On the search engine results page we have two types of results: sponsored links or ads and organic or natural results , therefore, this makes us also talk about two types of web positioning for each type of result: search engine marketing or SEM ( for Search Engine Marketing ) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) .
SEO
The Natural or organic positioning refers to the set of techniques that offer websites in search engines to improve your viewing pages in search engines. Therefore, the purpose of this type of positioning is to make web pages appear in privileged positions in the results returned by search engines in a natural way with the use of certain keywords. For instance, a company selling Damascus steel chef knife want to find targeted audience who are looking for Damascus knives. SEO strategy would be a great way to optimize the effectiveness of digital marketing techniques
Search engines like Google handle a criterion that ranges from the popularity of the web page, content, loading speed, to technical issues, and based on these parameters it decides which pages will occupy the first positions.
The natural positioning or SEO has to be worked following the parameters on which the search engines are based, and from that, optimizing the website completely, from the structure of the site and its content to the web design, all are aspects very important that should not be overlooked. For this, a variety of technical factors are put into practice that will increase the notoriety of a web page gradually over time.
SEM
The search engine marketing or positioning using sponsored links refers to the type of position that by paying advertising, a website located in the top positions of search results. A website is promoted through sponsored links by paying the search engine so that the website appears in the first positions but in the form of an advertisement .
As the name suggests, search engine marketing is a variant of Internet marketing, and it promotes the services or products that a website offers when a search is generated.
The results of this type of positioning, in general, are much faster than those obtained with natural positioning (SEO), but they are not permanent over time because it is a paid service. In many cases, both types of positioning are used at the same time, in a joint strategy to position the page quickly. The SEM will achieve a privileged position in a short time, while it is working on the natural positioning to ensure that once the payment for advertising is settled, the position continues in the first places of the search engine results.
SEO vs SEM
Both organic positioning (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) have the same objective in common, and it is to place a website in the best positions of the search engine results in order to capture as many visits as possible, but each uses different tools to achieve this end.
In the case of SEO, its approach is to position a website following certain criteria used by search engines such as Google, which have to do with the quality of the content and any other characteristic that benefits the user. SEM, on the other hand, is based on the creation of quick and clear announcements for potential prospects. SEO is a process that requires a great investment of time and effort, which is why web positioning techniques are usually used for long-term results but that last over time, unlike SEM, which is used to obtain faster results and immediately although limited in time.
Both positioning techniques are ideal to achieve positioning of a web page, therefore, experts in this area recommend combining them and taking advantage of the great potential they offer so that a website receives more traffic from both natural results and sponsored links.