In this advanced world of Digital Marketing, getting online success depends upon some key strategies which businesses must understand. There are many strategies, but basically two core strategies: Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. Both will improve the website’s visibility on SERPs; however, the method of their actions isn’t the same.

Here we’ll discuss these differences and also highlight the points on when to use each strategy. 

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of enhancing the website’s content, and other factors that determine its ranking on the SERPs. This process includes the keyword research, on-page SEO, link building, and technical SEO, These will give you the sureties that your website is user friendly for both search engines and the users. Which may help generate more traffic to the website, convert the traffic into customers, and sell more products.

For example, if a business is located in Jaipur and targets only the local customers, they shall contact an SEO company in Jaipur to optimise the website for local search.These companies use some strategy for increasing their business website on the first page of Google search results. For this they use strong backlinks, quality content and relevant keywords.

Benefits of SEO

• Cost-Effective: SEO deals with organic search engine results; hence there is no need for continuous spending to be ranked. Once your website is optimised and gets good rankings, you will continue earning the traffic without additional costs.

• Long-Term Results: SEO means long-term benefits. Provided that one can attain a good ranking, it becomes easy to maintain it with constant optimization efforts.

• Builds Trust and Credibility: High-ranking websites on organic search results can deliver credibility. The right SEO strategy is going to be very  helpful in establishing your business as an authority that can be trusted in the industry.

What is SEM?

It is the process of driving traffic to your site from search engines. You can get this traffic either from organic or paid results, or both. You use SEO to get traffic from organic results and Pay-Per-Click to get traffic from paid results.

Search engine marketing is a business process that allows bidding on specific keywords related to one’s products or services. These ads appear next to the organic search results when users are searching for the same keywords. This strategy is highly targeted and drives immediate traffic to your Website. 

Benefits of SEM

• Fast Visibility:  Organic SEO is a time-consuming, energy-consuming activity to create visibility. On the other hand, search engine marketing provides almost instant results. This is where your ad gets placed right in front of your prospect the moment they look for you. This makes for an ideal short-term strategy to quickly create some visibility to your products, service, or organisation.

• Increase Traffic: Another advantage of SEM is driving more traffic to your website. By bidding on correct keywords and with a decent budget, your advertisement will be seen by genuine prospects actually interested in trying to find the product or service that you are selling. Though that customer is only in the research stage, your ad will pop up before the natural search results. This, therefore, leads to targeted visitors coming to your website. In addition, you are able to see the actual strings that were searched and brought your website up. Google Trends is a good source of information and reports, which can ensure vast targeted traffic.

SEO vs. SEM: Key Differences

• Long-term vs Short-term goals

SEO-Search Engine Optimization is time-consuming and a patient strategy. Therefore, this will suit those businesses who are searching for a long-term online presence, since it takes time and effort to show its results. On the other hand, SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing, pays off with immediate organic traffic and leads. Therefore, this will suit those businesses that want quick results or run time-critical campaigns.

• Cost–Effectiveness

While SEO is more cost-effective in the long term, its investment may be high. On the other hand, SEM might prove even more costly in the long term but gives a fast way to get visibility on SERPs.

• Backlinks

Backlinks are the most important part of high, organic search rankings, therefore, they play a very crucial role in SEO. However, in SEM, backlinks don’t affect the paid search results directly, even though quality score and ad ranking can be used with them.

• Click-Through Rates (CTRs)

Generally, search engine optimization efforts result in higher click-through rates compared to SEM. CTRs for SEM are usually lower, and effective ad copy will raise them combined with exact keyword targeting.

• Quality Score

Quality score is an important component of SEM but has no meaning for SEO. For the case of SEM: it acts as a metric to determine the relevance of the ad to the targeted keywords. Higher quality scores can affect ad position positively on the search result page, and also lead to lowered CPCs.

When to Use SEO

Many marketing goals for many brands include SEO. The ultimate goal of SEO may range from brand visibility to traffic, leads, sales, and market share in the long run. However, sometimes you should not worry about anything else. The following are some of the points that may guide you in making the decision such that you should not worry about it. There still is some time. SEO is not a business strategy which provides immediate results, in most cases, it could be months before a site receives natural traffic, which in turn should lead to conversions and leads. However, if you are compiling an archive of knowledge that will always come in handy, you have time on your side.

When to Use SEM

A brand can use SEM to ensure that it will appear quickly in the user’s search results. These may appear at the top of SERPs or even at the bottom. These ads, placed at the top of the page, are extremely useful to users since they appear prior to the organic results. It could also help to be placed at the bottom of the page since it is the last thing that a searcher sees when scrolling down the page. Following are a few cases when it is preferable to concentrate on SEM alone. We need immediate results. PPC is ideal for new companies or brands just starting with SEO as PPC produces immediate results. You can choose a budget, write ads, and go live in search instantly.

Combining SEO and SEM

Most companies have the ability to blend SEO with SEM so that they can afford a balance of traffic for the long run. By SEM needing immediate results and, at the same time, using the SEO strategy for long-term organic traffic purposes, a balanced approach will be able to help maximise their visibility online. For example, the best SEO company in Jaipur may suggest the use of SEM for quick visibility but securing a comprehensive SEO strategy for sustained long-term growth.

Conclusion

To understand the digital marketing strategy,you have to know the difference between SEO and SEM. This blog discusses every detail about these two strategies and gives you an idea when to use them. Taking help from an experienced SEO company in Jaipur, you can create a strategy which can help to get success and reach your target audience.