Difference between SEO and SEM

[webmasterworld3]

Hello,


What is the bigger difference between SEO and SEM.

Thanks

[quicklockworks]

SEO= Search Engine Optimization- optimizing your online presence (on your website and others) to rank higher in natural (unpaid) search results with the goal of attracting visitors to your website without paying for the visibility on the search engine.

SEM= Search Engine Marketing- Umbrella term that Includes SEO and other paid methods of gaining exposure on search engines and their network of affiliate websites (pay per click, etc.)

[cobo_836]

SEO is part of belonging to the SEM, SEM includes SEO.
SEO to keyword ranking, website traffic, website structure, search engine pages will include the data;
SEM through SEO techniques based on extended to the commercial value of the search engine, planning effective network marketing program.

[robert1231]

seo is manual optimization n sem is a paid service bt it cums under seo only..

[paulpreston]

SEO an SEM are both types of web marketing but SEM is paid marketing as compare to SEO.

[anshulniet]

seo is defined as the process of building pages in a manner which enables the pages to rank highly in 'algorithmically' determined search results which displayed on the left hand side of the page.
sem refer to short text advertisement which generally appear at the top or down the right hand side of the search engine results.

[nptifitness]

Difference between SEO and SEM
SEO is aimed at continuously refining the website in order to get friendly with both the search engine indexing algorithms as well as the user, thereby driving traffic to the site.
SEM on the other hand is aimed purely at marketing and advertising the business represented by the website, and has nothing to do with the rankings or the contents of the website.
SEO is purely organic in nature in the sense the results are slow, consistent and quite hard to achieve and maintain.
SEM mostly comprises paid marketing services to get the required impact.
Tons of relevant, unique and keyword-rich content with appropriate titles, tags, links and images is the backbone of SEO.
SEM is hardly worried about the content. Lesser the content, just a few fields to capture the details for a subscription or registration and the job is done.

[Mattsaff]

SEO means:- Search Engine Optimization - Optimize website on search engines. Increase ranking of website on SERP.
SEM means:- Search Engine Marketing - Promote your website on through paid service. Like: Google adwords PPC.

[nptifitness]

seo means search engine optimization.
sem means sedach engine marketting
SEO, on the other hand, is simply a subset of SEM.
SEM is the all-encompassing broad phrase that includes SEO as well as paid search activities such as Google AdWords purchases.

[davidjohnson]

SEO == Search Engine Optimization which means increase traffic visibility for a website On Search engine.

SEM == Search Engine Marketing which means increase traffic visibility for a website On Search engine (Paid service like PPC).

[rajivwebads]

While some people use SEO and SEM interchangeably, SEO (search engine optimization) is actually a part of SEM (search engine marketing).

SEO refers to the process of using on and off page factors (typically free) to get your web pages ranked for your chosen keywords in order to get more search engine traffic to your sites. SEM takes it a step further to include using paid search engine listings and paid inclusion to get more traffic to your websites.

[kingsweb]

Major difference between these two methods of getting traffic is this:

SEO is more a mid and long term solution with long lasting results while SEM usually provides fast results that stay as long as you pay for the service.

[petguru]

SEO is all about link building. Where as SEM is about social media marketing through face book twitter, linked in , Stumble upon etc etc...