Importance of SEO and SEM in Digital Marketing

Authored by Siddhartha Vanvani, Founder & CEO, Digidarts

The world has solemnly embarked upon the routes of digital business, which sees an unceasing competition among brands racing to sell their products. But, reaching the right audience on the online marketplace is not a cakewalk after all. Hence, to bridge the gap between their products and customers on the digital platform, brands consistently look out for efficacious digital marketing strategies. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) are two proven components crucial in optimizing a brand’s website discovery on SERPs for advantageous reach. 

SEM vs SEO: The Difference

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is an organic practice of improving the website rank by placing products and content higher on the search engine results page via best performing and relevant keywords. It aims at increasing website exposure as well as customer interaction.

Search Engine Marketing(SEM) is a superset of SEO that also includes advertising the website and content via paid ads that glance up on the SERPs. This is an inorganic mode of marketing that performs in direct proportion to the money spent. 

Why do brands need SEO and SEM?

SEO and SEM are designed to furnish a powerful framework for small businesses and startups in an online environment. Both of these have a common goal to acquire more traffic that will ultimately boost revenue generation. A consistent SEO effort will result in a loyal and lasting customer base while the application of SEM provides for an instantaneous rise in sale conversions with paid ads.  

Advantages of Search Engine Optimization

1. Cost-effectiveness

The most advantageous point of SEO is that it doesn’t hurt your pocket, as long as one has the right knowledge on how to do it. This point makes digital marketing accessible even to businesses and startups who are on a tight monetary budget. While investing a reasonable amount of money in SEO is advisable especially for beginners.

2. Long-term Online Exposure

Brands seek to build a long-term online presence for their business. SEO directs them in planning high-quality content for their website to enhance SERP rankings. This makes the website more accessible for the search engines once the digital marketing strategies are executed. 

3. Higher CTR of SEO 

SEO has a higher click-through rate (CTR) as compared to SEM. Continual endeavours to upgrade the content quality adds more value to the website over time, thus ensuring more visitors. 

Advantages of Search Engine Marketing 

1. Attain Prompt Results

SEM acts quicker than SEO in leads generation by boosting the web visibility of the brand instantly. This is ideal for small businesses to reach more potential customers in a short span of time. 

2. High Flexibility and Scalability

The budget spent on SEM campaigns can be controlled to avoid overspreading. The characteristic of SEM being flexible and highly scalable benefits the brands to integrate it in their marketing campaigns and bid on appropriate keywords to upscale the conversions.

3. Pay-per-click Option

The pay-per-click type of strategy proves to be a double-edged sword. SEM showcases ads as links on top of SERPs, but the brands only need to pay if a visitor clicks on the link and is directed to their website. Interesting! Right? 

What We Know Now: The concentrated implementation of SEO & SEM solutions acts as the most beneficial marketing strategy for brands to uplift website traffic, ranking and user/ lead generation.

 DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and Adgully.com does not necessarily subscribe to it.