Apples and Oranges: Comparing SEM and SEO
Posted by Eric Peterson on Tue, Apr 06, 2010
As the search marketing conversation continues to heat up between our account managers and clients, I’m not surprised to learn that many who are new to the topic aren’t clear on the difference between search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO). I thought I’d take a moment to help distinguish between the two.
Search Engine Marketing
SEM is the choice when immediacy is of the essence. With SEM, you pay the search engines to display your ads on the results page of a relevant query. Your jobs appear as sponsored links, typically in the right column of the search engine results page, and often at the top of the left column above the list of organic results. Because there is no ramp-up time, you begin to realize results right away.
How Search Engine Marketing Works
The first step is to use resources such as Google’s free keyword research tool to discover what terms people use to search for the types of jobs you want to advertise. Relying on your own intuition, you can experiment with your own words and phrases, always with the understanding that it doesn’t make sense to buy keyword phrases for which nobody’s searching.
Unlike SEO, SEM allows for precise control over the deployment of your advertising. You can choose what day and time you want the search engine to display your ad, and you can also target specific geographic locations, ranging from an entire country to a five-mile radius of a specific zip code.
After you establish the campaign parameters, you’ll need to set a budget. One attractive aspect of SEM is that the advertising is pay-per-click (PPC), which means you only pay if your ad is clicked on. Additionally, you set the daily budget, and once your daily budget is exhausted, the search engines stop displaying your ad; meanwhile, you reap brand benefits as your ad is visible even to visitors who don’t click. In order to maximize the return on your investment, you can track and analyze the results of your ad, experimenting with the parameters until you find a formula that works best for you.
All of these benefits and the sheer simplicity of SEM might make you wonder why you need to bother with the more complex undertaking of SEO. The answer is simple: more than 75% of all clicks on a search engine results page go to the organic links; less than 25% go to the sponsored links.
Search Engine Optimization
In a nutshell, SEO is the art and science of modifying web content with the goal of gaining better positioning on search engine results pages. The goal of your SEO effort is to incrementally improve your page’s ranking in the organic search results, and ultimately rise above your competition when a job seeker enters your target keywords in their search query.
Unlike SEM, SEO is not a quick fix to filling your open positions. In fact, it can take 3-6 months before an aggressive strategy begins to bear fruit. However, depending on your competition, the keywords you target, and the amount of link building you do, it is possible to see substantial improvements in weeks instead of months.
Because search engine algorithms change constantly, and the battles for page-one rankings grow fiercer by the day, SEO must be embraced as an ongoing discipline to maintain any successes you achieve.
SEM and SEO each have their own advantages and drawbacks, depending on your objectives. What are your objectives? What are your challenges? Have you found more success using one over the other?