It’s 2022 and people are smarter than ever. Consumers do not fall for gimmicks or click bait to buy stuff, and search engines know when a keyword has been overused. You effectively put in efforts to boost organic, unpaid, and real traffic to your website when you opt for search engine optimization. This allows your business to flourish since the traffic sent towards your money site wants to visit it and if they get what they desire, the visitors might become worthy customers. Digital businesses have taken a boom ever since pandemic set in and later then SEO has become even more important because now there are so many online businesses out there and one needs to stand out to get the customer’s attention and retention.
SEO Campaigns are vital for Online Business Growth
Advanced SEO feeds smart, quality & optimized content that helps rank on major search engines and pop up in top SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for effective user feedback. While search engines contain numerous factors to measure any website authenticity. And if it is worth the rank, it makes it to the top 10 pages. Commonly, SEO breaks down in the following categories:
- Off-Page SEO
- On-Page SEO
- Rich Content
- Technical SEO
Coupling all these elements effectively improves the evaluation of your brand website by search engines in their own way. Focusing on your SEO strategy might be the best investment you make for the digital presence of your business. The set of efforts you put in SEO are combined to improve your website’s position and drag it to display on the 1st page as a result of any specified search query written on the search bar of Google.
Discover Why Search Engine Marketing is Hacking Growth for Online Business?
SEM – Search Engine Marketing is creating waves in the growth of online business so let’s dive deep into the reasons behind it. SEM is all about turning the favor of search engines towards your brand website by improving the clicks & impression count. People usually go wrong with the ads since they aren’t aware of it. Yet, Google ads is a powerful tool/tactic that allow businesses to run ads based on specific keywords or phrases related to your product, industry or service which you’re offering at competitive pricing. You might be wondering, how ads exactly help boost your sales/conversions? Well, it is estimated that a user who has the intent to buy something, there’s a 64% chance they will click on ads (brought by search results) to buy the product they want. This technique projects the website, product or service that you are selling towards a user who might have written a search query relevant to your online business. It pays attention to paid marketing and advertising so that your business becomes more visible with the SERPs.
Other than Google Ads one can also use YouTube ads, display or shopping ads as well. The end goal is simple to trigger the thought of visiting a website that might be of interest for the user and in return improving the clicks sent to the website. When SEM done smartly, this brings a visitor very close to make a purchase and makes it easy for your business to stand out one step at a time.
SEO Vs SEM: Who’s the Killer Marketing Technique Today?
If we talk about 2022, who are we on the side of? Both SEO and SEM are making their room in the world of marketing and internet in their own way. If we talk about who has the edge, there may not be a clear winner as both comes with their own pros and cons.
Pros & Cons of SEO
The pros of SEO include genuine traffic generated using smart keyword optimization. SEO based interaction sent towards a website is always unpaid and the search engine is happy to display your page on 1st page of the search results. SEO builds long term value and quality of your brand. However, the results one may reap from SEO may take time and even take months to show up desired results. This is due to the continuous evaluation being on merit basis entirely and user response matters to the search engines.
It might seem puzzling or complicated sometimes to put more effort into SEO or even to use it as your primary marketing tool. Since your money site needs loads of unique content and rich keyword placement to start generating customer traffic. Furthermore, it also requires considerable off-page SEO efforts. However, off-page SEO refers to obtaining/creating backlinks from high authority websites that can boost your website’s overall SEO ranking. All these factors may demotivate those brand owners who are actually looking for results in a short period of time.
Pros & Cons of SEM
Search engine marketing is taking over the marketing world. The SEM process helps boost instant traffic/conversions to your website in a whole different way. We use it to showcase our company’s website to a potential customer when they type a search query relevant to our business/products/services. You are free to make any changes to your ad copy that you desire, such as targeting a different audience, selecting specific landing pages, or adding/removing keywords and observing how your rank changes. SEM is a powerful tool to target specific audiences or people who might be interested in a product or service.
Search engine marketing may look promising but comes with its own set of drawbacks. The clicks are not all going to make a purchase and there is a cost you have to pay for each click that is made through the ad. It is not unpaid and requires you to invest. SEM may not leave a long lasting impact on your website, it will only produce results as long as the ads are running. This optimization is temporary and may require adjustment with the ads again and again.
SEO & SEM Tools You Must Have
You can always ensure your marketing strategy is correct and manage/monitor/modify it easier with the help of tools. It’s normal to tweak something if it isn’t working fine since that doesn’t mean the marketing medium is wrong, it means you’re using the wrong strategy. If you manage more than one website, such tools will help you assess the performance of each site at any time. We’ve compiled a few authentic SEO & SEM tools list below to make your life easier:
Let’s have a look at different tools one has for both, SEO and SEM.
There are also several plugins available for both SEO and SEM, including:
- AIOSEO (All In One Search Engine Optimization)
- MonsterInsights
- Yoast
- SEOPress
- SEOquake
- Broken Link checker
These tools & plugins can make your SEO/SEM campaign a success if you use them wisely.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are both designed to support online businesses and improve the overall performance of the website. These are techniques that can be implemented using multiple tools and plugins, and each has its pros and cons. But here’s the big question: Does it really matter which one you use? Aren’t they both pals? Combined, this duo proves more effective than using either one separately. All you need to do is understand how they work together, and the rest should be easy. Until your SEO is built and improved, you can use SEM. Use SEM to tap into the SEO part.
Conclusively, both are fruitful for you to invest your time and efforts in, in the long run. Pair up with a digital marketing agency if you have any limitations with respect to implementing these techniques and get the results both short and long term based.
