How to use SEO and SEM together to skyrocket your online presence

Before diving in the details, it’s important to understand the fundamentals of both SEM and SEO.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is all about optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) organically. It involves various techniques like keyword research, on-page and off-page optimization, and link building. By focusing on user behaviour and search engine algorithms, SEO aims for long-term results and driving organic traffic.

On the other hand, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, involves paid advertising to gain immediate visibility on search engines. Unlike SEO, which focuses on organic growth, SEM provides instant reach and can be particularly useful for time-sensitive campaigns or new product launches.

While SEM and SEO are distinct strategies and each has its own merits, the real magic happens when they are used in tandem.

SEO lays the foundation for long-term growth and credibility, while SEM delivers immediate visibility and targeted traffic. Leveraging the strengths of both helps you maximize your online presence and achieve optimal results.

One of the best ways to use SEO and SEM together is by sharing keyword insights to craft a strategy that improves the performance of both.

From SEM to SEO: When launching an ad campaign, you can quickly learn which keywords are driving not just clicks but conversions, offering invaluable insights into customer intent and behaviour.

This data becomes a secret weapon in optimizing your organic SEO strategy. You can fine-tune your organic content to target high-converting keywords, thus increasing the chances of ranking higher organically.

In other words, SEM can provide a fast-track research platform for your longer-term, organic SEO tactics.

From SEO to SEM: Conversely, the organic search data you gather through SEO tools can uncover long-tail keywords or emerging search trends that are not yet saturated with competition.

These are golden opportunities, especially because long-tail keywords often indicate a higher intent to purchase or convert. You can then create SEM campaigns centred around these keywords before your competitors even recognize the opportunity.

Essentially, you’re leveraging the slow-burn data from your SEO efforts to identify early-stage opportunities for your SEM campaigns, thereby preempting the market and gaining a competitive edge.

SEO and SEM can work like besties when it comes to testing what words or phrases get people to click on your website.

From SEO to SEM: For example, in SEO, you often play around with the title and description that show up on Google to see which ones make people want to click. Once you find out what works, you can use that same wording in your SEM ads. Because SEM shows results quickly, you can easily see if the wording really does make people interested.

From SEM to SEO: On the other hand, SEM allows you to test different versions of an ad to see which one people click on more. This is known as A/B testing. If you find that a certain ad gets lots of clicks, you can use the wording from that ad to update your SEO title and description.

In short, SEM lets you quickly test what people like, while SEO gives you long-term tracking of your content’s performance. By using the quick results from SEM to guide your SEO, and vice versa, you make both your paid and free search results better. It’s like a two-for-one deal that helps you understand what your audience wants more quickly and effectively.

A landing page is the first page you land on after clicking a search result or ad. Both SEM and SEO need good landing pages to make people take action, like buying a product or signing up for a newsletter.

From SEM to SEO: Imagine you have a landing page that you use for SEM ads, and it’s doing a great job – lots of people are clicking and taking action. You can take this well-performing page and adjust it as needed to make it show up in free Google searches. Since you already know the page converts well from your SEM campaign, it’s likely to do well organically, too.

From SEO to SEM: On the flip side, let’s say you have a page that gets a lot of free traffic from Google and people spend a lot of time on it. This is a sign that the page is engaging. You can use what you learn from this successful page to make your SEM landing pages better.

In a nutshell, by focusing on making your landing pages as good as possible, you’re creating a win-win situation. Your paid ads (SEM) and your free search results (SEO) both benefit, and most importantly, you make your visitors happy.

Think of your digital marketing budget like a pie. You want to cut it in the best way to get the most out of it.

From SEM to SEO: Sometimes, bidding on certain words in paid ads can be really expensive because everyone wants them. If you find that’s the case, you might decide to use that money to improve your SEO for those same words instead. It takes longer but could be cheaper in the long run.

From SEO to SEM: On the other hand, let’s say you’ve been trying to show up in free search results for certain keywords, but it’s taking forever to see any results. If those keywords are really important for your business, like they bring in a lot of sales, you can decide to spend more money on paid ads for those specific words. This way, you can show up in Google searches instantly.

Understanding what works in both SEM and SEO helps you make smarter decisions about where to put your money.

From SEM to SEO: When you run paid ads, Google Ads tells you what people were looking for when they clicked on your ad. You can use this data to make your website better at providing what people are actually searching for.

From SEO to SEM: On the other hand, Google Search Console helps you understand how your website is doing in the free search results. It tells you how many people see your website (impressions), how many click on it (clicks), and what percentage of people click after seeing it (click-through rate or CTR). You can use this information to spot weaknesses in your paid ads. For example, if a lot of people are clicking on a certain free search result, maybe you should also be running paid ads for that topic.