The 50/15 Rule: Balance SEO and SEM Spending

Online and mobile marketing has proven itself as a legitimate and necessary part of any marketing strategy. U.S. companies spent $32 billion in online and mobile advertising in 2011, up 22% from 2012, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Almost half of that spending is on paid search, also called Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is growing even faster, up 27% over 2010. Note that the IAB’s totals do not include the billions of dollars spent annually on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), where companies try to rank highly in search engines’ unpaid, or organic, search results.
It makes sense that so much money is spent trying to get in front of people when they are searching – it’s rare that consumers announce exactly when and what they want to buy, but that’s what they do when they go to a search engine and do what we call aAs a custom content creation company, we have many SEO and SEM agencies using our service, so we have some unique insights into best practices for getting a website to the top of the search results, whether in paid or organic results. Clearly, for our clients, content is a key element of how they approach SEO and SEM campaigns. The search engines decide which web page ranks at the top of their organic results for a particular keyword largely based on the content on the page. Of course, they also look at domain names, meta tags, links and other factors. What is interesting is that increasingly, the content surrounding a link to a webpage is studied by the search engines to make sure the link is a true “vote” for that page to be listed highly in the organic results. As a result, we think every SEO expert would argue that content is crucial to an SEO campaign. commercial search. Whether they are asking about cheap flights to Las Vegas, Father’s Day gifts or wristwatch repair, they are announcing their intention to buy a product or service…now.