kodion consulting

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has traditionally been thought of as a component of the umbrella term, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), encompassing both paid AND organic tactics. Today, SEM is used to refer exclusively to paid search. According to Search Engine Land, Search Engine Marketing is “the process of gaining website traffic by purchasing ads on search engines,” while Search Engine Optimization is defined as “the process of getting traffic from the free, organic, editorial or natural search results on search engines.” 

So, rather than viewing SEM as an umbrella term encompassing SEO, it’s more accurate to view SEM (paid search) and SEO (organic search) as separate entities to use as part of your Search Marketing arsenal. 

SEO

A means of optimizing your website so that you get organic (free) traffic from the search engines According to the Google Knowledge Graph, SEO is “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.” 

SEM

An online marketing strategy that involves getting traffic, paid and unpaid, from the search engines, 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.”