Search Engine Land

Search marketing is the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts.

Search Marketing encompasses:

1. SEO: Earning traffic through unpaid or free listings
2. SEM: Buying traffic through paid search listings
3. Originally called search engine marketing, the shorter phrase search marketing is now often used as the umbrella term over SEO and SEM. The longer phrase search engine marketing or SEM is now typically used to describe paid search activities.

Yes, we know that can be confusing but that's how things have evolved. Our article, Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?, explains the evolution in more depth.

For those who want to learn more about either SEO or SEM, see our guides below:

What Is SEM & Paid Search Marketing?

What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?

from Wikipedia

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO. SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO). SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done. A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time. SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition. Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Creating the link between SEO and PPC represents an integral part of the SEM concept. Sometimes, especially when separate teams work on SEO and PPC and the efforts are not synced, positive results of aligning their strategies can be lost. The aim of both SEO and PPC is maximizing the visibility in search and thus, their actions to achieve it should be centrally coordinated. Both teams can benefit from setting shared goals and combined metrics, evaluating data together to determine future strategy or discuss which of the tools works better to get the traffic for selected keywords in the national and local search results. Thanks to this, the search visibility can be increased along with optimizing both conversions and costs.

Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM). SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[23] Some of the latest theoretical advances include search engine marketing management (SEMM). SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO). SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO. For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor. SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

semrush.com started out in 2008 as a small group of SEO and IT specialists united by one mission — to make online competition fair and transparent, with equal opportunities for everyone.

After seven years of trailblazing experiments and constant progress, we've grown into the world's leading competitive research service for online marketing. Having traveled the path from a small startup to a big international company, we at SEMrush are still loyal to the fundamental values that got us to where we are now — adapting to change over following a strict plan and always placing individuals over processes.