Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

The biggest two terms are search engine optimization and search engine marketing. They refer to different terms but you might be wondering what the differences in SEO and SEM are. Internet marketing is quickly becoming a very important aspect of a business marketing campaign.  However, there are different terms in use when it comes to internet marketing.

SEO and SEM

SEO and SEM can be seen as a question you might be wondering if these two terms are the same thing. They might sound similar but they actually refer to two different parts of the same marketing system. SEM is a much broader term than SEO, and actually includes SEO as one of its techniques. SEM refers to everything a company can do to advertise itself on a search engine including paid inclusion and other advertisings.

When you search for specific keywords and key phrases on a page, the page that comes up on a search engine is used is referred to as a SERP which is short for a search engine result page. On this search engine result page, there are several different types of results. Using Google's search engine result page as an example, there are paid ads that are related to your search on the right side of the search result page, and paid inclusion results at the top that are highlighted. If you choose to pay for any of these special results on a search engine result page, or even just pay for an ad on a search engine result page, this is an example of search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing (SEM) also includes search engine optimization (SEO) which stands for the application of making your website friendly to search engines "organically". This is done without purchasing additional ads or paying to have your site listed first, instead, it relies on making your website attractive to search engines so that the site will come up early on the result page. These techniques include using inbound links, keywords and key phrases and coding like special META tags to make your site friendlier to web crawlers which are the programs that find new content on the web.

So in the question of SEO and SEM, which to use you will be using a form of SEM no matter what, as SEO is a form of SEM. If you decide to pay for advertisements and other benefits on search engine result pages, you will also be using SEM but it might not be as advantageous as using search engine optimization. While you might get some immediate results by paying for a spot high on the search engine result page, some people never click on the paid results, which will lose you some visitors.

OnLime ME has partnered with H2O New Media . H2O New Media is a web development consultation and online marketing agency in Dubai that creates cost effective and SEO friendly websites for its clients.