Too often I encounter customers, prospects and so-called "Search Marketing Professionals" who actually believe that "paid search listings," commonly called SEM and organic search listings, commonly called SEO, are the same thing. They lump them together and decide that a person with a Search Engine Optimization skill-set should therefore be good at managing their paid search efforts, or vice-versa. Because they both take place on a search engine? Maybe, but that's where the similarities end.

Managing and getting the most out of paid search listings require a specific set of skills, knowledge, financial and other commitment. Getting your site listed "for free" in a search engine's "natural" or "organic" listings requires another, sometimes similar but much different set of skills knowledge and commitment from the client.

The type of consumer or prospect ---his or her attitude and expectation--- that clicks on a paid search listing will usually be entirely different from that of the user who clicks on the organic listing. If anyone tells you the are the same, they don't what they are talking about .