“Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are critically important to online businesses. You can spend every penny you have on a website, but it will all be for nothing if nobody knows your site is there.”
Marc Ostrofsky, Author of Get Rich Click!: The Ultimate Guide to Making Money Online
Have you ever try searching for something online using some keywords and you find tons of results right in front of you? Do you wonder how does the web organize these results and which website links to be placed on top of the page?
THAT’S RIGHT! Using complex online ranking algorithm, businesses will fight for the top spot to be on the top search engine result pages (SERPs). In this post, I’ll share about Search Engine Marketing (Paid Marketing) and Search Engine Optimization (Organic).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The Search Engine Optimization, or known as the SEO, is a method that optimize a content to gain exposure at the top of the search engine pages through selected keywords.
To achieve this, search engine such as Google uses search algorithms including the input keyword you search, usability and relevance of pages, proficiency of search and your locations and setting (Joshua Hardwick, 2019).
According to TheDailyEgg, using SEO can help businesses to track long term results such as traffic flow, the ranking of the selected keywords and time spend of the consumers on your website. These immediate feedback can help the businesses to make amendment promptly.
However, it requires a long period of time to gain exposure and have to compete against the competitors for selected keywords. Search engine such as Google are also constantly changing their search algorithms. Thus, these organic efforts are hard to manage (Sherman, 2019).
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
In layman term, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a online marketing technique where marketer spend an amount of money to promotes their website by increasing their exposure to appear higher in the search result pages (Nicole Rende, 2014).
To fully utilized SEM, marketers incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search. For Example, when a potential consumer search for product via selected keywords, marketers places paid advertisement with search engine optimization into these result pages that attract the consumer.
However, companies have to bid for the selected keyword they wish to place their advertisement on and it is usually a HEFTY PRICE! (Ilya Cherepakhin,2020)
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is debatable whether which technique is best for a company. In my opinion, SEO will be a better approach. Although it will take a long period of time to show results, it is more cost efficient and better search credibility.
However, for new startup companies, i would recommend using SEM and SEO to gain quick exposure as it saves time to reach the consumers to create brand awareness.
Which technique do you think best works for your company? Feel free to leave a comment and share with me your thoughts!
Andrew's Digital Marketing Blog 
Personally for my new start up company, i do agreed with you that SEM is more effective for my case. I do find your post helpful in helping me to decide which method will me more viable for me. How would you recommend for me to better use my marketing funds?
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Hi Lucas,
Thank you so much for your time in reading my post and do hope you enjoy it! In regarding to better use of your marketing funds, firstly we can decide on the marketing funds. You can start to build up your online platform with a strong delivery message. Ensure all your products and of a certain quality and be confident of your products. Learn to build up and work your way through SEO. Subsequently, you can use the marketing funds in SEM and further leverage your brand site and products to gain consumers brand knowledge and awareness. That way, it would be beneficial for you to work with limit funds. Hope you like my recommendation and hope to hear from you soon, thank you!
Best Regards,
Andrew T.
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Hi Andrew, I’m a founder of a new start up company and having difficulties with managing my online marketing techniques. After reading your post, I do have a better and clearer direction on how to better leverage my internet marketing. It’s is informative and I gained a lot of marketing knowledge from it. How would you recommend me to maximize my marketing funds with limited budget? Hope you can share your views with me, thank you!
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Hi Stephanie,
Thank you so much for your time in reading my post and do hope you enjoy it! In regarding to maximize your marketing funds with the limited budget, firstly you can start to build up your online platform with a strong delivery message. Ensure all your products and of a certain quality and be confident of your products. Secondly, you can learn to build up and work your way through SEO. Subsequently, you can use some funds in SEM and further leverage your brand site and products to gain consumers brand knowledge and awareness. That way, it would be beneficial for you to work with limit funds. Hope you like my recommendation and hope to hear from you soon, thank you!
Best Regards,
Andrew T.
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Hi Andrew,
Sounds like SEO will take some time to build up. Should startup firms consider using more SEM at an early stage of their growth to gain brand awareness fast?
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Hi Melvin,
SEO do requires quite some times to build it and take a long period of time for it to see its effort. I would recommend that if the startup firm have sufficient marketing funds, it would be best to incorporate SEO and SEM to boost its effect. Hope this helps you, thank you!
Kind Regards,
Andrew T.
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Comprehensive article on SEO and SEM! What are your thoughts on pay per click (PPC) advertising?
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Hi Guan,
Thank you for reading my post and hope you enjoy it! Pay-Per-Click Advertising is useful if the organisation do have sufficient marketing funds. It is definitely useful in drawing consumers attention while their searches for relevant products online.
Kind Regards,
Andrew T.
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