SEO and SEM: what are the differences?

What the SEO and SEM abbreviations mean, what differences there are between these two activities and how they can help a website

Those who intend to increase the visibility of their website on search engines must have a clear idea of ​​what SEO and SEM are . In this guide we will find out together what is the difference between SEO and SEM , what specific techniques these two activities adopt and how they can help make a site more visible on Google and other search engines.

What is SEO

SEO stands for " Search Engine Optimization ", which, translated into Italian from English, means " Optimization for search engines ".

It is, more concretely, the specific area that includes within it all the strategies and techniques aimed at improving the positioning of a website among the organic , i.e. non-paid, results of the search engines.

The aim is to make sure that, when a user searches on Google for a specific keyword linked to the activity, his site appears among the first organic results of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Specifically, SEO includes three main macro-activities and, that is, the choice of keywords for which you intend to position the site within the search engines, the On-Page SEO, which in turn includes optimization SEO of HTML code and optimization of website content , and Off-Page SEO , which includes for example the management of incoming links.

What is SEM

SEM is an abbreviation that stands for " Search Engine Marketing " and identifies a wider area of ​​SEO, which includes SEO itself but also SEA . The latter is an acronym for "Search Engine Advertising" and is the discipline that includes all the strategies and techniques aimed at increasing the visibility of a website by improving the positioning of the site itself among the paid results of the search engines .

Going back to SEM, this is the specific branch of Web Marketing which includes those activities carried out in order to conduct as many users as possible on their website while browsing on search engines.

Therefore, the scope of Search Engine Marketing includes the aforementioned activities of:

·         Keyword analysis

·         On-page SEO

·         Off-page SEO

·         Pay-per-click campaigns .

·         That said, over the past few years the acronym SEM has been increasingly used to refer exclusively to paid activities (SEA). On the contrary, to indicate the area that SEO and SEA encompasses, the term " Search Marketing " has generally been used .

Those who intend to increase the visibility of their site on search engines must consider two parameters :

·         The available budget.

·         The time horizon in which you intend to obtain results .

SEO NYC generally takes longer to get concrete results, while sponsored ads usually allow for shorter-term traffic, in proportion to the investment made.