You may have come across Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) while planning your business marketing strategies. SEM and SEO are two different components of online marketing. They include different actions but have the same goal.
Can you use both SEO and SEM in your marketing strategy? Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses. You can use them together to create a more efficient marketing strategy with better impact.
How can SEO and SEM work together? Are they even complementary to each other? Read on to know why and how you can use them together.
SEO enables your website and webpages to rank higher in the SERP (Search Engine Page Results). This process improves your website’s visibility through different methods.
The traffic to your website increases significantly with good SEO. Along with it, the quality of the traffic also rises. SEO brings in organic results, which means it is unpaid.
SEM is paid search marketing or paid advertising. You can purchase ads on various search engines to gain traffic to your website.
It is sometimes called Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Click (CPC) marketing. You need to pay when a user clicks on your ads. The ads target a few keywords. They appear whenever users search for these keywords.
While SEM and SEO are different, they closely relate to each other in the following ways.
Both SEM and SEO have a primary focus on keywords. Users search the web using keywords to get their information. The results they get are optimized according to the keywords.
Your webpages must have good SEO optimization. It makes them rank higher in the organic SERP whenever users use specific keywords.
The same goes for SEM as well. You have to target your ads and links that you sponsor according to the relevant keywords. Your ads will appear in the paid area on the SERP, above the organic or unpaid results.
In this way, both SEM and SEO utilize keywords to generate traffic to a website or webpage. Through keywords, users find their information among organic results through SEO. Otherwise, they find it among paid results through SEM.
Both SEM and SEO share the same goal: to drive higher traffic to your webpage or website. The two methods aim to increase not only the traffic’s volume but also its quality. Ultimately, their target is to get high conversion rates.
When it comes to the effectiveness of these goals, both SEM and SEO are efficient. It is mostly because of their active response to keywords.
The difference is the effort and time taken by both to achieve these goals. However, this works well for your business.
You need the traffic to your website for both the long term and short term. SEO takes a long time to bring traffic, but it brings quality traffic. Meanwhile, SEM brings traffic faster.
You can use SEM as a tool for the short term and SEO for the long term.
You can utilize both SEM and SEO together in your online marketing strategy in the following ways.
SEM and SEO work well together. You have to find the right way to do this for the best results. One of them fills the gaps that are left by the other.
In this way, you can cover both paid and organic search results. You get an all-rounded strategy to reach your goals.
While planning your SEO strategies, make sure to complement them with your SEM strategies. Do the same for the other way around as well.
You can measure your results with a tracking system. It shows you the number of clicks you receive for both organic and paid results.
With this analysis, you can optimize your webpages for better results.
SEM has an analytics program that shows the conversion rates through your keywords. It lets you know the most effective keywords.
Make sure to check the bounce rate and session duration in your analytics. It lets you find out which keywords are not working out for you. You can avoid using them.
You can now use the most effective keywords in your SEO strategy. With the inclusion of these keywords, optimize your website and web pages. It helps you to rank higher in organic search results.
The same keywords can be used in your SEM strategy as well. It allows you to rank higher in the paid search results.
Make sure not to stuff your website with too many keywords. Too many irrelevant keywords can make Google penalize you.
If you use both SEO and SEM in your marketing strategy, your business will appear on both organic and paid results. In this way, your brand becomes familiar with the users. People tend to trust the bands that they are familiar with.
This high visibility will generate higher brand awareness. Moreover, it boosts the credibility of your brand!
When your brand features on the same page at both paid and organic results, the clicks increase for both.
If users are unfamiliar with your brand, they may not engage with it. There is a better chance that they will do so if they see you twice on the same results page.
In this way, your business gets a wider audience reach. With improved trust levels, your conversion rates will also significantly increase.
Both SEM and SEO are good methods on their own. You can, however, use both SEM and SEO together for a more efficient online marketing strategy. In this way, you get higher and consistent traffic.
You now know how they both relate to each other. By using the strategies mentioned you can use both SEM and SEO to complement each other. It will lead to a high conversion rate and bring you closer to your goals!
