What are SEO and SEM (search engine marketing)?

SEO is an unpaid strategy, while SEM is a paid strategy.

What are SEO and SEM (search engine marketing)?
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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of achieving higher rankings in the organic results of search engines.

The goal of SEO is to improve your website’s ranking on the search engine results page (SERP). This can be done by optimizing a website's content and structure and using keywords in an efficient manner. Search engine optimization techniques can also include making your website more mobile-friendly and user-friendly and changing the way you present content to your users.

SEO has evolved into a wide field that covers several disciplines, including:

  • keyword research;
  • on-page optimization;
  • link building;
  • technical audits; and more.

SEO involves optimizing a website's content and structure by using keywords in an efficient manner, which will improve rankings in search engines.

SEO is a long-term strategy that requires you to make changes to your website content, its structure, and the way it is presented in order to improve rankings in search engines. There are many different tactics you can use that fall under the umbrella of SEO (such as link building, keyword research, and content creation).

As an example:

  • You need to create or update a blog post on your site showcasing your new product or service. You want this blog post to rank highly for keywords like “product launch” and “new product release", it should also include the name of your service, and keywords relevant to what you do.
  • You want all of your blog posts related to this topic on the same page so users who are searching for information about your new product can easily find them all at once rather than having dozens of scattered pages across different sections of your website. So by creating one page with links back out into each individual blog post, it will have more visibility within Google's search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves optimizing a website's content and structure by using keywords in an efficient manner—often through strategic placement within the organic text—which will improve rankings in search engines

SEO techniques can also include making your website more mobile-friendly and user-friendly and changing the way you present content to your users.

You can also use SEO techniques to make your website more mobile-friendly and user-friendly. Here are some tips:

  • Use big fonts, bold headlines, relevant keywords throughout the content, headings and subheadings, bullet points to highlight important information, images and videos to break up the text, and videos to explain the content.
  • Make sure your site is responsive across platforms like desktops/laptops as well as smartphones or tablets.

It can be helpful to think about SEO as a form of advertising since it ultimately is about capturing traffic that has already been created by a search engine for a given topic or keyword.

You can think of SEO as a form of advertising since it ultimately is about capturing traffic that has already been created by a search engine for a given topic or keyword.

When you run an ad on Facebook, for example, you’re paying for the right to have your ad shown to users who are interested in seeing it.

Similarly, when you optimize your website for search engines like Google and Bing (more on this below), you are buying ads that show up on the results pages when people search for certain keywords related to what your business does.

So if SEO is really just an advertising method, why do we call it “search engine optimization?” The answer: because SEO focuses on improving your ranking in organic search results—not paid ads—and here’s how it works:

In other words, SEO focuses on increasing traffic by improving your ranking for the keywords people are already searching for.

The process of increasing traffic by improving your ranking for keywords people are already searching for is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO involves optimizing a website's content and structure by using keywords in an efficient manner, which will improve rankings in search engines.

In other words, SEO focuses on increasing traffic by improving your ranking for the keywords people are already searching for. For example, if you want to increase traffic from [people searching for "puppies"], then you would optimize your website so that it ranks higher than others when someone searches this term.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that helps websites gain visibility and organic traffic from popular search engines like Google and Bing. SEM includes paid advertising on search engines, SEO, social media marketing, and using different types of content to reach customers or clients. While SEO focuses on optimizing your website so it ranks higher in the results pages of search engines, SEM focuses on getting your ad ranked as high as possible to drive traffic to your site.

For example: if you want to list your business on Google Maps for “plumbers in Vancouver", then you need both SEM and SEO because any potential customer searching this term will see both listings (if they're done well).

Because there are so many ways to use both strategies together effectively—and because they often overlap—it can be difficult to know which one works best for each situation. Here are some guidelines for deciding when it's time for an overhaul:

SEM involves creating a paid marketing strategy that involves paying for listing placement in search results through an advertising service such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads.

SEM is a form of paid advertising that involves creating a strategy to place your content in front of consumers as they search for relevant terms. In SEM, you’re paying to be listed on the results page.

For example: if you own a restaurant called “The Burrito Shack,” and someone searches for “burrito places near me," then their search engine will show them several restaurants that serve burritos. The number one spot (or top three) below organic results will be reserved for paid placements.

SEM can be extremely helpful when it comes to acquiring new customers or sales leads; however, it can also be expensive because you're paying to get your listing seen by people who might not have otherwise found out about your business or product!

Paying to be listed in search results isn't the only thing you can do to improve your ranking on these sites; there are many other tactics you can use to improve your ranking organically across these sites without spending money on advertising services.

SEO is an SEO tactic that involves optimizing a website's content and structure by using keywords in an efficient manner. It's about capturing traffic that has already been created by a search engine for a given topic or keyword.

This means the best way to get traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Bing (which together make up 95% of all search queries) is to improve your ranking in their results pages; this is what we call Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Much like SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO can be broken down into two categories: Onsite or Offsite.

The difference between SEO and SEM is that while both strategies involve getting a website listed within the organic results on search engines, they take different approaches to achieving this goal.

SEO is an unpaid strategy, while SEM is a paid strategy. In other words, with SEO you can get ranked at the top of Google (and other search engines) without having to pay anything for it; but if you want your site to appear at the top of Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages), then you will need to use SEM.

SEM involves paying for listing placement in search results through an advertising service such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads.