Which One Should You Choose — SEO or SEA?
SEO or SEA? Online marketers often ask themselves this question. However, the answer is not just one. Because they shouldn’t always be viewed separately. The two disciplines are not mutually exclusive, and can complement each other perfectly. The goal here is essentially the same — to boost the visibility of your website as prominently as possible in the results of search engines.
On one hand, SEO — the organic search — includes all measures with which you try to be as high as possible in the organic results of the SEPRs (Search Engine Results Pages). On the other hand, SEA — the paid search — includes all paid advertisements and thus the inorganic results found in the SERPs fall under SEA. They are marked at Google with the word “advertisement” and can be bought at different prices. For this you need a Google Ad Account.
SEO and SEA have in common that both are keyword-based and lead to success through keyword optimization. The synergy effects of both disciplines are based on this idea. Use these synergies to have long-term success with your online marketing measures.
Understanding SEO and SEA as a team
What is better now? SEO or SEA? This is a question many online marketers ask themselves again and again. You do not have to decide for or against one of the two areas.
SEO and SEA are not mutually exclusive, but often complement each other well in achieving your goals. It is particularly obvious, of course, that two click possibilities take up more space in the SERPS, lead to more clicks and thus achieve higher sales. But there are other ways in which SEO and SEA can help you achieve success:
1. Using SEO for long-term visibility
SEO consists of many, extensive measures. It is not enough to just optimize the content of your site and neglect the site performance or backlinks. The whole package of your SEO measures must be right.
SEO is also a continuous process consisting of several adjustment loops and precise monitoring. One-off measures, on the other hand, are usually not helpful for SEO and often the success is only achieved after some time. But the success of SEO is more sustainable than that of SEA.
So you use a constant budget and constant resources, but receive more traffic every month. As a result, your customer acquisition costs decrease over time — no paid channel can do that.
2. Using SEA for short-term success
SEA on the other hand can lead to success after a short time. Therefore SEA is also suitable for short-term boosts — for instance, if you want to draw attention to a campaign or product for a certain period of time.
How can SEA support SEO?
SEA has no direct influence on the success of SEO measures. Nevertheless, SEA can support search engine optimization well. For example, SEA can be helpful if the long-term SEO measures have not yet borne fruit, your competitors have piled up at this point or there have been traffic changes due to a major Google update.
Especially if high turnover sites are affected, this can have a negative impact on your performance. And this can be very painful for companies. With targeted advertising, traffic can then be generated in a targeted manner to at least somewhat offset impending losses or even generate initial successes.
You can also learn from SEA. Because a well-managed AdWords account provides you with a lot of helpful information. For example, you can see which keywords have a high click or conversion rate and thus identify relevant keywords for your On-Page measures.
Especially well-functioning long-tail keywords are also helpful for your SEO measures and should be considered for the optimization of your content. In addition to that, you can also learn from the snippets of your SEA campaigns. Which ad texts are clicked particularly often and generate a high turnover? Which CTAs work well? Based on these findings, you should optimize your organic snippets to make them more successful.
Whether SEO or SEA — the more a site has an excellent user experience, the more visitors it turns into customers and fans. In addition, comprehensive keyword research is the basis for successful on-page optimization. Relevant keywords are researched, evaluated and clustered. You can use the entire keyword list not only for your SEO measures on your site, but also as a basis for your ad placement.
