Anyone who is working in digital marketing must have a strong grip on both the discussed terms. SEO, Search Engine Optimization and SEM, Search Engine Marketing are related yet different. You will get to know here how SEO and SEM work together and how to utilize that co-relation to build an effective SEO and SEM strategy for your business.

What Is SEO?

Search rankings are where a piece of content is placed when someone searches for a related query. The higher it shows the more traffic it is likely to attract, and your click-through rate will go up. 95% of people do not leave the first page of Google results, so that is where you want your content to end up.

SEO is activities performed to get high rankings on search engines’ result pages. Some of these activities include:

• Keyword research
• Strategic keyword placement
• Using credible redirects
• Optimizing the structure of the page

Search engines determine the quality of your content and the user experience you offer. If it finds them good, it will help you get more traffic. The SEO data also helps your business to improve by giving you insights into how your customers think.

What Is SEM?

SEM is the bigger picture in which SEO also lies. Search Engine Marketing includes both organic search and paid search, but usually, it focuses only on paid search as the SEO team covers the organic part.

You can pick a search engine and buy a keyword from it that you think will be effective for your business. This will help you rank pretty quickly. Another perk of paying is that the search engine’s strictness towards your content page gets lowered, so you get control over it.

A certain edge that SEM has on SEO is that you can obtain a lot of data related to your keywords. Getting to know all the queries about your keyword can help you determine traffic behavior towards the subject. You can use that to surge the advantages of SEO and SEM.

How SEO and SEM Work Together

The teams responsible for SEO and SEM should correspond with each other, sharing insights and learning. SEM can help SEO by providing it high-intent terms to focus on. SEO can help SEM in getting an efficient ROI.

People search for queries on search engines and are likely to buy from pages that they go through. So the key is to make your page as visible as possible so that more and more traffic comes to you. SEO and SEM together can achieve that much more effectively as compared to only one of them.

Sponsored ads with good keyword placement are more likely to rank high. However, sometimes even paying doesn’t get you the wanted results as there is a competition for keywords. In that case, it is your SEO that comes to the rescue. If your website has good SEO practices in place, you will get an edge over those who don’t.

The end target of both SEO and SEM is to get a traffic flow. It is the techniques and methods used for both that are different. How SEO and SEM work together will keep changing as the trends keep shifting and search engine algorithms keep getting optimized. But the efficiency of the two will most likely be at their best when they are combined.

Pennsylvania SEO Agency

Ready to start ranking higher for relevant keywords and driving more traffic to your website? We’re ready to help. Pendragon Consulting is a full-service marketing agency in Pennsylvania, serving clients across the nation. Get in touch with us today to map out your strategy for success.