Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are two parts of a successful digital marketing strategy. SEO is a set of tactics that bring customers to your virtual doorstep organically while SEM attracts your target audience with paid strategies.
Both SEO and SEM are continuous processes that require a well-planned and consistent approach. From identifying the main marketing channels to setting the right budget, you need to learn how to leverage these strategies to ensure marketing success.
Let's discuss how to use SEO and SEM to grow your business.
Set Clear Goals
Defining the goals and objectives of your marketing strategy helps you understand which tactics to implement and channels to cover. Consider implementing the SMART goal scheme that can streamline your marketing plan. Examples of such goals are:
- Increase website traffic by 10% by Q3
- Improve conversion rates by 20% by next year
- Generate 50% more leads by next quarter
These goals will serve as the North Star of your marketing campaign and help you implement effective SEO and SEM tactics.
Keyword Search
Keywords are the backbone of any digital marketing strategy. They play a major role in both SEO and SEM. By identifying relevant keywords, you set the stage for your content strategy.
These keywords attract the target audience organically in blogs, articles, and other website content. Meanwhile, they help your ads appear on top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) in response to user queries related to your products and services. To conduct a comprehensive keyword search, you can use such tools as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is an essential part of SEO. It involves optimizing all elements on your website to make it more appealing to the search engine's ranking algorithm. On-page SEO includes:
- Adding high-quality content
- Optimizing content for keywords
- Improving metadata
- Using optimized images
With the average Google search lasting under one minute, on-page optimization plays a crucial role in maximizing your website's visibility.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO involves making your website easier to crawl and index by search engines. You need to show the search engine how worthy your website is to be on top of the SERPs. This includes optimizing:
- Loading time
- SSL certificate
- XML sitemap
- Canonicalization
- Mobile-friendliness
While technical SEO tactics help search engines index your website, they also improve user experience.
Content Marketing
High-quality content plays a key role in the success of both SEO and SEM tactics. It attracts the audience to your virtual doorstep, builds brand awareness, demonstrates business credibility, and establishes its expertise.
Content marketing tactics include creating such content as:
- Blog posts
- Articles
- eBooks
- Newsletters
- Email content
- Ad copy
- Infographics
- Videos
- Social media posts
Once the content is ready, your marketing team needs to identify the most effective opportunities for publishing it and work out a posting timeline. More than 80% of marketers consider content a key business strategy
Local SEO (If Applicable)
If you are catering to a local market, you need to implement such local SEO strategies as:
- Optimizing your content for local keywords
- Creating (or claiming) and managing Google My Business profile
- Using geo-specific keywords
- Encouraging customer reviews
- Listing your company in local online directories
The key to successful local SEO is ensuring NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency across all marketing channels. This can keep customers coming to the local doorstep.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC advertising is an SEM tactic that involves designing high-quality ads that appear on top of the SERPs and on social media platforms. You only pay for posting an ad if the visitor clicks on it, hence the name.
A successful PPC ad contains valuable and relevant content, keywords, and compelling images. This tactic can aid with lead generation, conversion, brand awareness, and even retention. The goal is to show your ads to the most relevant audience. To do that, you can take advantage of robust targeting options offered by search engines and social media platforms.
Link Building
Link building or backlinking is an off-page SEO tactic that builds the credibility of your website. By encouraging other trustworthy websites to link to yours in their content, you are building your reputation and helping search engines choose your website for the top spots of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
A successful backlinking strategy begins by creating top-notch and highly valuable content that other sites can find "worthy" of linking to.
Display Advertising and Remarketing
As part of your SEM tactics, display ads appear on websites and applications to reach your audience while it's not browsing your website. These ads are the foundation of a strong remarketing campaign that re-engages visitors and brings them back to your website for action.
To optimize your display ads, you need to focus ad copy and keywords on your user behavior and interests.
Analyze and Optimize
Both SEM and SEO are ongoing strategies that require continuous analytics. Neither of them yields immediate results. To see what is going wrong, you must track metrics using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
These consistent analytics can help you identify problems and point to elements you can optimize in real time. This can prevent unnecessary expenses and streamline your marketing strategy.
Stay Updated and Adapt
The digital landscape is capricious and constantly evolving. SEO and SEM tactics that may have worked for you last year can become useless tomorrow. To stay on top of your game, you constantly need to monitor the changes and adapt to them quickly and seamlessly.
Streamlining Your Business Growth with SEO and SEM Tactics
SEO and SEM are ongoing processes that rarely yield immediate results. By maintaining consistency and leveraging a data-driven approach, you can achieve business growth goals.
Mid-West Family Springfield, MO is a team of SEO and SEM experts, who have decades of experience leveraging these marketing tactics to encourage business development. If you would like our expertise to contribute to your business growth, please contact us at any convenient time.
