SEO vs SEM

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or unpaid (organic) search results.

It is the art and science of acquiring high-ranking organic placement in the results page of a search engine , such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. SEO increases a site’s accessibility to a search engine and improves the chances that its pages are spidered by said engine.

SEO is a time-consuming, ongoing process. As the definition states, there is an art and a science to letting Google know that your site is there and its pages are worth indexing – keywords must be researched, content (that speaks to Google and your audience) must be prepared, links must be garnered, and so on. The cost of SEO comes in the form of planning, strategy, execution and monitoring.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and advertising.

It is the act of increasing a website’s visibility in search engines through optimization and advertising. In this respect, SEO can be seen as a sub-product of SEM. But in many cases, SEM is the strategic use of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) listings in SERPs. Ad Words is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords which can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service.

One of the biggest differences between SEO and SEM is in the amount of control the advertiser has. With SEM, you get to pick which of your site’s pages show up for which keywords, and where on the SERP they’ll rank. With SEO, those choices are up to the search engine.