A wide array of newbie digital marketers will mix up these three terms mentioned here. Sometimes they use all the three terms SEO, SEM, and PPC interchangeably. However, that should not be the case.
Yes, there is one thing common between all three terms. Different brands and digital marketers use them to increase online presence, visibility, and brand recognition so that websites and social media profiles can get more traffic.
Now that being said, there are a lot of differences between these three terms. In this blog today, we are going to clear all the differences between SEM, SEO, and PPC used for industrial manufacturing.
What is SEO (Search Engine Marketing)?
Search Engine Optimization includes the collection of actions that brands and digital marketers take to increase the traffic of a website organically. In simple terms, they do not have to pay anything to the search engine to get traffic.
There are different types of SEO. These include on-page optimization, off-page optimization, local SEO, use of strong links and backlinks, and more. However, all the major search engines work on algorithms. They are updated periodically. Therefore, the SEO strategies have to be updated from time to time according to the change in algorithms.
What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)?
Search Engine Marketing includes the actions that increase the online presence of a brand through paid methods. At present, Yahoo, Google, and Bing are the three most popular search engines. Thus, marketers make use of paid promotional methods to make sure that the website gets the necessary mileage in the digital world.
A lot of digital marketing experts have the opinion that SEM includes both organic and paid methods to increase online presence and get a website ranked. This is why it is an umbrella term that includes both SEO and PPC.
What is PPC (pay per click)?
This is simply a paid method to promote a website. In this method, the brands pay the search engines to get traffic. In the PPC services method, the brands place the ads on the search engine results page. Now, every time there is a click on the ads, the advertiser pays the search engine.
This is special because the search engines run PPC campaigns on real-time bidding. Since the advertising inventory is limited, the advertisers have to bid like it is a private auction. However, this is an automated process where the search engines use a formula to gauge the price and advertisers pay up a fee for every click.
PPC ads are mostly the banners that you see on the corners of a window or at the first of the search engine results page. They are marked as ads or sponsored results. There are a lot of websites as well that offer PPC opportunities. There are different forms of PPC ads but search, display, and remarketing ads are the most used ones.
PPC is easier to set up than SEO but it guarantees only visibility. Also, you will have lesser control over the type of traffic it draws.
Some Industrial SEO examples
-
Air Innovations gets a featured snippet along with a strong SEO strategy
Air Innovations is one of the most popular manufacturers of environmental control systems. They have almost 2000 sessions on their website. The company needed a plan to increase organic traffic. They also needed an ongoing SEO strategy depending on the keyword research along with a content plan that is focused on diversification of content. With blogs including long-tail keywords and supporting backlinks, Air Innovations saw results with increasing website ranks and a ‘featured snippet’ on Google.
-
Triad Magnetics attains a website analysis for increasing
Triad Magnetics is a manufacturer of multiple electronic products like inductors, transformers, high-frequency magnetics, and power supplies. Initially, they saw little growth in website metrics and they realized it was a time for website redesigning. Also, they were looking to increase page views and site speed as well.
Google rewards the website that produces long content and is updated on a daily basis. With a newly designed website, Triad Magnetics got increased traffic, a well-sorted product catalog that helped in lead generation and conversion.
Reach out to more buyers with digital marketing campaigns
Just like any other business, marketing for industrial manufacturing companies needs careful planning and experiments, especially when it is starting out. It is important to remember that digital marketing doesn’t just involve quick fixes to increase online visibility. The lead generation and buying process of industrial sectors are a bit complicated. Thus, to reach out to your audience at all stages, you have to be where your audience is.
If the end goal is to simply boost visibility and traffic, then SEO, SEM, and PPC are great. However, at the same time, you have to understand what works best for your brand. This is only possible when you have a clear understanding of the differences between SEO, SEM, and PPC. Then you will know how to use each of them separately for industrial manufacturing companies.
Three primary reasons to understand the difference in SEO, PPC, and SEM
- One of the primary reasons to understand the difference is, you or your brand will be the one putting money in the ads, promotions, and all the activities. Unless you know the difference, you won’t be able to access the data and understand the analytics. Once you understand the differences, you will know what works and what doesn’t work for your brand. Thus, when something doesn’t work out, you can figure out where the problem is and what else can be done to make things work.
- Another reason is the budget. At the beginning of the year, you will make a budget on how much you will be spending on the marketing activities and promotions of your website and brand. Just like the offline world, the online world too has a lot of marketing activities that require a lot of tools. When you know the differences, you will be able to figure out what tools you need and what methods can be used to get the best results.
- The final reason is, once you understand the differences it will help the internal team to pass on the right message to the audience. When you and your team are clear about SEO, SEM, and PPC, you will use the right method to pass your information to the outer world. If you don’t know the difference it will have negative impacts on your brand reputation and the online world.
In conclusion, it can be said that there is nothing black and white in the online world. There is no one right way to do things. You have to figure out what works for your brand and what doesn’t. That’s it. Anything that works is right and something that doesn’t is wrong.
