SEO & SEM What's The Difference?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing). What is the difference and which of the two is the best strategy to employ for your Real Estate Office? In this article we will look at the pros of
both strategies.

SEO is best described as the process of generating traffic to your real estate web site by increasing the ranking in the free (organic) results of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It involves On-Site Optimisation and Off-Site Optimisation. Let’s take a quick look at both of these:

• On-Site Optimization
  
  Making changes to the HTML code on the pages of your web site to:
• Improve Keyword relevancy
• Increase Page loading times – How long does it take for your site to open up in a browser?
• Basically, making your website easy to read for the search engines
  
  
• Off-Site Optimization.
  
  Getting back-links from other relevant sites, using key words (anchor text) in the links. Relevancy is of major importance here. Back links should come from sites that are relevant to Real Estate, Your local area or your business.

SEM is best described as the process of generating traffic to your site through paid advertising spots on Search Engines. This could be through paid inclusion in relevant directories or PPC (Pay per Click) campaigns on search engines like Google Adwords.

Both strategies can offer value and ROI however, SEO is generally looked at as a long term strategy to increase ranking where as SEM can have an immediate impact.