Digital Onion Studio

Whether you’ve just launched a new business or you’ve been tasked with growing an existing one, chances are you’re looking for ways to: a) get noticed and b) drive sales.

While websites are crucial in helping businesses generate attention and potential customers, how do people find out about your website

Online search engines should be your best friend. Especially Google!

Since most people don’t look past the first few listings on Google, you need to be within those top listings to gain traction.

In this article, check out how you can use search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) to drive more traffic and leads to your website.

 

What are SEO and SEM?

SEO and SEM are two main ways to boost your search ranking in today’s online marketplace.

SEO is focused on optimizing a website to improve its rank in organic search results, while SEM uses paid advertising to improve the search visibility of a website.

SEM is commonly found in the form of pay-per-click (PPC) ads where businesses are charged  every time a user clicks on an ad.

 

How SEO and SEM can work together for your business

When you’re faced with the daunting task of creating a digital marketing plan for your business, which one should you choose? SEO or SEM?

Spoiler alert: The answer is… both.

Let’s look at three benefits of using SEO and SEM together:

  1. See faster results

It can take some time for a new website you’re creating to become effective and authoritative. Testing copy, title tags, and meta descriptions to discover which performs better in organic search can be a time-consuming and arduous procedure. In most cases, SEO results take three to six months to appear.

By employing certain keywords, SEM enables you to instantly generate traffic to your website. Armed with metrics and insights from your SEM initiatives, you can begin playing the SEO “long-game” once your campaigns are up and running.

The approach is a little different if your website is more well-known and has strong SEO capabilities. In this case, you can make use of your SEO data to identify the more effective keywords that would help improve conversion rates for your SEM ads.

The information provided by search data on user behavior, like conversions, click-through rates, and website user activity can be used to create a stronger, more targeted SEM strategy.

Over time, websites that rank higher in organic search may not need to run as many SEM campaigns, since they have better web visibility.

  1. Power up keyword presence

Once several successful keywords are found, you’re in a good position. The ability to target the same keywords with both SEO and SEM is a great benefit.

This improves the visibility of your keywords on Google and other search engine result pages (SERPs). As a result, your website’s visibility and ranking continue to rise. This is a great sign that both your potential customers and search engines are beginning to take notice.

  1. Optimize content strategy

SEM allows you to immediately target and test key search terms. It shows you if the messaging and content have been effective to drive conversions.

This means that low-performing keywords or messaging can be dropped in favour of more successful ones, which can fast-track your SEO strategy.

Plus, high-ranking search terms and quality content get noticed by Google, which further improves your search rating.

The magic really happens when SEO and SEM are coordinated strategically to effectively boost visibility and drive conversions.

 

Is it Actually Worth it to Invest in Both SEO and SEM?

When you invest in both SEO and SEM, you’ll create a more aligned and effective digital marketing strategy.

Get excited! This potent pair can definitely move you ahead in this race.

Did you find this article helpful? If you did, please like and share and give this article a thumbs up