As per Forbes and Linkedin, SEM and SEO are the most important skills for 2018. Almost everyone is acquainted that Digital Marketing, SEO and SEM are the most important components. Both SEO and SEM can be the confusing concepts to understand. In fact it is hard to understand if there is some difference between them. Both these terms are used interchangeably which ultimately make matters even worse. So, it is important to have understanding between two terms and the fact that they are different.
The Basic Definition of SEO and SEM are:
- SEO states the task of increasing the number of website visitors while getting the site to appear higher on results returned by the search engine.
- SEM is said to be the internet marketing that increase a website’s visibility through the organic search engine results and advertising.
- SEM includes SEO and many other search marketing tactics.
Since SEO and SEM both play a key role in a campaign, it is important to understand how they are beneficial to us.
Benefit 1: Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the key parts of search based marketing. It hardly matters if it is SEM or SEO. All the online campaigns start with some kind of keyword research. Search engine marketing is totally based on displaying the moment searchers look for a solution. And that search is completely based on a keyword.
The paid advertising use keywords in order to create ad groups and campaigns, and organic marketing use keywords in order to optimize the web-pages and then create content based campaigns. Both the marketing channels rely on the premise of displaying a particular keyword, topic or the phrase when a person use search engine to find out a solution.
Benefit 2: Increase Performance and Speed of SEO
So, what is the advantage of having both SEO and SEM campaign running at the similar time. We have completely established the importance of the keyword research for both types of campaigns, and because of the crucial nature of keywords, choosing the perfect keywords are very important. Paid advertising campaign may help you in selecting high converting keywords for search engine optimization campaigns faster than if you had SEO campaign only.
When you go with PPC, you not only get instant traffic to your web portal, but you get more valuable insights on what type of keywords perform well. With paid advertising campaign, you may have paid for the competitive keyword and get the feel for the value of that specific keyword in few weeks or days. On the other hand, for a search engine optimization campaign, it may take a lot of months to get the same information for competitive keywords. The difference is if you find some keyword is not valuable or performing in your paid advertising campaign, you could test a new keyword instantly. And when it is about SEO campaign, you may have spent around six months in optimizing and creating the content around keyword to find out something that doesn’t convert or is not worth the efforts to rank.
Search engine marketing can actually help in preventing such a wasted effort, if both SEO and SEM work together it may have a synergetic effect on your campaign performance and speed at which you see the favorable results.
Benefit 3: Increased Authority and Visibility
I would state it here with an instance. My first visit to Café Coffee Day happened on the basis of flawed logic that Coffee there must be good as they are on every corner. Since I am not an avid coffee drinker, I’ve paid a visit to Café Coffee Day time to time over last few years. So, I can see that I have become a lifelong consumer because of their visibility.
Ofcourse search engines are not the streets or avenues, the flawed logic left the same effect when competing for online space. On search engine page, there is a confined space, very few spots for the paid ads, few organic results and based on the search, there may be little space for local results. Advertising with SEO and SEM offers you the capability to show up in both organic and paid real estate. This is something which enhances the visibility, add credibility to it and offer you the authority on web. It is nowhere less equal to Café Coffee Day on every corner.
Benefit 4: Depending on a Single Marketing Channel is Risky
SEO and SEM go well together. If you have established website and thousands of visitors coming to your website in a month, SEM may not be important. But even in that situation, if you have a marketing channel which is working extremely well, it is really risky to become completely dependent on that specific channel mainly, when you are not in control of Search engine which is permitting your website to show up. So, in such a situation, an SEO program which is really working properly may want to scale
SEO and SEM work well together. If you have a very established website and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to your website a month, SEM may not be necessary. But even in that case, if you have a marketing channel that is working extremely well, it’s risky to become 100% dependent on that channel. Sp, in such a case of SEO program which is working really well you may wish to scale back your SEO campaign or even state testing page social channels.