Why You Need both SEM and SEO to Build a Successful Online Business
December 24, 2018Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are powerful tools for online businesses of any size. Both work wonderfully on their own, but without both of them, your website will always be behind the most successful businesses of your niche.
In this article, I’ll give you a brief description of SEO and SEM as well as get into what about the two of them makes them work so well together. You’ll learn how to use search engine marketing for your business at the beginning while building up your website with SEO. By the end of this article, you’ll realize just how well they complement each other, and you’ll want them both too!
Brief Description of SEM and SEO
SEM involves paid advertisements that will turn up on the first page of a SERP. (Search Engine Results Page) You will choose certain keywords that people often search and pay for every person who clicks on your advertisement. The idea behind SEM is to get more people to purchase your product to earn back what you spent on the advert and more.
SEO, on the other hand, costs you nothing. SEO is when you build up the reputation of your website using keywords, backlinks, good content, and so on to the point where the search engine puts you on the first page of a SERP anyway. As your website gains reputation over time, you will get closer and closer to rank #1 on the SERP. When you reach the top 10 in rankings, you will stay on the first page without needing to pay for an ad.
Benefits of SEO
- Costs you nothing
- Improves the quality of your website
- Earns you permanent traffic that increases forever
- Increase brand exposure and awareness
- Keeps you ahead of your competition
Benefits of SEM
- Quicker profit turnaround
- Brings in a high level of traffic while active (traffic isn’t permanent)
- Gives your business an excellent kick start for some awareness
- Focuses on your target audience
- Helps smaller businesses overcome larger rivals
Combined Balance to Your Business
If you take a look at the different benefits of SEM and SEO, you may notice an interesting pattern. The general conclusion of each of them goes something like this:
- SEM helps your business get an edge during the initial stages of development when your brand presence isn’t yet there.
- SEO helps solidify your business’ grasp on the online world by providing you with permanent brand awareness and traffic after a long period of time.
Thus, SEM is great for a young business, while SEO is great for an aged business. However, SEO still needs to be implemented immediately in order to provide those benefits after a few years.
The idea is that you can use SEM to get some customers flowing through your website for the first couple of years. You can then focus on improving your website with SEO. After a couple of years, your optimized website will be self-sustainable, and you won’t require SEM anymore. (Although it may still be profitable to use both even after several years)
Learn more about SEM here: https://ipsnorthamerica.net/want-to-start-your-own-search-engine-marketing-agency-here-is-what-you-need-to-know/