SEO and SEM are two arms of a Digital Marketing strategy and work with both organic traffic and internet advertising. The two strands work together and their main objective is to attract more leads and generate conversions for the company.
Those who work with Digital Marketing have been hearing the acronym SEO for a long time, but recently a “little sister” has been added to the jargon list. We are talking about the acronym SEM, which is now also being explored. SEO and SEM are complementary strategies.
The first acronym stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” The second, “Search Engine Marketing”. If the difference between the two is not yet clear to you, this is the right place to answer your questions.
Keep reading this article to understand how to structure your company’s Digital Marketing based on these two tools!
- What is the definition of SEO?
- What is the definition of SEM?
- How do SEO and SEM relate?
- How to apply SEO and SEM to my strategy?
- Top SEO Techniques
What is the definition of SEO?
When we talk about SEO, we are referring to a set of techniques for optimizing websites, blogs and pages. These techniques apply to both the content and the site structure itself.
The goal is for this content to be more easily found by search engines like Google. As a result, SEO improves the positioning of this URL in search engines and attracts more organic traffic to the site, generating leads that can be converted into customers.
Investing in SEO techniques is critical because research shows that 90% of people click on only one link between their search results.
In addition, other user behavior studies have found that the top spot on Google alone accounts for about a third of search clicks.
Let’s take an example: Suppose you are working on the keyword “ Content Marketing ” in your strategy, and that keyword has about 8,000 searches per month. One-third of that number, or about 2,666 clicks, will be first in Google. The rest of the clicks will be split between the other results, with the first page having the overwhelming majority of total clicks.
- What is the definition of SEO?
- What is the definition of SEM?
- How do SEO and SEM relate?
- How to apply SEO and SEM to my strategy?
- Top SEO Techniques
What is the definition of SEM?
SEM can be described as any search engine marketing strategy. This strategy can be used to advertise online or offline businesses, as well as to promote actions that happen virtually or physically.
Search Engine Marketing is divided into two parts. One is SEO, which aims to generate more organic traffic for a particular domain. And the other is sponsored links.
We’re talking about ads that show on Google and other platforms and social networks. These materials involve strategies such as keyword research and other techniques in common with SEO.
But they also involve audience segmentation analysis and strategies more in line with traditional advertising media buying.
How do SEO and SEM relate?
If you have come this far in this post, you should be starting to understand how SEO and SEM talk when it comes to designing a Digital Marketing plan for your business.
Both strategies are complementary and need to be developed in parallel with the company’s Marketing department. Actions aimed at optimizing organic traffic reinforce the reach of sponsored links, and vice versa.
The SEM can then be described as a kind of umbrella. Underneath it is SEO and other techniques that help the company to appear and be well-positioned in the search in the major search engines.
A Digital Marketing strategy will only be complete and well developed if there is a quality investment and effort using both dimensions.
How to apply SEO and SEM to my strategy?
Some tips will make your Digital Marketing strategy more efficient and attract good results for your business. Check it out below.
Sponsored links
To work out a good sponsored link strategy, you need to start with a good analysis of your product or brand. One of the great advantages of internet ads is that they allow detailed audience targeting.
So you should know well who you want to talk to. Ideally, think of your buyer persona when cropping your ad on Google AdWords or another ad platform. From there, you can make effective communication for this audience.
Sponsored links allow you to campaign for a fairly low amount. So if you are not very sure, start with campaigns involving a small investment and go testing what brings you the best results.
Top SEO Techniques
SEO has two dimensions, called On-Page and Off-Page. Here’s what each one means.
SEO On Page
Here we are talking about all the techniques you apply within your own site or page. Producing quality content, a fast, cross-platform optimized site, the meta description of your post, and the URL are some examples of these actions.
SEO Off Page
Off-Page includes all the techniques that have to do with the relationship of your site with the entire internet environment. These actions are performed off-site. See some examples:
- Link building: Establishing a network of internal links between pages on your site improves ranking, as Google will read all pages as one thing, stronger than an isolated page;
- Guest posts: In this strategy, you post content on blogs and websites of other companies, with the goal of strengthening both domains;
- Comarketing campaigns and actions: As with guest posts, the goal here is to strengthen both domains. In these actions, you can launch rich materials in partnership with the other brand or develop cross-media actions.
Applying all of these SEO techniques, coupled with the consistency of your work, will ensure that your site gets Google search rankings. Allies, SEO and SEM will bring significant results for your brand.
Were you excited and want to understand even more about it? Find out about local SEO ranking! Read our article on this topic! See you in the next post!