What’s The Difference Between SEO and Online Marketing?

SEO and Online Marketing platforms are as different as apples and oranges. However, these two platforms work together for a drastically more critical benefit of growing an online business. Although some people use these two terms interchangeably, each platform serves its own unique purpose. Therefore, it’s essential to understand that if a business focuses more on one platform than the other, then it doesn’t benefit the company’s success or its online campaign.

However, there are many ways in which SEO and Online marketing function similarly, and today they work in tandem. People hire an SEO company to optimise a website so that its position in search engine result pages or SERP is improved. They will use a wide variety of strategies and SEO best practices to achieve higher rankings in the SERPs. SEO is a subset of online marketing, and many would define an SEO specialist as one who integrates Online Marketing and SEO best practices to achieve their goals

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the more technical half of the two platforms, but its primary purpose is to bring the company’s website to the front page and preferably the first link in the search engines. Page Rank depends on SEO; therefore, the company should focus on articles with related content and proper keyword density.

 

Another SEO factor is the Social Signal, which is also vital since it puts the user in charge of Page Rank. Every time a user ‘Tweets’ or ‘Likes’ a specific article or blog, it affects the page ranking. Although Old methods like backlinking still works to build a network back to the company’s original website or blog. Frequent blogging with quality content also affects Page Rank, and it creates a productive online presence for interested readers.

 

Online Marketing

While SEO is the technical side filled with keywords, links, and page content, Online Marketing is the more human aspect of the two platforms. Online Marketing plays a huge role in a company’s success since it primarily focuses on interaction with people through Content Writing and Social Media. Never before has social media played such a significant role in a company’s success as it does today. Through websites like Facebook, a company can freely extend its reach and market its product in a matter of seconds.

Besides, furnishing quality content through online forums is yet another successful Online Marketing strategy since it extends the company’s brand to all the readers of the website. Other approaches, such as sending sales copies via email, work just as well to reach new and existing customers. Lastly, ‘Call-to-action’ also makes people want to read a website, click a link, or buy the stuff the company offers for sale.

 

Integrating Online Marketing and SEO 

There is no doubt that the SEO world is in a state of constant change. Search engines like Google & Bing are constantly updating their methods of ranking sites, and the SEO specialists are obligated to keep up with the trends. One of the more recent changes in SEO strategies is the incorporation of Online Marketing. The new term that has emerged from this transition is Search Marketing Integration or SMI. As search engines continue to perfect the techniques they use to look at a site and measure content quality, brand sentiment, and overall relevance, it can be observed that search is increasingly overlapping with other marketing strategies. This is enough to completely revolutionise an organisation’s method for approaching sales, marketing, PR, branding, and pretty much everything else. Marketing your website successfully requires the integration of SEO best practices and marketing strategies.

 

Main Differences between SEO and Online Marketing:

If we already know what SEO and Online Marketing are, then let’s find out what the difference between them –

1. SEO Is One of the Tools of Online Marketing

The first significant difference between SEO and Online Marketing is that SEO is one of the tools used in Online Marketing. If you want to start marketing for your website, you should first start with SEO. A site that is correctly optimized for search engines will provide a good foundation for all other marketing activities.

2. Online Marketing = Paid Traffic vs. Free Organic Traffic = SEO

The second difference is how your website gets traffic. SEO tries to make the site appear on the highest positions in crawlers like Google for specific keywords. The higher the page is shown in the search engine results, the higher free organic traffic is, while Online Marketing focuses mostly on paid traffic and uses PPC advertising (Facebook Ads or Google Ads) and other marketing tools dependent on the company’s budget.

3. SEO Cost vs. Online Marketing Cost

Another difference between SEO and Online Marketing is in terms of finance. In this regard, let’s take a look at SEO first.

SEO Cost:

If the website is optimized correctly, it will start appearing in the top positions in search engine results, and unpaid organic traffic will increase. The only other expense is having to pay an SEO Specialist every month.

Online Marketing Cost:

However, Online marketing does not stop at paying for specialist services. The cost of Online Marketing can reach as high as a few thousand a month. For example, if a website appears on the first page of Google, or if a company’s ad appears on Facebook, this means that all paid ads and ad campaigns strongly rely on the company‘s budget. Once the company’s budget is fully depleted, advertising stops, and the company loses online traffic and the benefits from being positioned on the first page of Google.

Now you have a complete understanding of these two platforms; hence now your company can take advantage of the numerous marketing strategies available with us and expand its online presence.

For more information on developing a proper SEO and/or an Online Marketing Campaign, contact Digital Sales. We will get in touch with you and make your website rank higher.