SEO and SEM might seem like alphabet soup, but they’re actually two distinct approaches to boosting your website’s visibility on search engine result pages. While they’re often lumped together, they’re not the same thing.
Think of SEM as the umbrella term that covers everything, including SEO. Some folks say SEM is all about paid ads on search engines, but it’s evolving to include more than that. Nowadays, SEM is the full package—it combines SEO with paid advertising strategies like Google AdWords and Bing Ads to maximize your online presence.
In a nutshell, SEM is your one-stop-shop for getting noticed online, pulling in both paid and organic traffic to your site.