The difference between search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)

February 29, 2008

 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to the full array of promotional technologies used by internet marketers to increase their online traffic as well as visibility for their web pages. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one only one of the important SEM tool that aims to make a page easier to evaluated, and consequently ranked higher by search engines.

SEM experts employ several methods concurrently :

1. Pay-per-click or PPC Advertising. Paying advertisers submit bids for megatags or keywords. Advertisers pay for listings in search engines (Yahoo, Google, Dogpile, and others). Search engines display ad banners at various frequencies and sites based on the prices they receive. Google ad sense is currently the most successful PPC program in the history of internet marketing, as it specifically picks out the niches that would prove the most effective for an ad - based on an intelligent way of assessing the needs of webpage visitors.

2 Search Engine Optimization. Using SEO, marketers will insert strategic keywords (or metatags) to websites often after carefully studying those used by their competitors, in an effort to increase their own rankings and site traffic. Entire websites can also be structured, and content is often developed to access certain statistically popular keywords. SEO can also employ Image Search capabilities’.

3 Paid Inclusions. For advertisers, it often pays to be a part of marketing or shopping search engines, such as BixRate, Froogle, Shopzilla , MySimon, DealTime, and many others. It helps them to lure shoppers to their own websites for other purchases and customer lists.

In the current high-tech marketplace scenario, entire organizations exist to provide consulting, web developing and SEM solutions. Larger companies often have their own in-house staff to handle and implement IM strategies. The objective is to create Search-Engine-Friendly websites that hope to attract and appeal to their target niche markets.

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