SEO Vs. Digital Marketing
Whether you have a simple blog or an ecommerce site, you need traffic. The primary purpose of traffic is to build revenue on your site. Generally speaking, you can build traffic through two methods:
SEO
Digital Marketing
Some people distinguish SEO and Digital Marketing are two distinct field, whereas some people include SEO as a part of digital marketing, and digital marketing is used in a boarder sense. SEO is often regarded as a part of digital marketing. When you do SEO, you will be able to rank your website or a business on search engines. The primary aim of search engine ranking is to rank high for high traffic keywords. When you are able to rank on the top search results for a keywords that get a lot fo search queries, you are likely to get a lot of organic traffic on your site. If SEO is not working, you can try search engine marketing. To become successful online, what do you need, SEO or digital marketing, which of these methods bring traffic easily?
SEO Vs Digital Marketing
SEO is a short form of Search Engine Optimization, which is a technique to make your website, web pages or online business appear on the search results when some searches for your niche. This include searches on search engines like Google as well as searches on social media platforms, online marketplaces, etc. For instance, if someone searches for keto diet and if you have a site related to keto diet, your website or web page should appear on Google or Bing search engine result pages. Likewise, if you are selling ebook writing services on FIverr and someone searches for ebook writing services on Fiverr, your gig should also appear on Fiverr search results. Or, if you are selling cutlery on Amazon, your product should appear on Amazon search results. SEO is not just about ranking on search engines but also ranking on other websites where you are selling your products and services.
All forms of marketing done on the internet, or let’s say online, is digital marketing. It includes everything from running ads on various websites to utilizing Facebook and Google Ads, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, etc. If you promote a product through your blog post, it is digital marketing. If you place a link in a forum signature, or email signature, it is digital marketing.
Digital marketing is a common term used to refer to the marketing methods that are used on the internet Some of the popular forms of digital marketing are social media marketing, search engine marketing, email marketing, etc. It is not easy to answer how to do digital marketing as a lot of marketing methods come under digital marketing, you need to be more specific such as how to do social media marketing, or how to do email marketing, in order to get an appropriate answer. When you are marketing on the internet, you need to understand how the platform that you are using works. For instance, there are a lot of social media sites and each of these sites has its own unique features, and in order to market on these platforms you need to understand the platform you intend to use. For example, marketing on facebook is very different from marketing on twitter
Utilizing SEO and Digital Marketing for Traffic
The purpose of SEO is to rank on searches for high traffic keywords, keyphrase or search terms so that you can get organic traffic to your site, webpage or online business. Frankly speaking, ranking on searches is really hard, getting traffic from searches is even harder as your site should appear high for multiple high-traffic keywords. If your site appears on 10th page or if you rank #1 for keywords that no one is searching, you will not get traffic.
Digital marketing is comparatively easier than SEO. However, this does not mean everyone will become successful with digital marketing and be able to generate traffic and revenue. In fact, just like with SEO many people also fail with digital marketing. Some people start running ads without knowing the target audience. If you focus on spending money on ads as your effort for digital marketing, you might fail. Well, running ads is a part of digital marketing, but you also need to focus on building followers, subscribers on the platforms that you intend to use for digital marketing.
You can sell only when the thing you are trying to sell reach the potential buyers. For instance, if you want to sell games, your game should reach gamers so that they end up buying your game. Therefore, if you have an online store and if you want to generate sales, people need to find your online store and the people you reach should be interested in the product you have on your online store. In other words, you need visitors, without visitors, there won't be any sales. There are two main ways to get visitors: search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing. SEO helps your store show up high in search results, where as digital marketing puts your store in front of target customer, thus bringing in visitors.
Digital marketing strategy includes many marketing methods, but one of the best digital marketing strategies is social media marketing. On social media, you can market for free and free marketing will work as long as you have a lot of followers. You can also pay for ads. Paying for ads will help you reach people outside your followers. Generally speaking, the average conversion rate is 6 percent , which is considered good. But if you need more profit, you will have to boost your conversion rate.
How to Leverage Online Marketing for Business Growth
Digital marketing means marketing on the internet through the platforms like social media, search engines, emails and newsletters, blogs and websites, etc. The alternative to digital marketing is advertising in newspapers, radio, and television, billboards, etc. Facebook has 2.9 billion users. Do you think a newspaper has 2.9 billion readers? Do you think 2.9 billion people are actually watching TV channels, even the most popular like MTV? Therefore, the primary benefit of using digital marketing is your reach is huge. you can reach a large segment of society. You can run ads on facebook or google even with $10, can you advertise in a popular newspaper with just $10? Thus, the second benefit of digital marketing is low cost. Other benefits of digital marketing include, easy to use (you can run your campaigns from your home, you don't have to walk to the advertiser's office to run ads just like you will be doing with TV ad or newspaper ad.
Whether you have an offline or online business, promoting it online can significantly contribute to its growth. Offline businesses can attract more customers through online promotion, while online businesses can expand globally. This is possible because internet users are growing every year and reaching customers through online marketing is easier than traditional marketing. However, success in online promotion requires a strong foundation in SEO and digital marketing. These two strategies will help you reach your potential customers as well as help you to build your brand and generate sales.
If you have a website and if the primarily aim of running a website is to make money, you need regular traffic. Your website will earn only when you have consistent flow of traffic. You can drive traffic to your website through SEO and digital marketing. The purpose of doing SEO is to get high on search engine result page. That will happen only when you target high traffic keywords on your SEO strategy. Digital marketing can be free method or paid method. If you post on your social media page, it is free marketing, however, if you boost your post with ads, you are basically doing paid marketing. If you want instant traffic, advertising is a good option, but it can be expensive.
There are multiple ways to do digital marketing and the most effective one is social media promotion.It is very important to improve your business visibility through SEO or digital marketing. You will have to combine SEO and digital marketing to reach potential clients. In the digital age, online platforms like Facebook and Google come as a great help for online businesses. You can build a page for your business on Facebook and reach customer through advertising and content sharing. Likewise, you can also list your business on Google Business and build your reputation and rank on local search.
Do Not Take Shortcuts for Search Engine Optimization
No matter what you do, if you want to make money online, you need SEO. Your SEO efforts will take a long time to show the results, sometimes your SEO strategies might not be enough to put your website on the first page or even 5th page of search engine result page. In a desperation, you might start using Black Hat or Grey Hat tactics.
Black Hat SEO tricks might seem tempting because results start showing pretty soon, but they're like building a house on sand. Black Hat is not long lasting. Search engines will eventually penalize you, sending your website crashing down. Therefore, play it safe, focus on high-quality content and organic growth. Patience is key!
One of the major issues with doing your own SEO is being unable to rank on the first page of search engine result page for high traffic keywords. If your website or web page does not appear on the first page or within first 3 pages for the most searched keywords, you will not receive any traffic. This happens when your SEO strategies are not not enough to rank you on the first page. However, if you are SEO expert, you can certainly do it
It is really important to check how your website is doing in search engines. The process of analyzing your SEO performance is referred to as SEO audit or site audit. Doing SEO audit means you check your site’s performance on search engines. You will have to use multiple toos to check your website SEO score. One such tool that I find very useful is Semrush's Site Audit tool. These tools scan your site and tell you what needs fixing. Google Search Console is also a useful tool. This tool from Google gives you even more info about how your site is doing in search results. It shows you what keywords people are using to find your site and if there are any problems Google sees with it.