SEO VS. SEM: What’s Better?

SEO and SEM are terms that are often used interchangeably when in fact they are quite distinct from one another. The main purpose of both processes however is to get a better search engine ranking. Search engine ranking refers to the position at which your website or its content appears on the results page when a user searches for something relevant to it. SEO stands for search engine optimization while SEM stands for search engine marketing. The former is a process through which your website or its content is ranked on search engines based on organic traffic and popularity which ultimately leads to it being more accessible and visible on them. With SEO it would take a long time for your website to even get noticed on the search engine as it is a slow process that does not give instant results.

SEM on the other hand refers to the utilization of both SEO as well as pay-per-click advertisements. Through SEM your website or its content appears on the results page of a search engine as a result of paid advertisements. It involves bidding on keywords and whoever places the highest bid gets to have a better ranking. As per the pay-per-click ads policy, whenever a web surfer clicks on your advertisement from the search engine you pay the amount that you bid to the search engine. Moreover, SEM allows you to analyze the data such as the cost of every click, website engagement ratio i.e., the number of people that go on the landing page and even those who convert from there, the number of leads you are able to generate and how many of those you are able to actually close.

SEM is therefore better as it embodies both SEO and PPC ads while giving great results instantaneously.