search engine marketing vs search engine optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are both great tactics to drive targeted traffic to your website but which method is more powerful and more effective at getting your potential customers to your site? Let’s first briefly walk through what these Digital Marketing Tactics entail.
SEO is tweaking the content structure and links to your site in order to rank organically (without advertising) and ultimately landing a page one Search Engine Rank Position (SERP). SEO Takes time, it is not an instant process, to rank a website that is in a low competitive niche could take 4 – 6 months, if the niche is more competitive it could take well over 8 – 10months. Once you gain a page one SERP you need to engage in constant work in order to maintain your ranking or your SERP could drop. What do we mean by more work? Creating more content, adding more value to you site, this could mean spending 4-6 hours per month to produce one quality article/video for a low competitive site or 4-6 hours a week to produce content for a niche that is more competitive. Landing a page one SERP does not guarantee business success, there are also 9 other sites listed on page one, there are three local business sites featured above the organic rankings and then there are also paid ads at the top and side of the page SEO has a major benefit however which is: You are not paying for advertising space which means SEO is extremely costs effective and arguable the most cost effective way to drive relevant traffic to your site.
SEM is Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC). This form of advertising is great because you only pay when someone interested in your ad clicks on it and this will lead them to your website or a specific page of your website. It is positioned right at the top of the page so visually has and advantage over organic ranked sites. The two most common examples of SEM are Google Adwords and Bing Ads. In truth they are very similar and are very customable to an advertisers unique needs, Adwords has a much greater reach and is also a lot more expensive than Bing Ads with is more cost effective but will not generate as much reach. Both methods are excellent ways of driving targeted traffic instantly (within 24hrs) to your website both require the user to have a very good understanding of these tactics and ideally gain Certification and compete various exams to use these technologies for maximum benefit. The major drawback with SEM is that it is expensive: Every time someone clicks your Ad and visits your site you are paying money. Online conversions are normally around 2%-3% so if 100 people click on your Ad expect 2 or 3 sales. You have to ask yourself, how much am I spending per click and how much revenue do I get per sale otherwise your advertising costs could exceed revenue.
Google and Bing/Yahoo are brilliant places for your website to be positioned for themes/phrases that are relevant and of value but the question is, SEO vs SEM which method is superior? Click on the video and in three minutes you will have the answer. Visit our pricing and promotions page to see what search will accommodate your budget.

Author Rod Day
Director: Project Manager
www.seobaliwebdesign.com