Every business out there needs to have a web presence, and even the kinds of businesses that you wouldn’t think rely on the power of internet marketing to boost their sales. Everything from massive e-commerce sites to local pizza delivery joints can harness the power of the internet to boost their bottom line. And while there is a lot of opportunity up for grabs, the vast business potential of the internet has created fierce competition for the top spots on search engine result pages (SERPs).

SEO vs SEM

In order to boost traffic and sales, many business website owners hire search engine optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM) companies. These service providers analyse your site and suggest and/or implement changes to help your pages perform better with search engines such as Google, or they implement paid marketing campaigns. But what exactly is the difference between SEO and SEM companies?

Search Engine Optimisation companies analyse the pages of websites for keyword relevancy. This is because each specific page should be focused on keywords that users normally search for when looking for information on the related subject, and all web pages should be focused on just a few keywords or key phrases. Let’s take a pizza delivery company in Melbourne, for example. After some keyword research, an SEO company might find that the content of the web pages needs to be structured around the key phrases “best pizzas in Melbourne”, “takeaway pizzas in Melbourne”, and “Melbourne pizzas”. The SEO consultant will recommend a certain website optimisation strategies to influence the page’s search engine ranking in a positive way.

SEO companies also work on building relevant links from other web pages to your own website. These links should come from highly ranked sites that have the same subject matter and keyword relevancy as your own site and page. The text that is used to link to your pages is also important, and is known in the world of SEO as anchor text. For example, a page benefits when the external link text includes the targeted keywords for that page. When our favourite Melbourne pizza joint is working on building backlinks, the anchor text should ideally be something like “Melbourne pizzas”.

On the other side of the coin, Search Engine Marketing companies can help you organise paid advertising campaigns using services like Google AdWords (these are the advertisements that appear as sponsored links in a Google search). Generally these services charge you for every click through to your site, otherwise known as a Pay Per Click service. The SEM consultant will help you to optimise your conversions, and should track how well your ads convert into sales on your site.

Do You Need SEO and SEM Marketing?SEO vs SEM

SEM and SEO are cost effective ways of improving your web site’s performance. SEO works to improve your organic traffic, and SEM works to build targeted paid for traffic. One of the great differences between SEM and SEO is that SEM will often yield immediate results whereas search engine authority takes a longer time to build using SEO techniques. On the flip side of this, as soon as the investment stops, the traffic stops with SEM, whereas SEO provides a long term ranking benefit from the website authority created.

Start-up businesses might find themselves more reliant on SEM strategies in the early days, but should still place a focus on building SEO practices for long term success in the online world.
At SEO Copilot, our SEO packages can make sure that you are placing the right emphasis on relevant keywords in order to ensure that your Page Rank improves month by month, and that your sales are boosted as a result.