SEO Vs SEM: The Report Card Arrives

The algorithm of Google has certainly been a big reason for sleepless nights for digital marketers all around the globe. It might seem a labyrinth more difficult than oracles.

 

But bless SEO & SEM! At least there is one guaranteed tool that can work in favor of the marketing strategists that allows them to plan a journey towards the pinnacle of the SERP and be seen, be known, be bought.

 

Welcome back, dear digital marketing enthusiast! 

 

If you have been regularly in touch with our in-house developed informative blogs, you must be aware by now that we have lately been acknowledging our readers about SEO and SEM promotions and how they act in favor of your branding blend

 

While in one of our blogs we have focused on how organic promotions (Search Engine Optimization) can act in your brand’s favor, in the other, we have aimed at explaining the pros of Search Engine Marketing. These two instruments have been singularly explained as heroes for taking your brand ahead.

 

And that brings us to today’s blog idea that has evolved out of the basic inertia of every human mind that always wanted to see Batman and Superman cast with or against each other in a single episode.

 

Correct, today we shall study these two online branding heroes under the same umbrella and arrive at a point that explains whom exactly your brand needs ahead. 

 

Let’s begin…

 

Primarily, let’s go through a brief recap. 

 

Organic promotion uses the tool of SEO, a practice that optimizes content for better discovery of your product by your target market on SERPs through use of efficient keywords. 

 

While search engines like Google employ hundreds of factors in their algorithm to decide which pages can ride it up, SEO enables marketers to trek with their content to the top in three ways; On Page SEO, Off Page SEO and Technical SEO.

 

 

 

To know more on SEO, you can go through our blog, to understand the discussion better.

 

The Second Hero

 

Now let’s take a look at a brief explanation of our second PH, aka, Promotion Hero, Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

 

Though SEM is used by some marketeers to shade down the complete package of online promotion through a combination of both SEO and PPCs, SEM however correctly refers to all ‘Paid Search’.

 

The integrity of PPC lies in the fact that it is instantaneous, which is a perfect whistleblower for the impatient business owners who need some immediate focus on their services and products.

 

Furthermore, SEM offers features like budget alteration, access to advertising that can be customized as both massive and granular cost limits, and makes the most of remarketing by popping up the screens of your probable clientele who had shown interest in trade in the past.

 

Below you shall find some basic keys to set the foundation of your SEM strategy correct, as is advisable for advertising on the most popular Search Engine, Google.

 

 

 

A beginner? Having problem understanding these technicalities at a go? For a more lucid understanding of the concept working behind SEM, do click here.

 

So which boat to step onto…SEO or SEM?

 

Now that, you have a concise and crisp idea baked into your mind. And based on the above perception some of you might have developed an inclination towards the verdict that SEO is certainly the god-sent promotional strategy for you as organic traffic is all your business needs.

 

Yet there are as well few of you who shoot for the stars, and waiting for time indefinite to get your brand noticed, is certainly not your option. 

 

Hence you plan to purchase spaces in the SERP floors and then you and your business will live ‘happily ever after’.

 

Take a brief pause. Because, this was the interval.

 

From our experience we can certainly say that no such conclusion is apt while developing an online marketing mix. Its not just that the quest for what’s better can be answered just based on your kind of business, but each business has a plethora of products and services, each of which have a norm to act better when promoted with SEO or PPC. 

 

Thus, here we arrive at a no man’s land where we will prescribe a supposedly ideal mix 4 scenes: employing either of these instruments, alternatively if not together – that can act as the perfect play for any generic business promotion, online.

 

Here’s how…

 

Scene 1: Picking up keywords that are high in demand? SEM-1, SEO-0 

 

‘A’ owns a garment manufacturing unit. A chooses keywords that are highly popular and in demand by the tycoons of his trade, like Amazon, Flipkart et al. A goes for SEO. 

 

Not a single footfall occurs on A’s website, because he appears so much below the SERP for ‘stylish formals online’ that his presence there is almost non-existent. 

 

A shuts down the website. 

 

After a year, A shuts down his store.

 

‘B’ on the other hand buys quiet competitive keywords with SEM strategy suggested to him by his digital marketeer. B owns a garment manufacturing boutique in the garage of his own home.

 

His ranking is certainly not anywhere near to the tycoons, but yet his advertisements receive notice for his comparatively cheaper rates, and great ratings and reviews. 

 

After two years, B buys the store that A once owned.

 

Small note to all the aspiring B’s out there. To achieve revenue through SEM, without increasing the price per unit of your product, you have to achieve two time taking goals, a. Taking up your conversion rate, b. Bringing down your CPC by increasing your quality score. 

 

So now you know why B took two years to buy that store.

 

Scene 2:Picking up keywords that are information oriented? SEM-0, SEO-1

 

Ever since its evolution Google has been the ideal platform for learner’s spread out everywhere across the globe.Thus, Google endorses learning before selling. 

 

And this shall be the mantra to be remembered whenever you are publishing informational content in Google.

 

Right now, by the time you complete reading this blog there will be hundred more searches on “What to choose for better online promotion, SEO or SEM?” or ‘Differences between SEO and SEM?”

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Google understands that the people who are searching with this query, are more into learning about digitally marketing their brand better, and not just on an urgent spree search for a digital marketing firm. 

 

Thus, instead of bidding on keywords related to selling services like SEO and SEM, we have aimed to use keywords like ‘Difference between SEO and SEM’, ‘SEO’, ‘SEM’, ‘Search Engine optimization’, ‘search engine marketing’, in our blog in the required density to help our blog rise up the ranking on the SERP with sheer SEO, whenever anyone asks Google, any query related to the difference between SEO and SEM. And there, we did it again!

 

Scene 3: Picking up keywords that are advertiser’s favorites? SEM-1, SEO-1f

 

The simplest of keywords that are easy to planted within your content, keeping it yet relevant and qualified for Google’s Quality Score test is what we meant above by ‘advertiser’s favorite’ keywords. 

 

For instance, if you type, ‘Chocolates’, Google shall show you three paid ads’ store names locally enlisted in Google Maps at the top of the SERP. They shall be anyway answering your query, and one of these nominees will bag down the deal, leaving you with no time or inertia to look down the organic nominees.

 

But that’s not it. If you get inside the Google analytics reports of these paid ad generating websites, you shall as well see that these pages are also receiving thousands of organic visits owing to their SEO optimized content that acts as an added treat to their SEM investments.

 

So, the blend of SEO and SEM is to be ideally achieved in the use of such advertiser’s favorite keywords.

 

The Unbiassed Bottomline 

 

Now this is the most ‘impartial’ portion of our blog, the verdict, that did not employ SEO or SEM, (and possibly, thus comes at the bottom). 

 

Being a digital marketing agency and working with brands that need to reap profits soon enough in this highly competitive market to make sure it exists down the line, SEM would certainly be the strategy we would suggest. 

 

But it is with our experience that we say, SEM: irrespective of whatever be your budget and however low you succeed to drive down your PPC: can never succeed on massive scale without employing efficient SEO strategies.

 

Above, we have thus mentioned scenes where – instead of customizing solutions for your promotional queries based on unending sets of business kinds – we have tried to focus on the general keyword needs of most industries performing around us, and suggested how either of SEO or SEM, or, in certain cases, both can be implemented for ideal results. 

 

Could this blog quench your curiosity? Then do like, share and comment to let us know your feedback over our social media handles.

 

And if you are still curious to know more on this, we would be glad to hear from you. Mail your queries at info@getyouat.com with Subject “SEO and SEM Queries” and get it resolved by our experts, for free.