SEO and SEM, or . . . Is it black with white stripes, or white with black stripes?

By most people's standards, the internet is still very young. New technologies and developments in existing technologies are appearing at an extraordinary rate. As technologies change, so does the terminology used to describe them.

Social Media Marketing, PPC, Viral Marketing, search engine optimization (SEO). For many people, this term is a new one, and they have no idea what it is an SEO does. To others, SEO is synonymous with SEM -- search engine marketing. In fact, there is a big difference between the two.

Search Engine Marketing

At WebXsposure, we see SEM as a rather broad term. It's everything that can be done to utilize the technology of search engines with the goal of promoting a web site and increasing its traffic, its "stickiness," and, in the case of sites that promote a business (or are a business), increase profits. SEO, therefore, should be a subset of SEM.

Aspects of search engine marketing that might be considered outside the realm of search engine optimization include the following:

Paid Inclusion

This is simply the practice of paying a search engine or a directory to add a site to its database immediately, rather than setting up that site so that it will be found by the search engine spiders on its own. In the case of some search engines and directories, paid inclusion is the only way to get listed. For others, it's presented as an option. If you're willing to pay, your site will be listed sooner. It's also a useful practice if you wish to make frequent changes to your content, because your site will be spidered more often and you will be able to test how changes affect your ranking.

Traditional Ads

This involves placing paid advertising on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Normally, these ads appear based on the keywords entered into the search engines, and one is charged based on the number of impressions, i.e. appearances, of the ad. In other words, you pay whether the ad sends anyone to your web site or not.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC ads are simple enough to look at. They're text-only. PPC ad campaigns are completely controlled by the advertiser. You decide which keywords should bring up your ads, you write the copy, and you decide how much you want to pay. And, as the name indicates, you only pay for an ad when someone clicks it and is brought to your site. There are two main networks of PPC ads, run by Google and Yahoo, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but in both cases, one should be prepared to spend a great deal of time monitoring and adjusting such a campaign.

Pay Per Click Marketing (also called SEM, Search Engine Marketing, Sponsored Search, PPC) is essentially hyper-targeted advertising. Pay Per Click provides a way to bid on advertising space in the search engines. Your ad is displayed only when search engine users search for a phrase you have specified you wish to bid on. You pay quite literally - per click. Hence the name pay-per-click. The beauty is in the click. You only pay (if your campaign has been expert set up) for the most relevant search, by customers who are searching for you right now.

The Advantages of These Practices

In contrast to pure SEO, these SEM practices offer the advantage of immediacy. If you need to increase your traffic and your visibility right away, or you want to ensure that you are in front of your potential customers at the exact moment they are searching for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, this is the most logical way to go.

The Disadvantages

You knew this was coming, didn't you? Think about it this way: you've spent your time and money to bring people to your web site. What will they see when they get there? You've convinced them, at least for the moment, that your site is worth visiting, so they're expecting to find exactly the information they were seeking. Is it easy to find? Is it there at all? You only have a few seconds to convince them that your site can deliver what they want. Will your visitors, failing to find what they're looking for, click their browser's back button and try another site?

Your site has to be ready for your visitors. It needs to be written, structured, and coded in such a way that the information is clearly laid out and easy to find. If it isn't, your site will either be immediately forgotten by visitors, or worse, it will be remembered as one that fails to deliver.

Thus, SEO should be a definite subset of SEM

Your search engine marketing will realize a much more successful outcome with inclusion of site optimization. Since the purpose of SEO is to make the site better for both search engines and users, the partnership of is a natural one.