SEM vs SEO – The Ultimate Comparison

As the wonderful world of marketing evolves more and more each day, so does our dialect. Like a lot of industries out there, we too are guilty of spouting acronyms that can leave our colleagues or clients confused. 

In all honesty, digital marketing can be quite confusing at first, especially with acronyms such as CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per thousand impressions), SERPs (search engine results page) etc.

Take SEO and SEM as an example. Both of these acronyms are often used throughout the marketing world. Believe it or not, though, not all marketers or business owners really have a clear understanding of how they relate, and how they differ. 

What is used more, SEO, or SEM? Are SEO and SEM a part of each other? Stay tuned because this article will answer all of your lingering questions, and more! 

You can always count on one fact remaining clear: they have an interdependent relationship, and when you leverage both to their full potential, you’ll be able to reap the rewards of incredible marketing results. 

Let’s dive into our SEM Vs SEO comparison!

What Is SEO?

If you have ever researched how to increase traffic to your website through SEM or SEO, you’ve probably seen both promoted a lot. 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, SEO is the process of ranking your website on search engines. Or, just how easy it is for someone on Google to find your website via organic search results. 

Advertisements can sum up to a significant portion of a lot of SERPS. Organic traffic means you’re not required to pay for it.

There are several search engines out there: Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex (just to name a few). However, 90% of global searches are made through Google. Naturally, the emphasis would be to focus on keywords that matter to your business, which would consist of your products and/ or services. 

These days, the importance of having high-quality and relevant content is undisputed. Gone was the era of relying on black hat SEO techniques, these are methods which violate Google’s policies, some of which involve building a ton of backlinks to your website, spamming or spinning content etc. This is why our team at Rogue Digital only focuses on white hat SEO, which are basically the SEO techniques recommended by Google

Google amongst other search engines looks at a wide variety of factors when it comes to their decision on which pages to rank for searches. Nobody really has any idea as to what exactly all of these factors are, since Google’s algorithm is a trade secret. We do however as search engine optimisation specialists know the most important ones.

To understand the true meaning of SEO, let’s break down its key components: 

On-page SEO – The optimization that occurs on your website

Examples of on-page SEO:  

• Utilising image alt tags
• Leveraging simplified, easy to read content, non-duplicated content
• Optimising for on-page keywords as necessary 
• Matching page content with the intent of the search
• High-quality and in-depth coverage of topics
• URLs that are short and describe the topic well
• Optimised title and meta descriptions

Off-page SEO – Anything optimisation that occurs out of your website

Examples of off-page tactics:

• Build citations (SEO for local businesses) 
• Optimizing your Google My Business listings (SEO for local businesses) 
• Positive consumer reviews 
• Backlinks from websites that are relevant to your industry and of high-quality 
• Mentions from brands

Technical SEO – A technical aspect of SEO

This SEO technique is used to assist search engine crawl, index, and to rank content efficiently. 

Examples of technical optimizations: 

• Optimize robots.txt for crawl efficiency
• “No indexing” of thin content (aka content that has value)
• Fast loading of your website
• Utilizing schemas (structured data) 
• Prevent duplicate content with canonical tags
• Hreflang tags for multilingual content
• Fixing error pages

What Is SEM? 

So, we now know that in the world of SEO and SEM, SEO can be used to improve your overall website rankings as well as increase your organic traffic. 

What about SEM?

Marketers around the world use Search Engine Marketing (or SEM) as a brilliant strategy that makes use of paid tactics in order to gain visibility on search engines. It can also be referred to as PPC (pay-per-click) Advertising. While SEM was used to classify both paid ads and organic listings on the SERPs in the past, today, SEM is only used to reference paid ads.

SEM can be a very effective way for a business, small and large, to generate new clients, increase their revenue, trim costs, and reach their target audience. An effective SEM campaign usually begins with keyword research, competitor insights, data analysis (from past campaigns) coupled with structuring your campaign according to industry best practices. 

To maximise results, proficient SEM agencies also leverage on technology to help clients reduce cost inefficiencies while driving greater KPIs without increasing their clients’ budgets. 

