What Is The Difference Between SEO and SEM?
The main difference between SEO and SEM is this: SEO is free and relies on organic search strategies, while SEM comes with a cost and relies on paid advertising. Additionally, SEO takes time to take effect, while SEM is instant.
Put another way: Google’s search results are divided into two main categories: the paid search results and the organic search results.
The goal of SEO is to rank your website in the organic search results.
You can also get your website in the paid area of the search results via pay per click (PPC).
SEO is where you focus 100% on ranking in the organic results. SEM is when you tap into both SEO and PPC in order to get traffic from search engines.
So yeah, SEM is a broad term that includes SEO and PPC. This means that SEO falls “under” the umbrella category of SEM.