Wow! With so many acronyms it’s difficult to keep them all straight. For just Search Marketing, you have SEM, PPC, SEO, SERPs, CPC.
For now we’re just going to look at SEM vs SEO.
What is SEM?
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. It’s defined as paid search or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. And let’s throw Cost Per Click (CPC) along with Cost Per Impression (CPI) in there just for fun.
SEM is when a user pays a company to show their ad. The most common form of SEM is Google Ads, which was formerly called Google Adwords. And certainly not to be confused with Google Adsense which is a different beast altogether and is for another entirely different blog post.
Here are the key benefits to SEM marketing as it pertains to Google Ads.
- It’s fairly easy to set up.
- You can target a specific audience.
- You can see results almost immediately.
- It’s great for A/B testing.
- You have control of what the user sees about your product or service.
- With some minor tweaks, you can show your ad on Google’s first page. Let’s face it, second place is the first place loser.
- Even if the user doesn’t click on your ad they probably saw it so that’s pretty good brand awareness.
- By having your ad on the first page, you take up space and can bump your competitor’s organic listing to the second page.
Ok, now let’s look at some of the cons of SEM.
- It costs money! Every time a user clicks on your ad, you have to pay for it regardless if it results in a conversion or not. This can really run up the marketing budget. Most small business owners are very good at what they do, but SEM may not be the sharpest tool in their box and that’s ok. As a small business owner, this is one thing that you could easily outsource
- If you stop paying, your ads stop showing, like immediately.
- Let’s face it when was the last time you clicked on an ad when you did a search? Most skip over the ads to get to the organic results (more on that later). So the click-through rate is lower.
Below is a screenshot of a list of ads for sunglasses on Google. These appear at the top of the search results page because advertisers pay to be there.
So what is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The name itself can be a bit confusing. We’re not actually “Optimizing” the search engine. Google doesn’t need any of our help to do that. Instead, we’re optimizing our own websites to rank higher on the Search Engines. So something like, “Website Optimizing For Search Engines” or WOFSE would be more accurate. Now you know why I don’t get to name things…
Every website owner wants to be the top-dog on the search results page so they spend a considerable amount of time and effort researching the top keywords or phrases that they think will get them there. There are a variety of tools to help with the research, some are free and others will cost money. Either way these tools are vital if you want to stand a chance to appear on the first page.
Here are some of the key benefits of SEO:
- SEO brings traffic to your site organically aka Free! Who doesn’t like free? A user can click on your listing all day long and it won’t cost you a dime.
- It provides value over a longer period of time. All that hard work to get to the top will have a longer-lasting effect than if it was just a paid ad.
- The click-through rate is much higher. Most people, including me, just skim over the ads and go straight to the organic listings.
So what are the cons of SEO?
- While we often refer to it as Free listings, it can be extremely time-consuming to research all of the right keywords and know where the best place is to put them on your site. Someone has to pay for all that time. If you’re a small business owner and you want to do all that work yourself to save money, think about all the things you could be doing for your business instead.
- It’s not very good for testing. With paid ads, you can see your results immediately but testing for SEO takes weeks or months to see the results. And remember, your competitors are all trying to do the same thing.
Here’s a screenshot of what organic listings look like for a search on sunglasses.
So which one is better for a small business owner, SEM or SEO? The answer is…
Both!
