Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are linked as they leverage search engines like Google to drive traffic and enhance visibility.
Sometimes the terms are used together to reference a similar set of activities, which can be confusing for those of us who aren’t as familiar with this world.
But while they have the same purposes, there are differences. Marketers need to understand what these are to leverage SEO and SEM in marketing activities and to feed into search intent.
It’s worth mentioning the recent Google API documentation leak which gave marketers a rare glimpse into what factors the search engine really uses to rank content.
In this article, we look at the key differences between SEO and SEM, how to use them successfully to boost the visibility of any product, service, or company and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on search marketing.
" Google requires high-quality SEO results to keep users engaged, all the better to serve paid listings against their future search queries "
Clark Boyd, DMI tutor and co-founder of Novela
So what’s the difference? While SEO optimizes a website to drive organic traffic, SEM uses both organic and paid search such as Pay-Per-Click or programmatic advertising to boost web traffic.
This means that SEM covers organic and paid channels while SEO focuses on organic traffic, making it a subset of SEM.
It’s worth noting that SEO experts are debating the value of paid search due to changes in search behavior and the rise of AI-powered search, such as Google's AI Overviews (SGE). More on that later…
Now you know the difference, let’s look at SEO and SEM in more detail.
So what is SEO? SEO involves continuously optimizing a website to rank in organic search engine results pages, known as SERPs.
Search engines like Google or Bing work by ‘crawling’ content to see how effective it will be to attract traffic and provide information. Search engines will assess a website based on many factors (explained below) and rank it.
According to Statcounter Global Stats, Google claims 91% of the global search engine market compared to only 3.74% on Bing and 1.26% on Yahoo. This means that when we talk about search engines the main focus for SEO is on Google, but we still need to remember that others are still in the running (but barely).
You should note that it takes a bit of time for Google to recognize and reward your site – if your site is brand new, it probably won’t get ‘noticed’ for quite a while.
With Statista reporting that Google processes 5.9 million searches every minute there's a huge opportunity for marketers to use that search intent to drive traffic.
That’s the way you need to think when it comes to SEO - What’s my audience searching for and how can I feed into it?