on the page.
The advert takes the form of a few words and displayed on the sponsored links area. The advertiser is charged a fee when a visitor clicks on the advert and this is known as a click through. The advert does not incur a charge if it is only displayed on the page.
Placing PPC ads on Google, Yahoo, MSN etc is very similar to placing clasified ads in your newspaper. It requires very little skills but it can be a waste of money if you don’t do it properly. It does rely heavily on understanding target markets, audiences, conversion rates and return on investments. The correct ad-writing skills also plays a vital part so this is where a professional search engine marketing company can obtain the best results for your advertising budget.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) - what’s the difference
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising the pages of a website so that they can be found in the top results of search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN. These pages are optimised for certain keywords in the title, description and body text of that particular web page. This is also known as “onpage optimisation”. However this is very basic and there are many more factors involved. Search engines use something called “algorithms” to determine the suitability of a web page to be presented in it’s results. These algorithms are extremely complex mathematical rules and they look for many criteria such as number of key words on the page (keyword density), inbound links (offpage optimisation), meta information, page length, internal links and so on. It’s the combination of getting all these things right that makes a highly ranked page.
SEO is not rocket science but a professional search engine optimisation company can produce the best results.
Search engine marketing pros & cons
Advantages:
Search engine marketing is pretty much instant. You can literally set up an account with Google, Yahoo or MSN and within a few minutes you can have your adverts on the front pages of search engines. You can have your adverts displayed and be taking enquiries and orders over your competitors. You only pay for a click through and you don’t need to make changes to your website.
Disadvantages:
These (in our opinion) outweigh the advantages. SEM can be very expensive. Depending on the competition of the search term you can pay as much as £5-10 per click. A click does not guarantee an order so you have to get the landing page right and make it easy to convert to sales. Another disadvantage is that of “advert blindness”. This is basically a distrust of an advert by a visitor where they are so accustomed to adverts appearing in the results that they are ignored totally. This happens with a large number of many potential customers. The other downside is that of your competitors clicking your ad or people clicking by mistake - known as click fraud and can be costly.
Search engine optimisation pros and cons
Advantages
More trust is placed on a listing that has got to the organic results on merit. Click throughs are much higher than PPC, there’s no charge when someone clicks on your link and once you’re listed it tends to stay there for long periods.
Disadvantages
A lot of hard work is required to get top level rankings. Competition at the top can be fierce. A very good understanding of the algorithims and what search engines want is required. You have to opimise your pages at code and content level. You have to do off-page work such as building links. It can be very time consuming. Professional SEO companies are often required for best results. It can take a long time to get listed.
For all the above disadvantages, SEO is much preferred to SEM as the return on investment is often much higher.