Some SEM campaign types include: 

• Search Ads (text ads)
• Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)
• Dynamic Search Ads
• Shopping Ads
• Location Extension Ads (On Google Maps)

SEM vs SEO: What are their Similarities?

We saw an introduction of both SEM and SEM. So, how are they similar? 

Both SEO and SEM have the below qualities: 

• They both aim to improve the visibility of your website on search engines.

• Both SEO and SEM will help your website appear in SERPs when you target and optimize for keywords, although application is different. 

• Whether you’re using SEO or SEM, you’ll have to do some ongoing testing and optimization as both require monitoring and tweaking on a consistent basis so that they can be successful long term, and deliver a solidified return on investment. 

• Will direct a high amount of good, relevant traffic to your website as both SEO and SEM encourage end-users to click on your site. 

• Allow you to gain a better understanding of who your audience are, and their buying intentions. After all, the first rule of running a successful business is to have a good understanding of who you are selling your product or service to. 

• Both strategies encourage keyword research in order to discover and target keywords that are of relevance to your goal. Once again, both SEO and SEM require you to take part in keyword research in order to better understand who exactly your competitors are targeting. 

SEM vs SEO: What’s the Difference? 

Now, let’s look at the differences when it comes to SEO vs SEM. 

Ads vs organic listings and how they are clearly differentiated on the SERPs

• SEM – You’re able to distinguish a paid placement in the SERPs by the icon that states the ad. 

• SEO – Organic listings don’t have the ad icon. This means that organic and paid results are going to look a little different, which allows search engine users to differentiate an organic listing versus a paid one

Extensions

• SEM – SEM offers paid ads that come with extensions. This will allow you to enhance your standard search with callouts, phone numbers, site links, and more. 

• SEO – Sitelink extensions can be found on organic listings too. Moreover, with good-quality content, your website could appear for more prominent organic listings on Google. One example is the featured snippet:

In this scenario, our website roguedigital.sg appeared as a featured snippet for the query ‘How to add Facebook Ads GST Singapore’.

Pay per click, means paying for every single click

• SEM – With SEM,  you will pay for every single click a user makes on an ad. 

• SEO – If a user clicks on organic listings ranked through SEO, you will pay nothing. 

Drive almost instant results with SEM and long term traffic the goal of SEO

• SEM – By using an SEM paid campaign, you’re able to drive almost instant results within a few clicks as soon as your ads are live. Consumers are able to see your ad straight away in the search engine results page, as long as they are approved and your bids are adequate. 

• SEO – Whilst SEO can be a cost-efficient technique if done right, it’s more of a long term marketing strategy. The only exception is that you have absolutely no competition in the keywords that you’re targeting, but this is extremely rare.

With SEO it can take months to see organic results after taking the first step in your SEO strategy. You should keep in mind, however, that SEO will continue to add value over time, and the return on your investment will be cumulative. Your search engine presence will continue to increase as time passes and will ultimately leave you with lasting results if you employ the right SEO techniques.

Testing and Refining 

• SEM – When running paid advertising campaigns like SEM, you will always need to track performance, test and optimise. Ad copies will continuously need to be revised and keywords would have to be reviewed regularly.
  
  If you are leveraging audience targeting with your SEM strategy, you’ll also have to monitor the effectiveness of each audience segment, adjusting and calibrating them as necessary based on your brand’s KPIs. For instance, you would want to look at the cost per conversion if your goal is to drive cost-effective results such as leads or sales.
  
  Another important aspect of SEM would be landing page optimization. We’ve seen many SEM campaigns ignore the importance of a well-optimised landing page, which in reality is a waste of budget since landing page optimisation is able to improve conversion rates. 

• SEO – Given the nature of the algorithm in SEO, you cannot test the same way. Whilst testing does remain an extremely vital part of any solid SEO strategy; you just can’t compare it when it comes to testing in SEM. For instance, one cannot make constant changes to their SEO landing pages every week as frequent page updates harms SEO.

When should you use SEO?

