If you are a business owner, you may be looking for ways to advertise and grow your business. There are many different tips and strategies out there to help you. There are also various companies and tools at your disposal to advance your marketing campaigns. One strategy that is quickly growing and outpacing the rest is digital marketing. Turning your attention to online marketing helps you grow your business. It helps you reach people outside of your geographical sphere whom you might not otherwise reach. With more and more people turning to online shopping and reviews, digital marketing is essential. That said, as you seek information to get started in digital marketing, there are several important terms to know. Chief among them are sure Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). The goal of both is to display your business webpage at or near the top of search engine results pages. The higher up your business is on the results page, the more likely people are to click on your site. There are some key similarities and differences between the two. Let us take a closer look.

Difference Between SEO and SEM

SEO

Search Engine Optimization uses key strategies, such as regularly posting on your site, to increase your web page’s visibility. These techniques harness the information provided from search engine algorithms to determine who your target audience should be, what products or resources they are most often looking for, and what other people are saying about similar products, resources, and businesses to help you hone your digital marketing practices specifically to that audience. SEO is an on-going process that requires consistency in order to keep your website near the top of results pages. This includes constantly updating your page and also relies on building a reputation online through reviews and backlinks from other pages.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing, on the other hand, uses paid strategies to boost your business website in the search engine results page. Most commonly, companies find what the most common keywords are in a particular field and then target their advertising campaigns to those particular keywords. Often called pay-per-click advertising, companies pay a certain amount per click on their targeted ad. For many people, SEM is a broad category that encompasses both paid and non-paid, sometimes called “organic” search results. This is because SEM tends to leverage both paid strategies and non-paid strategies to boost your overall visibility.

To Be Continued…

With both SEO and SEM, the overall goal is to increase traffic to your website by making your page appear at the top of a search engine results page. Business owners often use these strategies in conjunction with each other in order to maximize the benefits and drive more traffic and potential customers to your site. The more you promote your website, the more traffic there is, and the more business you will be able to conduct.