Search engine optimization and marketing are among the most commonly used disciplines within digital marketing.
Within search engine optimization, there are several concepts you should be familiar with, and in this post, we will take a look at the general differences between the terms SEO, SEA, and SEM.
They all relate to search engine optimization – that is, optimizing websites’ visibility on search engines like Google and Bing – which ultimately aims to enhance a company’s performance.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
SEO stands for search engine optimization.
This is an optimization process for a given website to achieve a high ranking among the search engine’s organic search results.
The optimization can be done through various strategies, often including quality assurance of the website’s content, its speed, its outbound and inbound links, etc.
With continuous optimization of a website, there is a higher likelihood of climbing to the top among the search engine’s organic search results.
SEA – Search Engine Advertising
SEA stands for search engine advertising.
SEA refers to the part of search engine marketing that involves paid advertisements.
The paid ads are the ones you see at the top of, for example, Google’s search results. This placement can be managed through Google AdWords, where advertisers bid to rank on specific keywords.
Even though SEA and SEO focus on different types of placements on the various search engines, it can make a lot of sense to combine disciplines from both areas.Partly because a large portion of a website’s visitors still come from organic results, and partly because SEO disciplines contribute to a general optimization of your website, which ultimately benefits the visitors’ experience of it.
Let’s imagine that your website ranks highest in the paid ads but lacks good structure and relevant content to retain consumers; in that case, the high ranking doesn’t make much of a difference.
Incorporating SEO disciplines to optimize the website’s content will therefore always be beneficial, even if the primary focus is on the paid ads.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
SEM would be expressed as search engine marketing.
SEM is, as the name also suggests, an umbrella term for both SEO and SEA.
Fundamentally, SEM includes all forms of marketing through search engines, aiming to increase the visibility of a website.
Thus, there is no distinction between paid or organic search engine optimization when talking about SEM.
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