There are a few considerations when deciding between using SEO, SEM or a combination of both. First, you have to assess your current situation and marketing objectives: 

Do you have a specific goal in mind?

If you’re looking to drive traffic quickly so you can test a brand new offer, speed up a slow month, or drive quick traffic to a sale, then SEM should be your go-to. Want long-term growth? Use SEO.

Do you already have a good online presence?

If your SEO is already strong, your organic visibility should be amazing. In this case, again, SEM can be a fantastic way to add even more visibility tactfully by bumping up important keywords that you might not be ranked for.

What is your marketing budget?

If your budget doesn’t allow the high click costs, it won’t make any sense to invest in both platforms. Depending on your industry as well as the keywords you’d like to target, SEO may or may not be the better option. 

One simple way to assess whether SEO or SEM is more suitable would be to look at the keyword bids on SEM. For instance, when we look at the keyword ‘Accounting firms in Singapore’, we see that advertisers on Google Search are paying at least $5.46 to appear on the top of the page.

Note that the aforementioned bid of $5.46 is not even on the high range (position 1 or 2), to appear on the top of the page (high range), advertisers would have to bid $13.95 per click. Yes, you heard that right, that’s the cost per click for this keyword. Hence, in this situation, SEM may not be ideal if the budget is limited.

Conversely, there are situations where SEO makes more financial sense. For instance, the keyword ‘aesthetic facial treatment’ has a low bid estimate as opposed to similar keywords. In this case, optimising this keyword for SEO might not make sense considering that its search volume is small (only 10 searches on average per month). Hence, SEM would be the better choice for this keyword instead.

What you might want to do is optimise organically for the keyword ‘facial treatment’ or if your budget allows  ‘aesthetic facial’ or ‘aesthetic treatment’ and it makes sense for your strategy. As each business is unique and every marketing budget, goal and strategy is different, an ideal SEO strategy would differ. 

What is the total lifetime value of your consumers?

At the end of the day, determine the results that each marketing channel delivers to assess your return on investment. Often times, your customers may come back after the first transaction, which adds up to their lifetime value.

The true reality for most businesses out there is that every successful marketing search strategy implements the effective use of your budget. Whilst either one of these channels can provide positive results for your business, both of them will be a force not to be messed with. SEO and SEM can open up a world of opportunities to drive growth from potential consumers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer.

Combining SEO and SEM

This moves us swiftly on to talking about the combination of SEO and SEM. As we just mentioned, these powerful marketing strategies will allow you to reap many rewards. When combined, you can: 

Gain valuable insights

Make use of the data insights from SEM strategies in order to supercharge your SEO approach. This includes gaining valuable insights into conversion rates, performance levels of keywords, estimation of all traffic opportunities, and so much more. If you look at it like this, you can think of SEM as a testing-bed for Search Engine Optimization.

Increase your search engine presence

By utilizing SEM, you can complement your SEO efforts by buying keywords that you’re not ranking for organically. Firms with an aggressive marketing strategy may consider utilising both SEO and SEM for the same keywords since this allows them at least two listings on the SERP. 

Naturally, with more listings on the first page of Google, the chances of your potential client clicking in would undoubtedly be higher. Note that to be cost-efficient, selecting the right keyword is absolutely critical.

Targeting multiple funnels in search engine marketing

Another method of increasing overall conversion rates would be to leverage remarketing campaigns as part of your SEM strategy. This will help you to reach leads that you previously didn’t convert into your own customers. Use either search remarketing (RLSA), display ads via the Google Display Network (GDN), or both.

You can take charge of the SERPS by combining both of these marketing techniques, and make sure you’re always visible in both on the top fold of the SERPs (SEM ads) and also organic listings. 

Your Competitor’s SEO and SEM

If you have a paid SEM campaign via Google Ads, you can leverage on the auction insights to better understand how competitors are bidding on their ads. This allows you to plan your campaigns accordingly and make data-driven marketing decisions. 

In the case of SEO, utilising tools such as SEMRush or Ahrefs will give you the opportunity to research and identify the on and off-page SEO strategies of your competitors. Sneaky, right? But undeniably helpful.

