Both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) play a crucial role in driving traffic to your website. Both come with distinct strategies, benefits and, of course, compliance rules.
Before we begin, let's first define both marketing channels.
SEO focuses on the non-paid, organic traffic growth you can earn from search engines.
SEM involves paying for ads on search results. In both cases you need to adhere to the guidelines in order to ensure you'll continue getting traffic from search engines.
What is SEO Compliance?
SEO Compliance refers to following Google, Bing, or any other dominant search engine's guidelines so that your organic search promotional activities are all above board or in alignment with their policies. The benefit of doing this is that you will not suddenly lose traffic or get algorithmically penalized for doing an activity that is against their guidelines. In other words, this means that you are following the rules set in place by the search engine.
These guiding rules the search engines set are designed to ensure that your organic search promotional activities are legitimate, ethical, safe, and free from spam.
The benefits of complying with each search engine's policies are that you will avoid the risk of getting algorithmic penalties and manual actions and avoid the risk of losing your search engine traffic altogether. In essence, complying with SEO standards means you're following the ethical and sustainable strategies that will allow you to grow your traffic levels from the organic search results.
What is SEO Compliance?
SEM compliance, on the other hand, refers to the advertising policies established by search engine platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. These ad platforms also have strict regulations concerning your ad's content, targeting, and landing page quality. By disregarding these policies, your ads could be disapproved, and your account could even be suspended. To ensure your ads continue to run, you need to adhere to the policies that each platform sets in place.The benefit of SEM compliance is crystal clear. You get your ads approved, and they show without any issues.
There is also one aspect of SEM compliance that often gets overlooked. It's search marketing brand protection. This refers to the monitoring and active process of safeguarding a brand's reputation and intellectual property online, particularly in search ads. Ultimately, search marketing brand protection prevents the misuse and infringement of your brand's name in search ads as competitors, bad actors, and counterfeiters try to bid on your brand's name.
BrandVerity helps with search marketing by providing paid search monitoring and sem compliance tools. These tools will help you identify and address trademark infringements, monitor affiliate activity, and protect your brand's reputation online. Contact us to learn more.