What Is The Difference Between SEO, SMM and SEM?
Digital marketing is one of those industries that are over populated with acronyms, making it very confusing for anyone unfamiliar or new to digital media. You have PPC, CPC, CPM, CRM, CPA, CTA, KPI, DMO, WOM, and many many more.
Most of these acronyms tend to fall under one of three overarching categories, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM).
SEO, SMM and SEM are important tools that anyone serious in developing a solid online presence needs to understand. With a strong understanding of these tools and by applying them to your digital marketing strategy effectively you will see an increase in brand awareness and more sales.
By the end of this blog you will understand the differences between each and why you need to consider them in your digital marketing strategy.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Search Engine Optimisation refers to the process of optimising your website in order to improve your websites organic (unpaid) results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). In laymen’s terms, it means trying to get your page to be the first result on search engines such as Google, ultimately driving more traffic to your site.
Search Engine Optimisation is broken into two component’s, on-site and off-site SEO.
On-Site SEO: As the name suggests, on-site SEO are all of the implementations you make directly to your site. It includes optimising copy to include keywords and improve your sites ranking for specific keywords. I.e. If you are a Social Media Marketing Agency in London, you want your site to be recommended whenever users search with keywords such as “Social Media Marketing London”, so to ensure your site ranks well for this key word you need to mention it throughout your sites content. Other on-site SEO tools include Headings, structuring your website in different ways, meta descriptions, user experience, site performance, responsiveness (making the site look good on mobile and desktop) and increasing the time a user spends on your site (which can be done by adding videos).
Essentially on-site SEO is about creating content around your desired topic and structuring your site so that search engines such as Google know that your site is relevant to the topic. So when users search for said topic Google is more likely to recommend your site.
Off-Site SEO: Where On-site SEO is about telling Google what your site is about, Off-site SEO is essentially telling Google what others think of your site. A metric used with off-site SEO is domain authority; it is a rating that shows the likelihood your site will be recommended by Google. So the goal of off-site SEO is to get a higher rating then your competitors so Google recommends your site over theirs.
Off-site SEO strategies are a lot more complicated and involve link building, Google Search Console Registration, Brand mentions and influencer marketing. Off-site SEO is much more challenging and requires an ongoing strategy.
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SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
It is very common to get Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) confused. After reading this section, you will never mistake the two again.
As previously mentioned Search Engine Optimisation refers to improving “organic” results and performance, organic meaning unpaid. To get results with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) you have to pay, and often this is determined by Cost-Per-Click (CPC).
The benefit of effective Search Engine Marketing (through tools such as Google Ads) is that it places a small sponsored ad at the top of the search engine results page for keywords you want to rank well in. On the other hand, organic results get a much larger click through rate (CTR) than paid ads. This is why it is important to utilise both Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation.
SMM (Social Media Marketing)
Compared to SEO and SEM Social Media Marketing (SMM) differs the most. Social media marketing tends to align with the top of the sales funnel, i.e. Raising awareness.
People often don’t understand where social media marketing falls into the sales funnel and you will often hear people saying their promoted posts never work or don’t generate a worthy ROI (Return on Investment). Whilst social media may in some cases be used to get sales, it should primarily be used for brand awareness and trying to encourage traffic to your website.
Promoted posts are effective for getting your brand in front of a large audience, so whilst it may not generate as many sales as you might expect. It puts your brand in the consumer’s decision making process.
TIP: You should link most of your social media posts to your website, as shares and engagement drive more traffic to your site and overall help to improve Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Which one is the most important?
Whilst SEO, SMM and SEM all serve different functions the end objectives are the same. These objectives are to increase brand awareness, drive more traffic to your site, generate leads and increase sales.
There is no conclusion on which one is the most important, as they all serve slightly different functions. However, to develop a strong digital marketing strategy and achieve great results you need to use all three in conjunction with one another.
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