Online marketing and SEO are really trying to achieve the same results – they just go about it differently. Some will argue that SEO is part of an online marketing strategy whilst others will argue the opposite, online marketing is part of an SEO strategy. It doesn’t matter which argument is right, what is important is to remember they do go hand-in-hand.
A good example is any advertising copy, press release, or social media marketing engagement. SEO is still important. When writing a press release, keywords and website links do matter. Keywords are also important when engaging socially, or writing advertising copy. If you engage in coupon marketing for example, coupons do appear in search results.
That then becomes an important issue. If anything you do online has the potential to appear in search results, it should be optimized for those search results. This includes using keywords effectively and promoting the right pages on your website. There are many small business owners who complain of failed marketing campaigns (and coupons are again a good example here). In reality, the campaign may have been well thought out in marketing terms, the failure coming from the lack of any SEO involvement.
There is a simple approach to take when it comes to online marketing and SEO. Marketing to helps to sell your business, your brand, and your products. SEO helps to sell your marketing strategy. Having the two working hand-in-hand often marks the difference between success and failure, more so for small businesses since they don’t have the leverage of big dollars and a much broader customer base.
When putting together an online marketing strategy, do you stop and consider how an effective SEO strategy can help you sell the campaign? Do you want components of your marketing strategy to appear in search results? Most business should be answering yes to both of those questions – and that’s where online marketing and SEO converge. They each rely on the other for success.
