What is the difference between SEO, SEM, and SEA positioning?

What is the difference between SEO, SEM, and SEA positioning?

Recognize the difference between SEO, SEA, and SEM positioning to apply them correctly in your digital marketing strategy.

SEO, SEA, and SEM are three acronyms that are used in digital marketing to position itself among the first results of search engines such as Google. Next, we will detail the meaning and operation of each of them to integrate them into a successful digital marketing strategy.

What does SEM mean?

SEM Search Engine Marketing and includes the marketing actions with the aim that the company or organization gain visibility in the pages of search engine results (SERPs).

Search engine marketing is divided into two branches: SEA (Search Engine Advertising) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Some experts in digital marketing consider that SEA is synonymous with SEM, avoiding its classification and neglecting SEO.

SEO and SEA work differently, but their purpose is the same: to make a website or organization more visible in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) to attract internet users to a website of an organization or company.

What is SEO in Digital Marketing?

The optimization of search engine SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is part of the strategies of inbound and marketing digital. Google’s algorithm finds user-friendly pages that match keywords in an organic search on the search engine. Therefore, SEO strategies seek to optimize the design of web pages to provide a solution and maximize the user experience. The objective of SEO is that the content and URLs appear in the first results of the search engines (SERP) or organic positioning between featured positions 1 to 10 and are not marked as ads.

Paid ads or SEA, experts in digital marketing do not pay the search engines when a user clicks on an organic result. Therefore, web positioning or SEO search results are associated with organic traffic to websites.

How is the organic positioning of a website determined?

The SEO positioning high or low in organic search results depends on a number of elements called “ranking factors”. Although search engines do not publicly disclose the factors their algorithms use to rank web pages, we can identify and verify some.

• Usefulness and quality of content.
• Website speed.
• Website design and ease of use.
• Keyword relevance.
• Quality backlinks.

What is SEA and how does it work?

SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising or searches engine advertising to appear in SERPs. In the case of Google, paid ads are displayed at the top and bottom of the SERPs, so the term “ad” is used to distinguish these types of search results or product sheets with a link that leads to an online store, everything ready for the user to buy the product. The paid ads on Google appear before the results of organic positioning, so it will always be the first thing the user sees.

How to create an ad on Google SEA?

The paid ads in the SERP are placed through an advertising platform. In the case of the Google search engine, the ads are created using the Google Ads platform. To set up an ad it is necessary to choose a keyword (after having done a keyword study), ad text, destination URL, budget, and offer or the maximum amount to pay per click.

How do ads work on Google SEA?

The advertiser only pays when a user clicks on the ad and the process that Google performs to display the ads is simple. Each time a user enters a search query, an auction is held to decide which paid ad will be placed first, second, and successively. The position of paid ads on Google is determined by different factors, including bid, ad copy quality, and landing page.

Do you want to know more about SEO and SEA positioning? Contact us! We are a digital and inbound marketing agency with a group of experts in SEO strategies for the organic positioning of your website. With us you will search for your company in Google and you will appear among the first two results: attracting more traffic is equal to more potential customers!