Peanut Butter and Jelly (universally abbreviate as PB&J) Is one of the most popular pairings – like, in the whole world. I have not seen anyone who has not heard of the PB&J paring.
Just like how PB&J is an inseparable paring for a really delicious sandwich, SEO and SEM are the same for digital marketing: one cannot function effectively without the other. Without a good SEM in place, your SEO efforts will likely go to waste.
Why SEO and SEM come together
Right now, you must be thinking “why do SEO and SEM come together and why do I need to have one to make the other work?”
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a method of optimizing websites to appear on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) – this means making your website crawlable to search engine spiders, making your site load faster, using keywords in your content to let search engines know what your website is about.
While this all sounds enough to get people to your website, the organic traffic will take a long, long time before it picks up an organic following. This is where Search Engine Marketing (SEM) comes in.
When SEM is employed, you get more chances of people seeing your website when they put in a search term with your targeted keywords. SEM methods include bidding for ad space on search engines, making microsites for specifically targeted words, testing and using digital marketing techniques to help increase viewership.
By increasing your viewership through SEM, you can drive an organic following into your website faster – More traffic means more chances of getting conversions.
Benefits of using both SEO and SEM
Using SEO and SEM together sounds like a hard and expensive task since you have to do a lot of planning and strategizing for both SEO and SEM. But once you get over that hurdle, you will see the beauty of the benefits when you mix both SEO and SEM. Some benefits include:
Lower Advertising costs in Search Engine ads: Cost for ad space on SERPs depends on how well your ad performs. So if you get more people to click on your ads when it appears on the results page, you pay less since google will see that you have a good quality ad. In order to get people to click your link, you need to give your viewers the right content for their targeted keywords and give your viewers a good experience when they visit your site. This requires a lot of SEO and SEM to work.
Higher chance of converting viewers into clients: When users have longer “dwell time” in your site thanks to your website’s content and fast load time, you have higher chances of getting viewers to click the “contact page” and turn them into long-term clients. Keeping your content updated and your website up to speed are works of an effective SEO and SEM strategy.
Using both SEO and SEM is important – one without the other will lead to mediocre results and would do little to boost your digital presence. While it can be hard to handle both SEO and SEM, having a team of SEO/SEM experts at your back can greatly help with the entire process.
