SEO vs SEM: Who Wins?
SEO and SEM include all those digital marketing activities aimed at giving greater visibility to a website and consequently increasing company turnover.
But let's be clear.
SEM and SEO are not synonymous, as some might think.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) includes a set of techniques whose primary objective is to make a site appear in the first results of search engines.
The SEO specialist is therefore the professional figure who deals with:
- Optimize the pages of a site
- Optimize the images of a site Article marketing
- Use advanced SEO tools for keyword research
- Monitor your ranking over time
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) can be considered as the parent of SEO, as it incorporates it together with SMO (Social Media Optimization) for the optimization of social networks and SEA (Search Engine Advertising) or that set of strategies used to optimize campaigns created with Google Adwords.
Doing SEM means working to bring traffic to a site, both organically and through the use of campaigns. In other words, a professional web marketing strategy must take into account SEM, SMO, SEA and SEO at the same time. In fact, for example, one cannot think of running a Google Adwords campaign if an SEO friendly site has not been created first.
However, often, in current language, reference is made to SEM to refer strictly to advertising campaigns, i.e. online advertising. In this context, the SEM specialist who has studied precisely to set up campaigns that are as performing as possible takes on relevance. Within web agencies, the SEM specialist can deal exclusively with campaigns or can also cover the role of SEO specialist.
The best SEO and SEM techniques
But what are the most effective techniques to obtain concrete results?
Surely we need to take care of every aspect of SEO web marketing and this means that: it is necessary to analyze the competition well and understand which keywords it is good to push on also based on search volumes the texts of the website must be drafted according to specific rules and must the urls, the H1, H2 and H3 titles, the meta description must be optimized by inserting strategic keywords it is necessary to "know how to sell" or make sure to obtain external links from portals or authoritative sites
The recommended SEM activities, in addition to obviously SEO optimization, include:
- presence of a mobile-friendly, well-structured and easily navigable website constantly updated social channels with original and engaging posts for better engagement planning of pay-per-click (PPC) paid campaigns using tools such as Google Adwords but also Facebook Business Manager
A good SEM campaign does not neglect any detail and involves drafting a web marketing plan containing information such as:
- primary objective and secondary target
- social task list SEO task list
- sponsorship activity list
Difference between SEO and SEM marketing
We reiterate that the main difference lies in the fact that SEM can be considered to all intents and purposes a macro-category of web marketing and involves the application of different strategies relating to SEO, SMO and SEA. SEO, therefore, is nothing more than a sub-category of SEM, unless, as previously mentioned, the term SEM refers exclusively to paid online campaigns.
In conclusion, we can say that there is no winner between SEM and SEO because both are essential for bringing users to a particular website and transforming those visitors, through targeted actions, into effective customers.
