Search engine marketing (SEM) is a powerful digital marketing strategy that focuses on increasing the visibility of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs). It primarily involves using paid advertising to achieve higher rankings and drive traffic to your site. 
Effective, comprehensive digital marketing strategies incorporate both SEM and SEO, but relationship between all media channels and tactics across the marketing funnel. SEO supports those tactics to maximize visibility and reach, while decreasing bounce rates and other valuable engagement metrics. SEO is incredibly important to the success of paid media campaigns. Both works together synergistically, and a strong SEO foundation can significantly enhance the effectiveness and ROI of your paid media efforts.
Here’s why:
SEO gives SEM Improved Quality Score
- Relevance = Ranking: Search engines like Google consider the relevance of your website and landing pages when determining the Quality Score of your paid ads. A higher Quality Score leads to lower ad costs and better ad ranking.
- SEO strengthens relevance: SEO efforts, such as optimizing your website content and improving site structure, enhance the relevance of your landing pages to your target keywords. This positively impacts your Quality Score, making your paid ads more effective.
SEM gives SEO Increased Website Traffic
- Organic and paid synergy: SEO drives organic traffic to your website, while paid media brings in targeted traffic through ads. When both work together, they create a combined force that drives more overall traffic to your site. This overall increase in site traffics will boost the site credibility for SERP rankings.
- Improved brand visibility: A strong SEO presence increases your website’s visibility in organic search results, making your brand more recognizable. This can lead to higher click-through rates on your paid ads from users who are already familiar with your brand.
Landing Page Optimization Benefits Both Strategies
- Shared best practices: SEO and paid media share many best practices for landing page optimization, such as clear calls to action, relevant content, and fast loading speeds. A well-optimized landing page benefits both organic and paid traffic, improving conversion rates from both types of traffic.
- Content alignment: SEO helps ensure that your website content is relevant to your target keywords, which also benefits your paid media campaigns. When your ads and landing pages align with your SEO strategy, you create a cohesive and effective user experience.
RocketSauce Tip: Optimized landing pages can play double-duty, being effective for both SEO and SEM. That’s why it’s important to ensure your site is correctly tagged and using UTM codes to track performance from different traffic sources on the same page.
SEO Reduces Reliance on Paid Media:
- Long-term sustainability: While paid media delivers immediate results, SEO builds long-term organic visibility. By investing in SEO, you can reduce your reliance on paid media over time and achieve sustainable, scalable traffic growth.
- Cost-effectiveness: A strong SEO foundation can lower your paid media costs by improving your Quality Score and reducing the need to bid as high on competitive keywords.
RocketSauce Tip: Amazon.com wasn’t built in a day. ROI from SEO campaigns is the result of long-term investments, whereas ROAS from SEM campaign can be realized in a few weeks. Major brands with sustainable SEO engines have invested years into these revenue streams.
Underperforming SEO Keywords Make Good SEM Keywords
- Leverage keyword research: SEO involves extensive keyword research to identify relevant search terms. This research can be invaluable for your paid media campaigns, helping you target the right keywords and reach the most relevant audience.
- SEO lag time: It can take weeks or months to begin ranking for new SEO keywords. Fill the gap in the meantime with SEM keyword buys to support the associated landing pages.
- Refine targeting: SEO data can provide insights into user search intent and behavior, allowing you to refine your paid media targeting and improve ad relevance.
So once you understand the value of combining Paid Media with SEO… now what?
How to optimize Paid Media and SEO together
By optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can improve your Quality Score, increase website traffic, enhance landing page optimization, leverage keyword insights, and reduce reliance on paid media over time. This synergistic relationship between SEO and paid media leads to more effective campaigns, higher ROI, and sustainable online growth.
Making sure your SEO is running correctly is an ongoing process, not a one-time task. It requires monitoring, analysis, and adjustments along the way. Here’s a breakdown of how to ensure your SEO is on the right track:
Perform Regular SEO Audits:
- Comprehensive analysis: Conduct periodic SEO audits (every 6-12 months) to get a comprehensive overview of your website’s health. This involves analyzing technical SEO, on-page optimization, off-page factors, and content quality.
- Identify and fix issues: Audits help uncover hidden problems like broken links, slow loading speeds, crawl errors, and content gaps. Addressing these issues is crucial for maintaining good SEO performance.
RocketSauce Tip: Never performed an SEO audit on your site or not sure where to start? Get in touch here and learn how RocketSauce SEO Audits work.
Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
- Monitor rankings: Track your website’s rankings for your target keywords. Are you moving up in search results? Are you losing ground to competitors? Tools like Google Search Console and Semrush can help you monitor your rankings.
- Analyze website traffic: Monitor your website traffic using tools like Google Analytics. Pay attention to organic traffic sources, landing pages, bounce rates, and conversion rates. This data provides insights into how well your SEO is driving qualified traffic.
Invest in On-Page Optimization:
- Content quality: Ensure your website content is high-quality, relevant, and optimized for your target keywords. This includes using relevant keywords naturally, optimizing title tags and meta descriptions, and structuring your content for readability.
- Technical SEO: Make sure your website is technically sound. This includes ensuring mobile-friendliness, fast loading speeds, proper use of header tags, and a well-structured sitemap.
RocketSauce Tip: On-Page Optimization is about making the content readable and accessible for the human reader AND the AI search engine bots.
Invest in Off-Page Optimization:
- Build quality backlinks: Earn high-quality backlinks from reputable websites. This can be achieved through guest blogging, content marketing, public relations, and other link-building strategies.
- Monitor your backlink profile: Regularly analyze your backlink profile using tools like Ahrefs or Moz to identify any potentially harmful links and ensure your backlinks are coming from quality sources.
Stay Updated with Best Practices:
- Algorithm changes: Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving. Stay informed about the latest updates and adjust your SEO strategies accordingly.
- Industry trends: Keep up with industry best practices and emerging trends in SEO. Follow reputable SEO blogs, attend webinars, and participate in online communities to stay informed.
Utilize Free Tools:
There are many measurement tools available, including the RocketSauce Comprehensive PESO Dashboard. If you’re just getting started, setting up the free suite of Google SEO tools is a great first step.
- Google Search Console: This free tool from Google provides valuable insights into your website’s performance in search results. It helps you monitor indexing, identify crawl errors, and analyze search queries.
- Google Analytics: This tool tracks website traffic, user behavior, and conversions. It provides valuable data for understanding how well your SEO is driving results.
- Paid Tools: There are many other SEO tools available, such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz, that offer comprehensive analysis, keyword research, backlink tracking, and other valuable features.
By consistently monitoring your website performance, addressing any issues that arise, and staying up-to-date with best practices, you can ensure your site is optimized correctly and driving sustainable organic growth for your website and properly supporting the success of your paid media activities.
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