SEO tools allow you to analyse your competitors with the options to look at data such as their organic presence, backlinks, referring domains etc. Using this knowledge, you will be able to understand which websites are linking to your competitors, allowing you to do the same for equal or better footing.

Whether its SEO or SEM research, you can even check out which paid keywords they are optimising for, as well as the keywords they are targeting organically. After all, the more you know about the strategies of your competitors, the better yours can be. As the saying goes “keep your friends near, but your enemies nearer”. In the spirit of competition, keeping the ability to stay steps ahead of the competition will never be detrimental, to you at least. 

The future of search engines for websites and businesses 

Whilst no one can for sure predict the future of how things will go, we can predict one thing with confidence – SEO and SEM will continue to grow with global search engines as they continuously change their parameters for rankings. 

Here are some likely directions that SEO and SEM could take in the future: 

User-friendly websites with high-quality content

Compared to the early days of low-quality content coupled with spammy backlinks, user experience (or UX) in recent years has become increasingly important to SEO.

You may receive a million website visitors a day, but if they’re visiting your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for something you’re not, you’ll have a hard time doing anything with it. The quality of your traffic has to be people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. Hence, having relevant content affects both SEM and SEO.

User-friendly sites that have large amounts of quality content and a strong backlink profile coupled with other SEO best practices are currently what Google allows to rank the highest, thus giving them the biggest reward.

It’s definitely likely that we will continue to see this trend grow stronger as Google commits to delivering a high-quality user experience for all its users. 

Improving user experience via faster loading speeds 

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) may continue to grow in popularity with users all over the world although it has its downsides. AMP is known as a way for developers and other industry professionals to collaborate where they can minimise website loading time. 

This is done by creating a huge open-source HTML framework that commits to offering users a wide range of opportunities to create smooth and fast mobile-friendly web pages. For websites that are slow, implementing AMPs can be a good idea since AMPs can reduce the issue of slow loading speeds.

A Google Case Study: When the Washington Post adopted AMPs, they saw a huge increase in mobile searches and traffic.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is already huge in the world of digital advertising and it’s going to get bigger. We believe that AI is going to become even more involved in SEM as time passes, along with other search activities. And Google has been advocating the use of its smart bidding strategies such as maximise conversions and the target return on ad spend. With optimisation methodologies that rely solely on smart bidding such as the hagakure method, the future of SEM has already been skewing towards AI.

Whether or not smart bidding strategies are effective would depend on your campaigns. In many cases, the smaller Google Ad accounts that we’ve worked on over the last few years saw better performance with manual CPC. Primarily sufficient data is still an important prerequisite for a successful smart bidding campaign on Google Ads. 

Looking ahead, as marketers, we know that everything will be pretty much data-focused in the future. I mean, hasn’t it always been? Well, as the years pass, we’re going to see even more of this. Technology will pave the way for our insights to become even clearer. This means that it will also become easier for us to assess the results of our campaigns.

The downside? It may mean that users are going to become even more concerned about their privacy. And as more countries come up with digital privacy laws, there could be restrictions in the sphere of data collection. 

SEM vs SEO – So, Which Is More Cost-Effective? 

Always look out for the search volume of the keyword, competition and estimated bids to assess whether SEM or SEO is more cost-effective. When targeting the right keywords SEO can be one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies out there depending on your industry. The same can be said for SEM if it’s used right. 

When you’re able to target genuine customers who are sincerely looking for your service or product directly, it’ll allow you to flourish in your industry.

A general rule of thumb: SEO can take time for results to flourish while SEM is pretty much immediate.

Are you looking to drive evergreen traffic over a long period? Use SEO.

Do you have opportunities where there are keywords of low search volume but also have low cost? Use SEM.

Do you have the marketing budget to really watch your business thrive and dominate the SERPs? Use both.

Need help with marketing your business on search engines? 

Looking for a digital agency proficient in SEO and SEM? Our digital strategies have at least half a decade of experience with driving results for businesses via search engines. Reach out to us directly for a non-obligatory consultation today!