SEO and SEA are two different online marketing strategies. Both are designed to improve the visibility of your website in search engines. SEO (search engine optimization) is aimed at organic ranking. This means that your site will appear at the top of the results list for a desired keyword without you having to pay for it. SEA (search engine advertising) means that you place paid ads: Then your website will appear above the normal hit list. SEA ads - for example Google Ads - usually look exactly like normal, non-paid hits. However, Google marks these paid hits with the label "Sponsored". Both measures can complement each other. You can find out how here and in the summary at the end of the article.
If you want your website to appear high up in the organic, unpaid search results, you need a number of SEO measures. For example, the use of keywords on your site is key. (Here you can find a detailed Keyword research guide). You should optimize all content and images with regard to the desired keywords. Search engine optimization also includes technical SEO. This means that your website must be technically designed in such a way that search engine programs (crawlers) can read your site well and rate the overall quality positively.
How do SEO and SEA influence each other?
If you use SEO measures to ensure that your website performs well, this can result in you having to place fewer paid ads (SEA) to achieve the desired number of website visitors. SEO can therefore help to reduce the cost of paid ads. Search engine optimization is a measure that can require a relatively long lead time to be effective. In terms of the cost-benefit ratio, however, a sustainable SEO strategy is much more favorable than permanently placing paid advertising.
Conversely, a successful SEA strategy can help to improve the SEO of a website. When you place ads, you collect valuable data about website users or click behavior. Advertising tools such as Google Ads give you a precise overview of which target group you can best reach with which keywords and with which ads or landing pages. You can use this data for your SEO strategy. Especially if you still have little success with unpaid hits, paid ads can help you to become visible in the first place. In this case, SEA increases your brand awareness and ensures that more customers land on your site. This higher flow of visitors ensures that Google classifies your website as more attractive overall and can therefore also lead to better visibility in the unpaid results.
Examples of the interaction
Although SEO and SEA are different approaches, they still have an impact on each other. Here are some examples:
- Keyword researchSEO and SEA are both based on the use of keywords. A good SEO strategy involves the selection of relevant keywords to be used in the content of the website. These keywords can also be used in the SEA campaign to place ads targeting specific search terms.
- Quality factorsThe quality of a website is an important factor for both SEO and SEA. If a page has a high quality score, it is likely to perform better in organic search results. It will also receive a higher quality score for ads in SEA campaigns.
- TrafficA successful SEA strategy can help to increase traffic (visitor flow) to a website, which in turn can improve the success of SEO measures. If a page generates more traffic, Google considers it to be particularly popular and ranks it higher in the organic search results.
- Cost per clickThe better the website ranks in organic search, the less you have to pay for SEA. This is because a well-optimized website has higher quality scores and better ad positions in the search results, which leads to lower costs per click.
Overall, SEA and SEO can help each other to improve the visibility of the site and collect data that is valuable for further online marketing. While SEA means investing money permanently, SEO is a strategy that is cheaper in the long run as it relies on unpaid search results. However, SEO requires a certain lead time. In order to achieve this goal, additional investment in SEA can make sense, especially for new sites.
Briefly summarized:
- SEO and SEA both aim to increase the visibility of your website
- SEO is a measure to improve the ranking of your own website in the unpaid search engine results
- SEA includes paid advertisements that look similar to unpaid hits
- SEO and SEA interact, for example, they help each other to attract visitors to the website, collect data and test keywords
- SEA can positively support SEO measures and vice versa
- SEO is the cheaper strategy because you don't have to pay for advertising on a regular basis, but SEA can be a good addition, especially for new websites in the early days