19. Conclusion

Development of the internet and the increasing number of users and daily searches proves the fact that search engine marketing has become and it will remain to be an important part of modern marketing. It has a strong potential to reach people, as internet has become a main source of information, and it generally makes things easier, allowing online shopping, booking, etc. Whether you are a local plumber or an international clothing brand, you can find a lot of benefits from being present online. 

First of all, having an online presentation will help you get discovered. There are differences with organic and paid reach, but the goal is to allow people to find you, to contact you, and eventually become your customers. Increasing the reach of your products or services is the ultimate goal you want to achieve with search engine marketing, regardless if you use organic or paid reach to achieve this goal.

SEM in modern business

Modern businesses see search engine marketing as a necessity, since running a business without being focused on online success is very risky and it might lead to negative results. It is an area marketers must explore and use to leverage the search engine ranking.

Not only does search engine marketing help you reach customers, but the data obtained from search engine marketing can help you with product analysis and assessment, evaluation of global business strategy of a company, product development, etc.

Each chapter of this e-book is focused on one aspect of search engine marketing, which will all help you understand the basics of search engine marketing and how to develop an approach based on your company profile and your business goals.

SEO or Paid reach

If you are wondering which marketing approach to use, search engine optimization or search engine marketing, the answer is: It depends. It depends on both your business and the budget you are able to assign to search engine marketing. Even if you are satisfied with organic reach and your website is usually ranked at the top of the search results page, you could still expand the reach even more by using paid options. Paid reach also allows you to develop a new approach and experiment with new strategies which can help you with exploring the market and discovering new opportunities for your business.

You need to have in mind that paid reach has no influence on your organic reach. Therefore, even if you have high quality score and successful AdWords campaign, this is not an indicator that your organic reach is going to improve.

However, there are a lot of benefits you can get from paid reach, which affect your website and can indirectly improve SEO. Those include large number of visits, reviews and perhaps even links shared by the users who discovered your website through paid reach. You are not able to predict these things and put them as goals with paid reach, as those are being achieved only indirectly through running a successful campaign.

You should also have in mind that organic reach represents a cumulative effort which you have invested in your website, but the results are more likely to last longer. Developing an SEO strategy is a long-term process, during which you are constantly trying to improve the ranking, which you are going to maintain only if you keep staying involved. On the other hand, paid reach provides immediate, but short-term results as your ad will be shown and you will get benefits only during your campaign. This is why this type of marketing is considered to be effective with realization of short-term goals, such as increasing sale. Indirectly, paid reach can help you with branding and recurring customers, which will then have positive influence on your business, even after the paid campaign is over.

Start with SEO

It is recommended for you to start with SEO in any case. Improving organic reach is the first task you should focus on, as it is cheaper and easier to handle. You should follow the suggestions from the chapter on SEO (chapter 13) in order to improve different aspect of your website, and you should also explore the keywords, a topic which has been elaborated in a separate chapter (chapter 6). Focusing on both on-site and off-site SEO will maximize the results, but if you are asking yourself where to start, you should first focus on your own website, and work on on-site optimization.

You need to understand SEO as a continuous work, a long-term project that is going to require your systematic work and regular involvement. Effective SEO strategy has to be up-to-date with current development, as this is the area which changes constantly.

Finally, even though you have to think about search engines when working on optimization, in the end, your visitors are those who will share your content, who will buy from you, who will recommend you. Therefore, you ultimately have to focus on people and offer content that will help you create respectful online authority. Besides the benefits in terms of positioning, this kind of approach will also help with link building, which will further increase the influence of your website, and eventually the influence of your brand.

AdWords or Bing

Google has more daily searches than Bing, which makes AdWords program more appealing to the advertisers who are interested in reaching a large number of online users. As said before, both of these programs offer a great opportunity for search engine marketing and you should explore them both in order to determine which one might be the one to use.

Search engine marketing is a form of marketing, and as such, it has to be based on a well-planned strategy. You have to start with setting up the goals and choosing the approach that will help you achieve those goals. As a company or an individual you have to understand how both, organic and paid search, work in order to determine which one to use in your search engine marketing strategy.

In the end, the strategy and the approach you are going to develop in order to promote your business through search engine marketing depends on your business and the overall goals you want to achieve. Both organic and paid reach can be adapted to be a part of any promotional strategy. For example, if you see a great value promoting your ads in the search result, you will pursue this type of strategy, while you will not invest time and effort into promoting your business through Display Network (part of paid reach), or link building (part of organic reach).

This is why search engine marketing requires a constant work. You need to be aware of what is providing best results for your business, in any given moment, as this is the only way you can be sure that the strategy you run is in fact profitable.