Why Managed SEO is Vital for Long Term Success
There are several ways to promote your brand, product, or service and that’s why you need to choose the most effective marketing strategy. Whenever we talk about online business, then search engine optimization (SEO) tops the list for getting found in search and attracting more visitors.
SEO helps to optimize your website (make it look better to search engines) and improves its rankings in search results. If your website is not showing on the first two pages of google, it’s basically because your SEO sucks. If you don’t show until page 4 or 5, you may as well not have a website at all. Ask yourself, when was the last time you scrolled past page 4 or 5 on a search engine? Exactly.
Getting a website to rank well in search results is one thing but keeping it there is another story.
SEO, SEM What’s the Difference ?
Many business owners aren’t clear on the differences between SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing). Some have little to no idea what the terms even mean. That’s okay, you have a business to run and we get that but if we’ve just described you, then maybe it’s time for some help. Ironically and quite often, these are the same business owners trying to handle their own SEO. Go figure!
In brief, effective SEO can get you to the top in search results (ie page 1 on Google) but SEM is what keeps you there! So which outcome is more important to you? Are you trying for a one-hit wonder or building a dynasty? Would you rather be George Lazenby or Sean Connery? Sorry George!
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A Change in Search Thinking
Smart businesses globally are moving towards search engine marketing (SEM) to keep their rankings intact. If you’re serious about marketing your products or services online and attracting more visitors, you need to explore search engine marketing. A client once asked me: What’s the one thing I can do differently than my competitors to stay ahead of them? What’s my best smoking gun? My answer, very simply was invest in long-term SEM.
Both SEO and SEM strategies aim to increase your site’s visibility on search engines. SEO focusses more on the website itself including written content and images. SEM is a more advanced approach incorporating SEO with off-site measures like pay-per-click advertising, social media and the Google index itself.
SEM is far more effective than SEO alone as it will gain and sustain more visitors over the long run. If you’re serious about online marketing then SEM needs to be a major player in your digital marketing strategy.
Why Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is better than SEO
A recent study revealed that about 90% of a websites’ traffic comes from the leading search engines. That’s why the majority of online businesses are now actively engaged in search engine marketing campaigns. These companies are investing time and money in focused campaigns and seeing huge rewards.
SEM also includes an optimization element (SEO) which is why we recommend this combined strategy for websites. SEM is sometimes called Advanced SEO which is true being a fully blended approach in search strategy. SEM delivers targeted traffic to a website, blog, sign-up form or landing page. While SEO is a general catch-all approach, SEM brings finely targeted marketing. Think qualified leads.
With an ever-changing search engine landscape, it’s simply not enough to optimize a few pages now and then. Not anymore. Sure, after a few hours spent optimizing one or two pages, you may see some search gains. But these gains have a tendency to be short-lived if not supported by an ongoing search engine marketing campaign. What’s the point of being #3 on Google for only one week? Doesn’t it make more sense to invest in a long-term search marketing strategy?
Case Study – SEO vs SEM
Currently, a business is running two e-commerce websites, site A is a clothing line and site B sells handmade accessories. In order to find which strategy provides better results, we pitted them in a head-to-head study using SEO alone for site A and full SEM on site B.
After six months, we analyzed the results on both websites and saw a significant difference. Site B (handmade accessories) running full SEM, was attracting 2000+ unique visitors daily. Site A (clothing website) running SEO only managed to capture 1000+ visitors. A 2-1 return over six months in favour of full SEM over standalone SEO.
Proof positive the strategy and tactics of SEM work!
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Why Invest in SEO and SEM Packages
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are making serious efforts towards optimizing & refining their ad platforms to use targeted traffic. However, the traffic from search engines like Google and Bing is found to provide a better ROI (return on investment).
Arguably the reason for this being, search engine traffic is open and unfiltered as opposed to boxed-in social channels where membership is required (first level filtering). If we look at the facebook machine as an example, your news feed is filtered by facebook (second level filtering) to show only facebook content they think you want to see (plus some ads of course). Call me crazy but I’d prefer to see what I want to see and NOT what an algorithm thinks I want or allows me too!
Search engines display results from all over the internet, thereby providing more open and ultimately better independent traffic. If you allow them to use your location in search (geo-search), the results will display only local listings near you. In other words, finding a local business for your needs is instant. So ranking well in these local results it absolutely vital. SEM can get you there and keep you there.
This fall, investing in SEO and SEM might be the smoking gun you’ve been looking for.
Thanks for reading!