SEM vs. SEO: The Landing Page Difference

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Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are not created equal, for a lot of reasons.  At a very basic level, search engine marketing involves click costs while search engine optimization works through free “organic” traffic.  Those two facts are the basis of a popular myth: that it’s a lot easier to get good return on investment (ROI) through SEO than it is to get the same ROI through SEM.

There are several reasons why that myth simply isn’t true, but today we’ll deal with just one: the landing page difference.

In SEM, you decide the landing page your visitors see whereas in SEO, a search engine spider decides on what landing page your visitors will see.  That’s a huge difference in control, and that difference makes all the difference in the world.

Searchers, after all, are impatient people with itchy back-button fingers; if they come to a site and don’t find what they’re looking for right away, they’ll return to the search engine results page and click on your competitors’ links in a matter of seconds!  That’s a scary thought for people who rely solely on SEO campaigns.  We live in a fast-paced world of instant gratification.  The less work one has to do, the better. 

So if your landing page is optimized for the keywords the searchers choose, and the ad copy the searchers see, then you’re able to tell a new visitor, right away, that s/he’s come to the right place.  And no matter how great your site is, that’s a message that visitors need to hear.  People don’t just want to see a good landing page: They want to see a relevant landing page.  There’s nothing more annoying than doing a search and getting results that have nothing to do with what you’re looking for.  It kind of makes you wonder.   

But only a good SEM firm can optimize your landing page.  A search spider won’t do it.

In both SEO and SEM, you only hit ROI if your searchers convert.  An SEM firm might require a higher initial investment than an SEO firm does (because SEM requires the management cost plus the PPC cost, while SEO only costs the price of management alone)—but you’re also likely to get better conversions through SEM.  That’s because you’re likely to get better landing pages through SEM, and it’s only conversions that will get you ROI.

Am I saying that getting the best SEO possible isn’t worthwhile?  Absolutely not.  (In fact, if you’d like some good advice on how to choose a good SEO provider, you may wish to click here.)  Top-ranking organic results are like front-page newspaper stories: you may not be able to control everything your market sees, but it can still make your brand look great.  Plus, the more real estate you take up in the search engine results page, the better: if searchers don’t click on your search ad, they can still get to your site through the organic link.

So good SEO is definitely vital to strong internet marketing.  But saying that SEO will get better ROI than SEM—simply because organic traffic is free—ignores the most important element of SEM: control, and it’s control that makes all the difference between merely getting traffic, or getting traffic that converts.  And that makes a huge difference when it comes to ROI.