SEO, SEM, … SEA?
What should be the proper nomenclature for advertising on search engines? Corollary: what does Search Engine Marketing mean? I am personally in favor of a semi-concerted effort among those of us who practice search engine advertising to call it that (SEA), not search engine marketing (SEM).
Just as marketing is much broader than advertising, search engine marketing (SEM) has historically been and should, in my opinion, be a broad term covering various disciplines like search engine advertising and SEO. Initially this seemed to be the usage promulgated by practitioners, but lately it seems to me that the media and online marketing neophytes have latched onto the idea that SEM refers specifically to advertising programs like AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, and MSN adCenter.
What are your thoughts?
Pick a feed
May 5th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
On the lighter side: In the spirit of XML, maybe we should agree on a universal namespace for search engine practices and call it SEX.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:47 am
I’ve just read that SEO = SEM + SEA, is it correct ?
February 18th, 2010 at 11:26 am
SEM = SEO + SEA
Marketing is the umbrella term to for optimization and advertising, just like traditional marketing often includes strategy, advertising, branding, etc.