SEO,
SEM,
PPC.
What’s the difference? Well there’s a clear
difference in SEO and PPC but what exactly is
SEM?
A lot of people use this term interchangeably
but many use it to refer specifically to pay-per-click search marketing.
You’ll see a lot of people refer to SEO/
SEM as if they are two sides of the same coin but
they are not – at least not exactly.
SEM really
encompasses all the different facets or pillars of search engine marketing – after
all, that is what SEM stands for,
right? Regardless of which search engine
you use – onsite, web search (e.g. Google
and Yahoo!) or a vertical search engines
like Business.com, Travelocity or Balihoo.
And then there is the added complexity of organic search results and
sponsored search results within web search.
But regardless of the engine or the type of referral, you’re still
marketing your business or web site using a search engine so it’s all search
engine marketing.
I often struggle with the semantics of search engine
marketing not only in the industry but internally at HP (and I’ve been guilty
of it myself I’m sure) because in addition to using SEM
to identify pay-per-click search marketing, people also tend to refer to their
focus of search engine marketing as just “search”. I’ll get a news letter from the on-site
search team highlighting the latest improvements in “search” and then I’ll get
invited to a cross-company “search” meeting held by the PPC search team focused
on PPC search. Like I said, I know I’ve
been guilty of it myself – it’s just too easy to think of and refer to your
search realm – whichever pillar it is – as “search”.
It would behoove us all though to be more specific because
so many non-search-savvy marketers and business people are easily confused by
the broad usage of the term “search”. People
often forward me articles about “search studies” that are specific to on-site
search or pay-per-click search or they’ll ask me a question about how much it
costs to “buy the word computer on Google” which is clearly a pay-per-click
tactic (I love that they want to “buy” it though). But what they don’t realize is that I focus
on SEO – not “search” over all and sometimes have a hard time understanding the
difference between the different types of search. So I’m making my best effort to help educate
my colleagues who are new to search and to differentiate whenever I can to say
“SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization”
or even sometimes “external search”.
I work closely with the managers of our HP.com on-site search engine and pay-per-click
search so they’ve already heard my request that we all be more specific when
referring to our respective programs.
But in an effort to differentiate these facets of search to those who
don’t live and breathe some variation of search engine marketing, I’d like to provide
more insight into what each of us does.
First, I’ll introduce the managers of the other two pillars
of search at HP:
Laura Dansbury manages the on-site, HP.com global search
experience.
Ryan Drey manages the global pay-per-click search effort.
Starting next week I’m going to interview various colleagues
at HP within my blog. Check back next
week for the first Interview with Laura Dansbury, HP.com’s on-site search
manager.
These interviews should demonstrate areas of complement
between them - there are many (although there seems to be more talk about the synergies
between PPC and SEO) - and give some insight into how we integrate the
various search engine marketing efforts in such a complex, global organization.
Posted
07-13-2007 9:16 PM
by
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