18Oct 2019

What is SEO, SEM, and SMM? What Are The Main Differences?

All we want is to attract audiences to our site. The search engines are always helping users to find content that is relevant to their needs. With great optimization methods, your website’s ability can be improved and listed across the top of search engine results.

You need to create high-quality, fresh and unique content for your audiences. So here we will discuss the role of SEO, SEM, and SMO in your web presence.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the technique used to help market a business through paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs).

What is SEM?

what is sem

You might have heard people use the terms SEO and SEM interchangeably. But though they might have to seem close origin and connotation, when it comes to implementing these for your business, they are entirely different from one another.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is considered to be one of the best ways to enhance your business while the competition gets tougher. This online methodology of advertisement is one of the best ways that you can promote your products and ensure that your business grows.

When a business employs this practice, it uses paid advertisements that will appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Here what happens is advertisers bid on keywords that search engine users (of Google and Bing), might happen to type when they are searching for specific services or products. This is the opportunity that the advertisers seek to get their ads to appear along with the results for the search queries entered by these users.

As an advertiser, make sure you are creating excellent campaigns and keeping a measure and track of your results. You would have to set aside a particular budget for this. But you can expect a wonderful return on this investment of yours. This is one of the easiest ways you can use to get your website to appear on the top results of the search engines.

These are the results that appear as sponsored ads at the side or top part of the search engine results.

What is SMM?

what is smm

Social media marketing (SMM) is a kind of internet marketing that makes use of social media websites as their tool for marketing. Its main objective is to produce content that users will like and hence will share across their social networks. This, in turn, will help the company to increase the exposure of the brand while increasing the customer reach.

What is SEO?

what is seo

Search engine optimization (SEO) comprises techniques and strategies, which are mainly used to increase the chances of a website’s presence within the search engine results, particularly, among the top results. The search engines look through the web, analyzing and identifying everything the see and witness. They are constantly watching and listening.

Whenever a user types a query in the search engine, the engine’s algorithm is set in such a way that it comes up with a list of relevant results. The search engine acts as a deciding factor. Mostly, it is powerful and it knows what is right and what needs to be put where.

Now, it is up to the websites to decide whether they would like to put content that is good, informative and useful. This will help generate trust among audiences.

However, these days, the competition is becoming fiercer. So what happens is that during such a tight competition, it is essential that the website not only makes to the top pages of the search engine results but stays close to the top. No one will take the pain to scroll down to the bottom of the results that appear even on page 1. So in case, if your website appears somewhere after page 1, then it is high time you reconsidered your SEO strategies because your site is way out of site.

The main intention of SEO is to look for ways that will help a website to make itself attractive for search engines. This will help them to output their search results and make the website visible as far as possible. Some of the techniques that can be used for this include the following:

  • Metadata which will help crawlers to read and understand what the content is
  • Setting up sitemaps and roadmaps for a website or submitting these to search engines, such that they don’t find it too difficult to find your site
  • Implement unique and new content that will drive traffic and ensure that your site is used a lot, which will help in ensuring that the site appears at the top of the search results
  • Certain internal modifications will help ensure that the code is compliant with the latest web standards
  • Also, ensure that the code is easily accessible through the search engine indexing·       When reputable backlinks or links from others to your website are accumulated – search engines consider that as a mark of distinction

The main intention of SEO is to generate natural and organic search traffic. When your SEO is done right, the search engines rank your website better and help generate more traffic.

How Does SEM Differ From SEO?

Search engine marketing, as we discussed, mainly refers to paid search marketing. The effort is focused on ensuring businesses make payments to Google to ensure their ads appear in the search results.

Search engine optimization differs from SEM as it doesn’t need to pay Google to drive traffic and clicks. But, in turn, it gets to earn a free space in the search results by implementing relevant content for any given keyword search.

But a business cannot succeed unless it implements both. Ensure that SEO and SEM are the most important parts of your marketing strategy. SEO will help drive traffic to the top of your funnel, while with SEM, you can drive conversions to the bottom of your funnel.

Make sure your SEO, SEM and SMM strategies are aligned in such a way that your business is driven toward its customers, thereby reaching higher sales when compared with their competitors.

Acodez is a leading digital marketing agency in India. Our service includes SEO, SMM, SMO, PPC and content marketing services to ensure that your website’s rank among the top results on the search engine. We are also a leading website design company offering all kinds of web design and web development services at affordable prices. For further information, please contact us today.

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Vipin Nayar

Vipin Nayar

Vipin Nayar is the Digital Marketing Head at Acodez. As a Social Media, SEO & SEM expert with over 8 years' experience in online marketing, he uses his keen insight into customer behaviour to formulate innovative strategies that helps clients enhance their online presence & open up new business avenues.

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