Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

Posted by Bart on May 29, 2011

When people think about Search Engine and Advertising, it is usually all about Google and being in the first position in the result page for a specific keyword. However there is more to Search Engine Advertising than Google and result pages.

It is important to clearly make a distinction between SEM and SEO:

What is SEM?

Search Engine Marketing, (SEM), is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

In other words, SEM is about buying or bidding on keywords to get a good visibility in the search engine result pages. Google AdWords is a good example of this technique, however it is not the only one.

Other Search Engines offer the same services:

- Yahoo!
- Bing
- Ask.com
- Baidu – China
- Seznam.cz – Czech Republic
- Yandex – Russia
- Rambler – Russia
- Timway – Hong Kong
- Ayna – Arabic Search engine, Middle East & North Africa
- Leit.is – Iceland

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.

In other words, SEO is about optimizing a website to prepare it and get the best results with the Search Engines.

If you consider SEM, you can work directly with the Search Engines and pay them directly. For SEO, you will probably use a third party agency and pay this agency, not the Search Engines.

Both techniques have to be considered to develop a website visibility and traffic on the Internet.

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