SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the umbrella term for all marketing activities aimed at acquiring traffic from search engines. It also includes SEO, but in common usage today it mostly refers to paid search advertising (PPC).
SEM consists of two main branches:
- SEO: Efforts to rank higher in organic (unpaid) search results.
- PPC (Pay-Per-Click): Search ads that operate on a pay-per-click model (Google Ads, Bing Ads).
A good SEM strategy calculates which keywords are more efficient to compete for with SEO and which are better targeted with ads. For keywords with high commercial intent but strong competition, ads are often the right choice, while content (SEO) is generally the better option for informational keywords.
Tip: Do not think of paid and organic channels in isolation. In SEM reporting, if the click-through rates of both channels are compared for the same keyword, budget allocation can be made much more effectively.