SEO is a very tedious and time consuming process while SEM is direct. SEM also cost a lot of money and if done wrong, it could be costly. SEO whereas can be done for free if you have the knack for it, and do it yourself. SEO professionals of course charge a good amount as Fee, which is well worth it. But it was always thought that SEM was a sureshot way of attracting targetted customers to your website, which is true in a way, and BIG websites always did a combination of SEO and SEM. For small webmasters, however SEO was the life-line, still is. SEM is a costly and risky strategy that small webmasters usually refrain from. Well good news for the SEO enthusiasts... A research study has shown that SEM is ONLY slightly better than SEO.. Yipee... http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/361738/seo-as-effective-as-paid-search-study-says.html Forget adwords for now. Concentrate on building Links.. All else remaining same, it is the links that will bring you top dollars!!
For me SEO is a part of SEM/Online Marketing. A good online marketing mix should include as many traffic sources as possible.
I feel there is no comparison between the two. Each one is having it's own specialization and having different methodologies and techniques. When we speak about people who have specialized in their own field, we should not compare, who is better. All largly depends upon the requirement of the website owner how fast he is expecting the results and what his advertising budget is. For me these two are 2 different services
I agree with Matt they should be merged together however I see them as two completely different things SEO = traffic basically SEM = ROI!!! $)
I think you're confusing SEM for PPC marketing. SEM is EVERYTHING that encompasses making money from search engines and converting traffic. That article talks about converting PPC visitors and organic visitors into a conversion. Anyway, I always tell clients to do both. Search users click everywhere on a SERP listing, so making sure you have your site listed everywhere possible is going to benefit them the most.
Not at all. I can understand what you are trying to say. It is more like Marketing encompassing the whole gamut of activity from Product development to Advertising to distribution. And I do agree that SEO is a part of SEM, But when we say SEM, what most reputed SEM companies do is consult for an affective PPC campaign using mostly the long tail of keywords and phrases. And my point of discussion was that, even for those webmasters who completely rely on SEO, it is just as good as spending on SEM. Whether you are good in keyword research or not, it is going to have some cost, where SEO need not incur any cost .