SEO and marketing are both tools used to optimize your website and create higher levels of engagement with your audience.
Simply put they’re both used to increase the traffic heading towards your website.
In order to achieve success, SEO and marketing are some of the most important strategies to master.
Yet only 75% of marketers use SEO.
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It can be difficult to distinguish the difference between the two as SEO and marketing are used in conjunction with one another.
Many people find it hard to see the difference between the two.
People working within marketing have many tools and techniques that they can use to boost traffic to your website.
SEO falls under the wider marketing bracket as any good marketing team should be using search engine optimization to boost your online traffic.
However, SEO and marketing both bat for the same team but have different roles in achieving the end goal.
You may look at marketing being the entire team and SEO being one of a number of players that help get the win.
Yet it is important to understand the differences, as SEO and marketing both have strengths and weaknesses for boosting your content online.
What Are The Differences?
Paid vs Organic Leads
This is probably the biggest difference between SEO and marketing.
SEO brings in a wide range of traffic, it mainly affects organic traffic which is people searching for a keyword and clicking on your website due to its high ranking in search engine results.
Whereas leads through marketing are often paid as they can come from forms of advertisement.
This is often through search engine ads or social media ads which are generally paid for.
Who They Target
Another difference between SEO and marketing is what and who they target.
All your content needs to be created with your audience in mind.
Yet SEO targets the search engine whereas marketing focuses on people.
Think of marketing as the overall visibility and online presentation, whereas SEO can help your content reach higher rankings through search engine results.
Results
Due to who they target means how you determine success from both are different.
Various tools can advise you how well your content will be viewed by search engines.
From SEO you will also know how many organic clicks you receive from search engines.
Through your marketing you will know if it is a success through engagement in your posts.
Approach
The techniques used for SEO and marketing are different in order to achieve their goals.
SEO is a lot more technical, you have certain boxes to tick set out by the search engines and your overall aim is to please the algorithm.
Marketing on the other hand is purely for the people.
The marketing team researches the target audience and makes a content strategy tailor made to attract them.
Your success on the marketing front relies on your creative side to tap into your market.
Your average person doesn’t care what the SEO score is but it doesn’t mean it’s not important.
SEO focuses on the keywords, title tags, backlinks etc.
SEO Holds Foundations For Success
One difference you may not think about is that SEO should be the first thing you think about when you get a website.
If you want to start advertising and marketing your website it first needs to be optimized.
A site that is fully optimized for SEO will hold strong foundations for you to build upon and start your marketing strategies.
There is no point in spending money on advertisements if your site isn’t fully optimized.
However you can’t leave SEO once you start marketing they both need your constant attention.
SEO Is Part Of Marketing
This is why many people don’t know the difference between them as SEO and marketing are part of the same family.
It is just one of a number of tools within the toolbox that attempts to increase traffic to your website.
Where Content Goes
This is the biggest visible difference between SEO and marketing.
Any SEO that you produce is invisible to the audience, they won’t know that a site has been optimized.
All the SEO that is done is only for your website and the content that you produce.
SEO hides between the scary algorithms and coding, yet the marketing is the star of the show.
Whereas within marketing the aim is to get the content that you create out there to your audience.
What is SEO?
SEO is a vital tool for any digital marketer in this current day and age.
SEO’s main goal is to get your content to the top of the search engine results page, whether that be Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.
If you want your content to reach the heights of a 1st page ranking then you need to have great SEO.
SEO stands for search engine optimization.
You need to optimize your content in alignment with what search engines are looking for.
Please the search engines and you’ll be rewarded by appearing near the top of the results.
However search engines hate bad content and lazy SEO.
They can black flag your site meaning you’ll never appear at the top of any search engine.
Search engines are temperamental things, they are constantly updating their algorithms.
Meaning you have to be on top of your content, producing new and up to date content that fits what they are looking for.
SEO helps build organic traffic to your website which essentially means they search for a keyword on a search engine and click on your page.
It is the only real tool you can use to get your website to the top of the results without having to pay ridiculously high ad fees.
If you are optimizing your content and using SEO correctly it can be your greatest asset in gaining more numbers to your website.
Without effective SEO you’re destined for the dark pits of the search engine results.
You want to be on that first page, not many people these days go onto the second page of the results.
What is Marketing?
Marketing is almost every other tactic other than SEO that involves attracting more customers to your website or business.
Marketing is focused on the product and creating and distributing content for your target audience.
You’ll often have a marketing team within a business or be hiring another business for your marketing needs.
Behind that marketing team they will come up with tactics and strategies wi th the vision of increasing your brand awareness and online presence.
Specifically digital marketing is often used when it comes to trying to increase online traffic.
Unlike search engine optimization marketing can often include paid advertisement.
Paid advertisement often includes PPC (paid per click) campaigns and ads which target specific groups and locations.
It’s vital that if you are paying for advertisements that they end up reaching your target audience.
The people within marketing will spend hours researching the best methods in how to get your content to the right people.
Businesses pay people a lot of money for marketing as everyone wants to improve their business.
The marketing team or individual decide what blog post, email, social media post or a page on you put on your website.
With the idea in mind that it is a good fit for your audience and your business.
Marketing’s goal is to create an interest and raise the online profile of your website so that the audience wants to engage and visit your website.
It can be used as a way to build trust and authority to new and existing customers, the more people that become aware of your business the more likely people will trust it.
SEO is used within marketing in order to optimize every post that is sent out.
Marketing is a great method of increasing your online presence by creating quality content which is delivered to your target audience.
Why Is SEO And Marketing Important?
SEO and marketing are both at the forefront of building a successful online presence.
Without them you’ll never attract new customers to your page.
SEO and marketing both work together, but you have to put the effort into producing the quality content for it to work.
Producing effective and quality content will both result in more leads, both organically and through paid advertising.
You might think what is the point of paid advertising when you can get organic leads through SEO.
SEO is only half of the picture, they need to be putting the keywords into a search engine in order for you to stand a chance of them finding you.
However through paid ads and effective marketing you can specifically pick out and target your audience.
Quality SEO and marketing can help you beat the competition and reach new clients whilst keeping existing customers engaged.
It’s like everything in life the more effort you put in more often than not the more you get out of it.
If you cut corners and produce lazy content with poor SEO you’re simply not going to get any traffic to your sites.
The landscape for SEO and marketing is forever changing so everyone needs to be on their toes to move with the trends.
SEO and marketing are the most important things to increase traffic to your site.
They may be different but they work hand in hand to achieve your goals.
Andrew Wright
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