The Power of an Integrated Search Strategy
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The Power of an Integrated Search Strategy

March 26, 2023 January 30th, 2024 No Comments

Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are two essential strategies that brands use to increase their visibility and reach their target audience. While both strategies involve optimizing a brands position on the SERP (search engine results page), they have different approaches and objectives. Understanding the nuances of SEO and SEM and how to approach organic and paid search in an integrated way can improve your overall site visibility and maximize your investment.

SEO vs. SEM

SEO involves optimizing a website’s content and structure to improve its visibility and ranking on the SERP for specific keywords and phrases. SEO focuses on organic search results and is a long-term strategy that involves continuous efforts to improve a website’s relevance, authority, and user experience.

SEM, on the other hand, involves paid advertising to appear at the top of SERPs for specific keywords and phrases. SEM involves paid search ads, and is a more immediate way to reach a target audience. While SEO takes time and effort to see results, SEM provides an immediate boost in visibility and traffic.

Elements of Search

There are several key elements of search that should be considered when developing an integrated search strategy. These elements include:

  • Keywords – Keywords are the foundation of SEO and SEM. They are the words and phrases that people use to search for information on search engines. Brands need to identify the keywords and phrases that are relevant to their products or services and use them throughout their website and ad campaigns.
  • Content – Content is a critical component of SEO and SEM. High-quality, relevant, and engaging content is essential to attracting and retaining visitors to a website. Brands need to create content that is optimized for keywords, provides value to their audience, and is shareable across social media platforms.
  • Links – Links that drive users from other websites to a brand’s website are seen as a vote of confidence by search engines and can help improve a website’s organic ranking on SERPs. Brands need to develop link-building strategies that focus on creating high-quality content, reaching out to influencers and bloggers, and leveraging social media.
  • User Experience – User experience is an essential factor in SEO and SEM. Search engines prioritize websites that provide a good user experience, including fast load times, easy navigation, and mobile optimization. Brands need to create websites that are easy to use, visually appealing, and provide a seamless user experience across all devices.
  • Search Analytics – Reporting and analytics are critical for measuring the effectiveness of SEO and SEM campaigns. Brands need to track website traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and other key performance indicators to optimize their campaigns and improve their ROI. Analytics tools such as Google Analytics provide brands with valuable insights into how visitors are interacting with their website and where they are coming from.

Use an Integrated Search Strategy to Optimize Your Investments

SEO and SEM can work together in a variety of ways to improve a brand’s online visibility and drive traffic to their website and improve return on marketing spend. Here are some examples of how SEO and SEM can work together to deliver impact through an integrated strategy:

  • Targeting High-Value Keywords: A brand can use SEM to quickly drive traffic to their website by bidding on high-value keywords that they may not yet be ranking for organically, delivering immediate impact. At the same time, they can use SEO to optimize their website’s content and structure to improve their ranking for those keywords in the long term.
  • Boosting Brand Awareness: By using SEO and SEM together, brands can maximize their visibility on the SERP for key search terms. Showing up both in sponsored listings as well as in the organic results builds awareness of the brand. Brands can use ad copy to best position the brand in the minds of consumers based on search intent.
  • Increasing Click-Through Rates (CTR): According to a study by Google, having a paid search ad and an organic listing appear together can increase CTR by up to 96%. Seeing the same brand in the SERP twice builds brand recognition and trust, increasing the likelihood of driving a click.
  • Optimizing Budget Allocation: By reviewing paid and organic data together, brands can identify opportunities to decrease spend on keywords that they are ranking for organically, and re-distribute the spend into high-value keywords in which they aren’t currently ranking. By doing do, they can reduce wasted spend, and further optimize marketing investments.
  • Local Search Optimization: A brand can use SEM to target users in specific geographic locations, while using SEO to optimize their website and Google My Business listing for local search queries, such as “near me” searches.

A Case Study: The Impact of an Integrated Search Strategy

Recently, we used our learnings from years of SEO oversight to launch several successful SEM campaigns for our client—a well-known commercial and residential agriculture manufacturing company.

Our SEO and SEM experts aligned very closely from the onset of SEM campaign activation. This dual-focused approached allowed for knowledge sharing that proved invaluable. The foundation of successful SEO and SEM campaigns is a combination of identifying high-value keywords and aligning them with compelling content/copy. By analyzing data through both an SEO lens and an SEM lens, we shifted how we identified these high-value keywords and what content/ad copy was most engaging. This resulted in increased Click-Through-Rates and higher click totals. In addition to optimizing ad copy and content, we shifted SEM budgets to support keywords that would drive higher value for the brand and supported SEO rankings were needed.

Partnering with our client’s brand teams, we shared transparent results and insights which allowed for proactive adjustments to strategy that aligned with changing business needs. The results have been significant for our client’s business and have influenced their decision to lean further into paid media investments.

Highlights of the impact we’ve made include:

  • Branded SEM Campaigns – Reallocating efficiencies from decreased SEM spend on branded campaign spend to non-brand
    • Spend down 70% YOY
    • Clicks down 57% YOY
    • CTR up 81% YOY
  • Non-Brand SEM Campaigns – increased spend and new strategy drove better efficiency
    • Spend up 56% YOY
    • Clicks up 36% YOY
    • CTR up 89% YOY
  • Overlap – While organic search traffic subsided because of reduced pandemic-related consumer demand, our paid search efforts made up for the declines by drastically increasing engagement and conversion activity.

Useful Tools and Applications

There are many tools available that can help brands with integrated search strategies. Here are some of the most popular ones:

  • Google Analytics – Provides detailed information about website traffic, including where visitors are coming from, how long they stay on the site, and what pages they visit.
  • Google Search Console – Allows brands to monitor their website’s presence on Google search results and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.
  • SEMrush – A popular SEO and SEM tool that provides keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor research, and more.
  • Ahrefs – Another popular SEO tool that provides keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor research, and site auditing.
  • Moz – A suite of SEO tools that includes keyword research, site auditing, backlink analysis, and rank tracking.
  • Yoast SEO – A plugin for WordPress that helps brands optimize their website’s content for SEO by providing suggestions for improving content and metadata.
  • Google Ads – Google’s advertising platform that allows brands to create and manage their SEM campaigns.
  • Bing Ads – Microsoft’s advertising platform that allows brands to create and manage their SEM campaigns on Bing and Yahoo search engines.
  • Facebook Ads – Facebook’s advertising platform that allows brands to create and manage their ads on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms.
  • Hootsuite – A social media management platform that allows brands to schedule and publish content on multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The Takeaway

SEO and SEM are two critical strategies that brands use to increase their visibility and reach their target audiences. While both strategies involve optimizing how a brand shows up in search engine results, they require different tactical approaches . By building an integrated search strategy, and looking at SEM and SEO more holistically, brands can optimize their paid search budgets, and drastically improve the overall visibility of their web presence.