What is the difference between SEO and SEM ?

[rajkumar12]

What is the difference between SEO and SEM ?

[jaysh4922]

SEO, it is the process to get your website in any search engine without paid links.
SEM, it is the process for submitting links of your website on paid websites.

[RichardSmith]

Hello Friends,

Search engine optimization or SEO refers to improving a web sites' natural and organic ranking in the search engine results page. This more affordable method is often slow and new web sites may take up to a year to achieve decent rankings in Google. SEO is the method to achieving high rankings on search engine. SEO (Search engine optimization) is the technique that makes you your client site's page-rank up on Google's search page. Search engines find the pages easily and index them. The goal is to have a page rank as high up on the results list as possible, or be on the first results page, or at the very least on the second results page. Search engine optimization (SEO) includes the choice of keywords used in the text paragraphs and the placement of those words on the page, both visible and hidden inside meta tags.

Search engine marketing or SEM, refers mainly to the text advertisements which appear at the top or on the right hand side of search engine results pages. These advertising links are purchased mainly from Google (AdWords) and Yahoo (Overture). They then in turn publish these ads on their secondary ad network as well. SEM (search engine marketing) is often used to describe acts associated with researching, submitting and positioning a website within search engines to achieve maximum exposure of your website. SEM includes things such as search engine optimization, paid listings and other search-engine related services and functions that will increase exposure and traffic to your website.

[semaphore.v]

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it refers to the process of increasing your website’s search engine ranking for a specific keyword or set of keywords. Said another way, search engines look for specific things on and off of your website that determines whether or not it’s relevant for a specific query, and SEO is the goal of doing those things.

Search engine marketing is the strategy to increase your traffic and sales through the search engine channel. Search engine marketing includes the tactic SEO and the tactic Paid Search. Paid Search refers to those “sponsored” advertisements you see at the top and right side of Google, Bing, and the rest. Businesses are in a bidding war for every click that drives them to their website. The more relevant your website landing page to the query and the more you pay, the higher you’ll appear on the search engine results page (SERP).

[pwhrita]

SEM or Search engine marketing, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

and

SEO or Search engine optimization, is the process of improving ranking in search engine results, via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.