SEO and SEM: Which one is Better to Increase the Traffic to Your Website?

In today’s world, one of the utmost powerful tools used is Web Search. Everyone uses the Internet to find solutions and learn various things around the world. Whether you have a local or global business, there are chances that people are looking for your business’ products or services. You should promote your business online for better branding, revenue, and outreach. You can promote your website through SEO or SEM. In this article, you will learn which one is better for your business.

SEO is an organic strategy while SEM is a paid strategy. Let’s dig deeper and compare both to find which is best for increasing traffic to your website.

Defining SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is used to optimize the website and attract organic traffic to the website from SERP. The SEO process may sustain costs that depend on the market’s competitiveness that you are targeting. Though search organic traffic is free, it’s the efforts and time that are invested in achieving the desired results.

SEO attracts relevant traffic to the website of your business. Also, it helps to get a huge amount of relevant traffic by targeting relevant and multiple keywords.

Defining SEM

SEM is a method to target the relevant audience from search engines through sponsored or paid ad listings. It is used to help advertisers gain visibility across search engines and drive the right traffic without waiting for a long time. SEM is also known as PPC advertising. There are a variety of PPC platforms available across social media and search engines, but the most successful and popular amongst them is Google Ads.

Similarities Between SEO and SEM

• Both help in branding: Both SEO and SEM help a brand gain visibility across search engines. Although the strategies are quite different, the search engine results for both are shown at the top when customers search for particular terms or keywords related to businesses, offerings, or products or services.
• Both Help to Drive Traffic: Both SEO and SEM help gain visibility on the search engine results page, which drives more traffic to a website. Both of these strategies use a plan to increase CTR (click-through-rates) so that they get more clicks on the search engines.

Related: The Role of AI in On-page SEO: Improving Organic Click-through Rates

• Both Require you to Understand the Needs of the Users: If you want to succeed in both strategies, you must have complete knowledge of the buyer’s persona. With the help of psychographic segmentation, you can find the needs of your audience and know what they are searching for. This will help you create relevant content that provides solutions to them.
• Both Require Keyword Research: Both strategies are using keyword research so that you can target the best keywords. You need to look at the keyword popularity and competition to know what the competitors are targeting and what you need to improve in your strategies to compete.
• Both Require Continual and Testing Optimization: While comparing SEO vs SEM, you should know that it’s not a strategy that you can just set or implement and forget. These strategies require continuous monitoring, optimization, and continual testing to improve performance.

Difference Between SEO and SEM

• When you compare SEO and SEM, you will discover a difference in their search results. In the search results, SEM results have ad extensions that can help add phone numbers, callouts, and additional links. While search results of SEO have featured snippets.
• In SEM, every time you are charged when a user clicks on your search results. So, you need a budget for constantly showing the SEM ads. On the other hand, no need to pay when a user clicks on the SEO search results.
• You can find a particular targeted audience using SEM and assign filters based on income, age, habits, locations, and many more. In SEO, you cannot select a particular audience that can see your search results.
• In SEM ads, you can get results with just a few clicks. When you launch a campaign, your ads are displayed on the search engine results page. And, ads turn into increased visibility. While SEO takes a longer time, it sometimes takes months to implement and get results of an SEO strategy.
• You can instantly turn SEM paid ads and it’s one of the best strategies for testing. You can easily revise your ad, target new users, and change the content of the landing page to check your plan. You cannot do the same via SEO, because it can take a huge amount of effort and time to monitor and make changes in results.

Which is Better?

While you decide which tactic is right for your brand as well as your marketing strategies, you should consider the following things:

• Competition

You should know about your competitors, what they are doing and how they perform in search marketing. This helps you understand how to compete with them. Research what terms or keywords they used to drive traffic and rank organically. You also know where you can improve in both organic (SEO) and paid9(SEM) search.

• Industry

You can start a long-term SEO strategy if you have a business for a long time and already know the needs of your customers that provide valuable results. But you can start an SEM campaign when you are not aware of your competitors and customers. Hence, test your products, services, and ideas.

Final Verdict

When you compare between SEO and SEM, you will find that some businesses focus and rely on the SEO while others on SEM and a few rely on both. It depends on your average cost-per-click and age of your business. You can also consider the current status of your website and also consider your unique goals and business to decide between the two. You should know the differences and similarities that can help the best marketing strategy of your business to reach its goal.

Also Read: Top 15 Most Important Google SEO Ranking Factors