Optimizing your online copy is a massive deal for digital marketing and keeping a brand afloat, especially when it’s making most of its money through online purchases, which many brands do nowadays. SEM and SEO are why brands can market online and allow simple user searches to direct them to their websites.
Now, what are these two terms, SEM and SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization and does just as it sounds. It optimizes your search in google. SEO is accessible for anybody trying to optimize a search that would redirect them to a website. It can take longer to build up and gain traction by not paying, but it would likely be there for the long run if that success were ever to come. SEO also allows for my trust because some users don’t feel that level of trust when seeing an AD sign above a website.
SEM stands for search engine marketing, which is similar to SEO but has slight differences in the long run. SEM is paid for advertising but does offer way faster results than unpaid optimization like SEO. The quick results come from Ads being the top section of google searches. Also, the data for paid marketing is far more advanced than just free optimization, which allows for websites using SEM to make data-driven decisions, while that can be harder for someone using SEO. Finally, SEM allows for further testing within your marketing, letting you test different options for different searches. An example brought to my attention was, “when someone searches for “cool t-shirts” you can test sending them to a page with many options for t-shirts or send them to a page with just your three best-selling t-shirts.”
Ultimately, SEM and SEO are great ways to optimize your search for whatever you want to market and optimize. It allows websites to push products fiercely through paid advertisements or let a company gain traction through different searches for free. It’s a great way to capitalize off targeted keyword searches.
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