Both are valuable and both are part of your web presence. In this series we will define what they are, how they can help, and how to utilize them.

Search Engine Optimization is defined as all the things you can do on your site, and for your site to make it more appealing and indexable by Search engines (google, yahoo, bing, etc.). For our purposes we will use Google in referencing search engines, since it is by far the most prominent and widely used (boasting over 2-3 billion searches a day)

Search Engine Marketing traffic that you pay for and control directly. This is essentially purchasing a link to your site, and then controlling exactly who sees it. You can specify your purchased ad to appear for people who search for something specific. For example, if you sell shelves, you can specify that your ad will appear on googles paid listing when people type in “cabinet shelves chattanooga” or “closet shelves tennessee”.

Below are graphics depicting paid listings and regular or “organic” listings.

Some people say that SEO encompasses SEM and some will argue the opposite. They are both valuable to your overall web presence though.