There are plenty of ways you can market your site, but SEO and SEM are still the two most popular tools to use. Today, you can easily hire an SEO & SEM expert to help you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand the basics of these tools. In this part, we are going to take a look at how SEO and SEM can be combined to work together.
Not One or the Other
SEO and SEM are indeed designed to be used simultaneously. You don’t have to choose one over the other. Even better, the two tools can strengthen each other.
SEO, as we all know, is performed generically. This means the search engine optimization is done by adding good quality content to your site, gathering backlinks from other respectable websites and completing other tasks that will help improve your site’s search engine rankings.
SEM, however, involves paying for text ads at the top of search results. Thanks to the growing market and increasing supply for advertising opportunities, SEM is becoming more and more affordable.
Targeting the Right Keywords
At the beginning of every internet marketing campaign, there is a keyword analysis to be done. Once the analysis is completed, you will have a set of keywords that you can use to improve your search engine performance. In order to combine SEO and SEM seamlessly, these keywords can be further analysed based on a number of factors.
Keywords that are targeted, highly segmented and are easy to pursue are usually added to the SEO pool. All content and SEO efforts will then be adjusted to suit those keywords and the market segment they represent.
On the other side of the equation, keywords that are more difficult to pursue, more generic and have the potentials of attracting a lot of traffic can be used for SEM purposes. You can buy ad placement for those keywords and have your site appear at the top of the search results immediately.
A Boost in Traffic and Credibility
SEM is perfect for increasing your site’s traffic. Combined with good conversion strategy, you can quickly increase sales and become one of the most popular websites in the market segment or industry. The increase in traffic will also help you with SEO, since search engines now take things such as time on site and traffic into considerations.
SEO works best for increasing your site’s credibility. Users can easily tell if your site is appearing as an ad or generically in the search results. Appearing generically for high-profile keywords will help boost the site’s credibility by a long way.
The combination is simply too good to miss. As you can see, SEO and SEM are meant to be use together. When used correctly, you get the best of both worlds. You get the increase in traffic almost immediately – without having to wait for the results of your SEO campaign to kick in – while at the same time gain credibility and generic traffic. It is also very easy to balance the cost of SEO and SEM when the two tools are used together.