It's not always easy to navigate SEO and web marketing. Several acronyms have emerged in recent years so that it can be easy to get lost in all these letters and definitions, especially as they are constantly evolving over time. What is the difference between SEO and SEM and what do these two elements refer to in 2018? Overview of the subject.
While SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or SEO, encompasses practices aimed at improving the natural positioning of a company on search engines, that is to say its rank occupied in the order of appearance of the natural links on Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines, the SEM (Search Engine Marketing in English) is a broader term which includes all the techniques of Web marketing aiming at causing the user to click on the link of a website.
It includes SEO, but also other practices, such as paid search, sponsored links and SMM (Social Media Marketing). The goal of SEM is to take full advantage of the volume of search engine queries by web users by increasing the traffic generated on a website and its conversion rate.
Changing terms
While in the past there were two types of SEO, natural referencing and paid search, these two terms are now separate. SEO is now only referencing free SEO, that is to say the techniques that we deploy without buying keywords or sponsored links on search engines.
Among these techniques, we find the optimization of the presence of a company on social media (the creation of pages), the writing of blogs and articles of quality content and the use of targeted keywords in texts websites to please search engines. There are indeed some writing techniques likely to please more than others to Google; unique spelling-free content that includes keywords is one.
Purchase of advertising space on search engines
As opposed to SEO, the SEM is paid and refers to the purchase of advertising space intended to appear first or to be more visible on the search engines. The most important of these engines is Google with its Google AdWords online advertising service .Since customers pay for advertising space, their positioning is guaranteed and will always outperform natural search results, which are below paid results.
The main advantage of this type of campaign is that it allows you to benefit from increased visibility associated with the keywords you are targeting and to pay only when a prospect clicks on the link, which ensures a certain return on investment. . On the other hand, it requires constant financial efforts to remain visible, as opposed to SEO which makes it possible to generate more durable results, because they are natural.
By making the most of each of these two techniques, you should be able to increase the traffic on your website and improve your conversion rate.
