Keyword Research
Keyword research is an essential part of search-based marketing. It doesn’t matter if it’s SEM or SEO all online campaigns start with some form of keyword research. Search engine marketing is based on showing up the very moment searchers are looking for a solution. And that search is based on a keyword.
Paid advertising uses keywords to create campaigns and ad groups, and organic marketing uses keywords to optimize webpages and create content based campaigns. Both marketing channels are based on the premise of showing up for a specific keyword, phrase or topic when a person uses a search engine to find a solution.
Increase Speed and Performance of SEO
So, what then is the benefit of having both an SEM and SEO campaign running at the same time?
We’ve established the importance of keyword research for both types of campaigns, and because of the critical nature of keywords, choosing the right keywords are of very important. A paid advertising campaign can help you select high converting keywords for your search engine optimization campaigns much faster than if you had an SEO campaign only.
When you pay per click, you’re not only getting instant traffic to your website, you’re getting valuable insights on what keywords perform well. With a paid advertising campaign, you could pay for a competitive keyword and get a feel for the value of that keyword in a few days or weeks. On the contrary, for a search engine optimization campaign, it may take months to get that same information for competitive keywords. The difference is if you find a keyword is not performing or valuable to you in a paid advertising campaign, you can test a new keyword almost instantly. In the case of your SEO campaign, you may have spent six months optimizing and creating content around the keyword only to find it doesn’t convert or isn’t worth the effort to rank.
Search engine marketing can help prevent this wasted effort, if both the SEM and SEO work together, it can have a synergistic effect on your campaign performance and the speed at which you obtain favorable results.
Increased Visibility and Authority
My first visit to Starbucks was based on the flawed logic that their coffee must be good because they are on every corner. While I’m not an avid coffee drinker, I’ve visited Starbucks time to time over the last 10 years. So essentially, I’ve become a lifelong customer because of visibility.
While the search engines aren’t avenues and streets, the flawed logic (that I suffered from) has the same effect when competing for online real estate. On a search engine page, there is a limited amount of space, there are few spots for paid ads, a few more for organic results and depending on the search, there may be space for local results. Advertising with both SEM and SEO gives you the ability to show up in both paid and organic real estate. It increases visibility, it adds credibility and gives you authority on the web. It’s the Starbuck equivalent to being on every corner.
Relying On One Marketing Channel is Risky
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. Especially, when you’re not in control of the search engine that is allowing your website to show up. So, in the case of an SEO program that is really working well you may want to scale back your SEM campaign or start testing page social channels.
If you have any questions or would like for us to evaluate your SEO and SEM campaigns, contact us.
