SEO vs SEM: Which Is Better for eCommerce Businesses in Nigeria?

• By Crea8Host
• In Blog
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SEO as well as SEM are terms that are being used frequently on the web nowadays so it good to get acquainted with it. Any Nigerian business or startup in the Nigerian eCommerce landscape needs to know which best suit their business.

SEO refers to Search Engine Optimisation whilst SEM refers to Search Engine Marketing

This article would highlight difference and which fits best to your business

What Is SEO?
Activities you undertake on your website, such as maintaining a certain keyword density such as Web Hosting Nigeria or Domain Registration in Nigeria, or on other websites, such as link building, with the intention of ranking higher on search engine results pages, is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

What Is SEM?
Paying search engines to send qualified traffic your way, probably using a pay-per-click mechanism, is Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Which One Is Better for eCommerce Businesses in Nigeria?
There is no one convincingly answer to this question as it is a function of requirements, goals of the business owner.

SEO Is Better for eCommerce Because…

1. you expend resources once, and reap benefits forever.
2. once you achieve success in your SEO, it is a formidable competitive advantage that is not easy to replicate in a short period.
3. ecommerce websites tend to have inherently poor SEO. As a result, even a little effort can bear substantial fruit.
4. users, who can distinguish between organic results and ads, tend to find organic results more credible.
5. it is expected that in the long run, the cost per visitor will be a small fraction of what you will end up paying for SEM campaigns.
6. in some verticals, SEM spends have turned prohibitively expensive.

SEM Is Better for eCommerce Because…

1. SEM campaigns start yielding results instantly, while SEO can take months.
2. you know exactly what you are paying for, and you are able to measure the return on investment (RoI).
3. your SEM spend won’t suddenly be worth zero when search engines such as Google tweak their algorithm
4. once you hit the winning formula, you can keep scaling up your SEM strategy with great ease.
5. most ecommerce businesses observe that, on a per visitor basis, PPC traffic converts better than organic search traffic.
6. you get to control how your brand name and other attributes are treated.

The pros and cons that are brought out by the above lists are compelling. Clearly ecommerce businesses in Nigerias cannot entirely overlook either SEO or SEM. Here are some conclusions you can draw:

1. If your ecommerce website is new, you can’t wait for SEO success to kick in. Consequently, most of your resources, say 90%, should be spent on SEM exercises, and the remaining 10% on SEO.
2. As time progresses, and you find some SEO success, you can gradually increase the allocation of resources to SEO.
3. Given that there will always be something you want to promote “right now,” you will need to lean on paid traffic forever. In the long run, you can hope to stabilize at a 50-50 spend on SEO and SEM activities.

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