Digital marketing is a vast concept that can be confusing to understand if you are a novice. SEO and SEM are two parts of digital marketing that often get confused into one. There’s so much that we don’t know about SEO and SEM.

For starters, let’s get clear on what both these terms mean. Let’s start with SEO first, SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO involves optimizing your website in such a way that it gets a higher rank on the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) to increase the visibility of the website. SEO is a process through which we get organic traffic on the website.

Let’s come to SEM then, SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. Like SEO, SEM too works at increasing the website’s visibility and traffic but through paid strategies.

In simpler words, the major difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO increases the website’s visibility organically through keyword placements and other tactics (On-page and Off-page SEO) without any paid campaign whereas on the other hand, SEM is known for making your website appear at the top of any SERP but through paid advertising or PPC (Pay Per Click) or CPC (Cost Per Click).

Differences between SEO and SEM

Since now we know what SEO and SEM are all about, let’s quickly acknowledge our minds with the differences between these two important digital marketing types.

SEM is instant, SEO takes time

This is one major difference between SEO and SEM that decides the marketing campaign of the brand. If you want instant results, SEM is the one for you as it gives quick results through PPC but if you have a lot of time in your hands then consider SEO because in the long run, SEO matters.

SEO enhances the reputation of your website, SEM does not

As revealed in the previous point, SEO matters in the long run. The biggest drawback of SEM is that it only works till you pay which is bad for business whereas SEO enhances the reputation of your website even when you pause the SEO campaign of your website. SEO leaves everlasting results that compounds with time.

SEM is straightforward, SEO is not

Although SEO and SEM revolve around targeting the right audience, this thing stands true only with SEM. With SEM strategy, you can specify who can see your advert based on filters, like age, gender, location, interests, and so on but SEO can’t make that possible.

SEM is pricey, SEO is not

SEM is a little bit on the pricey side so if you are an entrepreneur with a tight budget you might not prefer it in the long run but SEO is quite inexpensive when compared to SEM.

No matter whether it’s SEO or SEM, what matters is what’s good for your business. Well, who knows that better than us? Come to Purpple Designs, the best online marketing agency in Kolkata to start your brand’s digital marketing campaign (because your competitors are doing it so aap peeche kyun rahein?) at affordable rates.

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