SEO? SEM? It's Not Necessarily An Either/Or Proposition
Posted May 7th, 2009 at 9:19 am by Joe MandeseAsked by Demand Media SEO Director Mike Valentine how many people in the room are interested mainly in paid search, only a couple of people at the Search Insider Summit raised their hands.
Asking the corresponding question – how many are mainly interested in organic search – Valentine still elicited only a couple of raised hands.
Stymied, he asked the audience, “What’s the balance here.”
The audience bellowed: “BOTH!”
Okay, so Valentine may not have understood the organics of the room he was speaking to, but don’t blame him. The reason for his line of questioning is his focus. Or rather, On Demand’s focus.
“We focus entirely on organic search,” he said.
Sounds like a John Wannamaker line to me. Either that, or a search marketing glass half empty.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:58 am
I think the proposition needs to go even further, to include an analysis of the myriad of online marketing opportunities that go way beyond simple SEO and SEM.
At http://web.2wtx.com, we are working with clients exclusively on SEO (improving organic search ranking as part of their web presence strategy), but whenever it makes sense for their business goals, we make sure to recommend online marketing agencies that can help bring the business to the next level (usually not with SEM, but rather a customized package of initiatives involving social networking, permission marketing and a lot more).
May 8th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
After initial embarrassment at my lack of understanding of the audience, in giving it more thought, I wrote up a blog post to attempt to make the case that we should be doing only one and that it probably should be either/or. http://bit.ly/seo-sem Does anyone really love doing both and can you do the work justice if you don't have a passion for both?