What is the Difference Between SEO and SEM?

SEO and SEM are the two most popular terms in the field of digital marketing. And sometimes people get confused due to the fact that most people use these two terms interchangeable. And because of this confusion, people tend to have difficulties in differentiating the functionalities of these two processes.

Here, we will try to explain what these to terms refer to and what processes they encompass. This will give you a better understanding and help you indulge your curiosity about the field of digital marketing. Let’s start with what SEO actually means and what it is useful for.

What is SEO?

SEO, in other words, Search Engine Optimization, is a process that aims to increase the quantity and quality of your website traffic by making your website a more reasonable destination for search engine users. But what do quantity and quality mean in this context? Let’s check it out.

Quantity of traffic is pretty much self-explanatory here. It refers to the amount of traffic your website gets. The more is better, as you’ll have more visitors for your website who may convert and become your customers after visiting your site.

Quality of traffic, on the other hand, refers to the percentage of visitors who are actually interested in what your business puts on the table. So, if you increase the quality of your website traffic, you’ll get more visitors who are more likely to convert and purchase what you have to offer whether it’s a product or a service.

So, SEO deals with making sure that your website is well-optimised for search engines, and it appears amongst the top organic results. It allows you to increase your website traffic, which converts into more revenue for your business, without having to pay for ads.

How Do We Boost Your Rank with SEO?

So, how do we accomplish this, you might ask. Firstly, our SEO experts will examine your site and your competitors through and through. Afterwards, they will find out the valuable keywords that your target audience might search on search engines such as Google and Bing. 

Our copywriters then produce content for your website and carefully place these keywords into these contents within the natural composition. These content will have all the necessary ingredients to resonate with your target group. That’s why search engines will rank your website and put it among the top search results, as your content is relevant and informative. 

The more relevant and high-quality content you have, the better chance your site has to appear amongst the top results. So, that’s why our SEO services play a huge role in your digital marketing campaigns.

What is SEM?

Another popular digital marketing term is SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing. It consists of several components, including SEO. The fact that SEM is a broader digital marketing term since it encompasses SEO. 

Apart from SEO, SEM also includes paid advertisements. By combining these two effective ways of marketing, it allows your marketing campaign to be more successful and more profitable. But let’s get into more details about how SEM works.

You have probably seen the top two results that appear after your searches on the search engines. Those are paid advertisements. The ones below, however, are called organic results, and it doesn’t cost anything for websites to appear there. They simply appear according to their relevance degrees, and we know SEO is all about that. But let’s focus on the top two results as SEM is all about placing your website among those two results.

So, SEM lets you use that space so that you could reach out to your potential customers when they type in the keywords that are relevant to your business. This way, you reach out only the people who are actually interested in what you offer. But how does SEM work really? This might come as a surprise at first.

SEM uses an auction system to determine who gets to use that space. But the great thing about this auction system is that it’s not about who bids the most. There are other factors, as well.

How Does SEM Auction Work?

In SEM auction your bid plays a part of course, but it isn’t the determinant factor of whether you get that precious space. The relevance of your ad plays a huge part. So, to be successful in SEM auctions, you have to have competitive bid as well as strong, well-optimised content.

Let’s say you own a car rental company and have placed a bid of 2 euros for the search results of “car rental”. You will naturally have more advantage than your competitors who have placed a bid of a euro. This part is pretty simple.

But what happens when we add content quality into the mixture? Search engines rate your content according to how relevant they are. Google and Bing refer to this as the Quality Score. Let’s say you and your competitors placed an equal bid for a particular search result. If your content has a higher quality score than your competitors’, you will win the auction.

Get Better Ranks with Lower Bids at Revpanda

In fact, you can win the auctions by placing lower bids than your competitors with the help of powerful SEO. Let’s say one of your competitors place a bid of 4 euros for an advert that has a quality score of 4. You can win the auction by only bidding 2 euros if your content score is higher than 8. So, the formula here is multiplying your bid with your quality score.

And that’s where our services come into play. By providing you with relevant and high-quality content, we are helping you win the auctions by only paying the fraction of what your competitors are bidding. We lower your ad expenses.

If you don’t want to play the bidding game, that’s okay too. With the help of our SEO experts, your website will be among the top organic results, which will increase your leads significantly. Be sure to contact us for more information about SEM auctions and our SEO services. Our strategists will guide you on which steps to take and provide you with a quote.