[yohan]

What's the difference between Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

[shabbir]

There is huge difference between SEO and SEM. In fact there is no similarity between SEO and SEM.

SEO is ranking your site well in the organic search results using tips liked by search engine but SEM is much more bigger than SEO. SEM includes the complete SEO process but also include the PPC Marketing as well as collecting data for more effective SEO.

Lets take an example with some numbers.

Say I want to rank on top for a keyword XYZ. Its highly competitive and requires lots of effort and money to rank well but what would be my ROI. Do I know that no. I can only estimate but what if I do a PPC marketing to rank at top for that keywords and see how the ROI comes to my website.

If now after doing ROI I know what would I make and so now I easily estimate if its worth investing in SEO or not. So SEM is something which you should work on before SEO.

[extomas]

I don't know why people don't accept that SEO is a part of SEM, SEM is search engine marketing that include PPC and SEO both.

[shabbir]

Quote:

Originally Posted by extomas

I don't know why people don't accept that SEO is a part of SEM, SEM is search engine marketing that include PPC and SEO both.

Its not that people don't accept. They just don't know it.

[seopeter]

SEM also contains PPC and Paid Listings while SEO is part of SEM

[janeyardy]

SEO is about building link and increasing your website visibility in search engines by implementing various techniques.
Contrary to it SEM is related with earning money via of marketing. Google adsense, PPC ,affiliate marketing all lies in the category of SEM

[shabbir]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shivani

Personally, I would start with SEO and then move onto SEM.

That shows your inexperience towards SEO

[nimesh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shabbir

Its not that people don't accept. They just don't know it.

Correct.
I came to knew about both from G4EF.

[JhonWilliams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yohan

What's the difference between Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Hi,
SEO concentrates on meta tags, titles, keyword density, effective and clean html coding whereas SEM looks into the search engine submission, paid inclusion, directories submission, traditional adds, PPC (Pay Per Click), PPS (Pay Per Sale) and press release.

[mickeyy]

SEO is ought to earn good volume of traffic and will convert visitors into potential traders. While, SEM finds traders to directly buy their product and services.
Bigger companies/sites need to include SEM in their plans, whereas smaller businesses can get away with just SEO
and yes.. i agree, overall SEO is a piece of SEM.