What's the difference between SEO and SEM? The whitepaper breaks it down and gives you everything you need to know to take advantage of both methods for your business.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM):
WHAT’S THE
DIFFERENCE?

2. If you're like most people, you may have heard terms like SEO or SEM used when talking about marketing
strategy, but you're never quite sure exactly what they mean (and you might not even be so sure the person talking
about them knows either). What's the difference? How are they used? What can be done? If you're unsure about
all these foreign sounding phrases and terms, we're here to help you wade through the chaos and demystify the
puzzle of Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing.
The first thing to do is to define Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing so you can get a basic
understanding of the terminology and just how they fit together.
"Search Engine Marketing" and "Search Engine Optimization" are both most commonly referred to by their
acronyms "SEM" and "SEO".
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a broad term referring to
marketing a website through search engines to give greater
visibility and page rank to the site. While SEM can certainly
incorporate marketing through organic methods (SEO), most
people associate SEM with paid search advertising, and
so this article will associate SEM with its paid advertising
strategies and SEO with organic ones.
Companies can spend anywhere from hundreds to millions
of dollars a month on paid search advertising.
There are many ways a company can practice SEM...
- Pay-per-click (PPC) (A budget is decided and cost is
deducted per click on the ad. The cost per click is determined
by the popularity of the targeted search phrase)
• Google AdWords - The largest advertising product online and accounts for over 90% of Google's revenue
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• Microsoft AdCenter
• Facebook and Twitter also offer various paid search options
- Banner Advertising (Buy banner space for a flat monthly fee)
- Cost-per-action (CPA) (Company buys ad sets guidelines for actions they want visitors to execute on their
site and pay per completed action of visitor who arrived from the paid ad)
- Directory submission (Pay to have your website listed on online directories. Search engines like Google
regard online directories highly)

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the practice of building a website's search engine
visibility and page rank through unpaid (organic) methods.
The mathematical algorithms used by search engines vary,
according to the components that those search engines
determine are the most important. Additionally, each
search engine is constantly tweaking, changing and
updating their search engine algorithms to detect more
SPAM and content that does not meet its quality
standards. Search engines have become so adept at
pushing out content that is low quality that businesses are
now employing or hiring people to ensure that they have
content created on a frequent basis and of high enough
quality to meet search engine standards and avoid falling
on page ranks, or even worse, penalization. This is called content marketing. (That's what we do here at
DigitalSherpa!)
Trying to figure out the algorithms of various search engines is an entire science that in and of itself. Since the
search engine programmers will not reveal how they set up the algorithms. This ensures that only the highest
quality of content is delivered to you on the top search results pages. If the folks at Google revealed how they rank
pages, those with spam or artificial content might find their way on to your computer screen easier. (Have you
noticed how rarely you come across spam when clicking on Google results compared to five years ago?)
So how exactly does good SEO practice help you get ranked higher on those search engines? The right SEO
strategies will not only deliver the correct content to search engines, but will present it in a way that is attractive
and easily indexed by them for better page rank and faster rise up the search ladder.
In addition to writing great content, some (not all) important elements of SEO...
- Keywords
• People use phrases and keywords people use when searching the Web to help them find what they are
looking for. Keyword selection is the process of deciding what words and phrases to build your content
around and is an important process to a great SEO strategy as you want to direct your content to the most
qualified prospects.
- Link Building
• While not exactly simple in practice, link building is the simple theory of creating inbound links for your
website. This can be done by agreeing on link exchanges with other websites, making sure you have links
on social networking pages, creating content for other websites that link back to you, or simply sending
out e-mails that link to your website. There are a ton of ways to link to your website and create a more
attractive Web presence for search engines.

4. - Titles and Headers
• How you choose to describe your web pages and the sections of content on your web pages helps search
engines know what the page is about.
- Competitive Analysis
• What are your competitor's doing? What keywords are they targeting? How much content are they
developing and how is it performing?
You should notice a trend right now that SEO is all about delivering the right kind of copy in the right manner to
the search engines. Getting found online just isn't as simple as launching a website. Proper SEO takes real
expertise and time, but the rewards can be business-changing.
Which should you be using?
One of the most important decisions that a business
owner has to make is where to put your time, effort,
and, money. Creating a clear and concise set of
marketing goals is extremely important, as well as
determining what kind of ROI (return on
investment) to expect for your money. By utilizing
elements of Search Engine Marketing, you have the
opportunity to create a fast impact, increasing traffic
and sales, sometimes within minutes of setting up
your advertising campaign.
While this is an excellent short term strategy, often
it's not sustainable in the long term. It's sort of like
leasing a car or renting a house. You pay for the
time you're driving the car or living in the house,
however, in the long run you have nothing to show
for it. An additional downside of paid advertising is
that, depending on what niche you're competing in, often paid advertising can become extremely expensive, with a
return on investment minimal. And it's not just the cost of the ad campaigns that are expensive, but also the time
and expense to test the ads as well as creating the ads themselves. As the internet itself becomes more complex,
the marketing itself becomes more sophisticated, with constantly evolving elements that make it difficult to keep
up with the ever-evolving web which is one of the reasons why it's important to integrate SEO.
So, while it could be important to create an ongoing Search Engine Marketing program, many experts now believe
it's even more important to ensure that your website has its focus on high level SEO. Sure, allowing a website to
grow naturally after it's been optimized takes a longer amount of time, it also creates a more sustainable amount
of traffic to your site and delivers that traffic in the long-term, as opposed to when your paid advertising budget
runs out as is often the case with SEM. Unlike SEM, SEO is not something that can be turned on and off with the
flip of a PPC switch. Once the search engines rank your site high in the search engines, the traffic will start to flow
naturally -- organically.

5. Many businesses choose to consider a paid advertising program short term while they are in the infant stages of
building their SEO. The combined method will allow a site to get a jumpstart on increased traffic and sales, while
also building brand awareness, and creating a sustainability that is required in order to remain relevant within the
online community.
How To Get Started
Whatever marketing path you take for your business, it can be a challenge to find and hire someone who will do
the work that needs to be done and stay within a reasonable budget. In starting the search to hire someone to help
you market your site, it's important to verify the expertise and experience of the marketer.
It might be counter intuitive, but one of the first things to avoid are those people who promise huge, fantastic,
immediate results on a very small budget. The Internet is the largest marketplace in the world, so you will need to
hire a service that will fight for your presence on the Web and put in the hard work necessary to beat the
competition on search results pages.
Here are three questions I'd ask before I began to consider any Internet marketing service for my SEO or SEM
services...
1. What SEO and SEM mean to you and how each could affect my business?
2. What sort of work have you done? How have you delivered for your clients? (Marketing companies come
a dime a dozen these days, make sure yours has a history of delivering to clients in a way that is sensible
for you.)
3. How often will I expect to hear from you? How will you report our progress to me in a way that I will be
able to understand and evaluate?
It's a great idea for a business owner to understand Web discovery before he has conversations with marketing
companies about spending money with them. It's not necessarily important to understand each and every tiny
thing about it, but it could serve critical to know and understand at least the basics SEO and paid search
advertising so that you can make an informed decision about the direction to go and it will save time, effort,
money and you'll receive a much healthier return on your marketing investment.