SEM vs SEO catfight = Stupid
It all started when David Pasternak started talking about how he thought SEO was becoming less relevant due to what he called SEO Spam, along with some of his predictions that the large search engines would start allocating a larger percentage of the page to paid search.
Then SEO Rockstar, Greg Boser responded with his rebuttal and a pretty nasty attack on Kevin Lee’s company Did-it.
Danny Sullivan, who i really respect and who is usually the voice of reason, jumped in (now I cannot find the link easily from the home page, Danny - you need a search bar!) with his own comments about the value of SEO. Unfortunately Danny used a really silly example for the search term “Danny”. Which is neither commercial or anything anyone would probably strive to rank for….
My thoughts are this -
SEO is neither easy or quick, especially if you are new at the game, do not have a name brand, and don’t have a large budget, SEO is probably not going to help you make money quick.
SEM is a fast,easy way to drive traffic that offers a measurable result with fantastic metrics and tracking.
In both cases, professionals should drive better results than amateurs.
SEO in my experience has always been sold with a hard sell, without offering any guarantee of results, and often with vague promises that are unlikley to be fulfilled.
SEM is also sold with a lot of BS. Some of the SEM firms I have worked with massaged numbers, tried to grab conversions that did not belong to them and practiced otherwise shady techniques.
Both industries have a long way to go before they should be pointing fingers at each other for ethics violations.
SEO is better suited for sites with lots of content and for sites with the ability to attract authoritative back links and that can generate fresh content on a regular basis.
SEM can be used on any site, but it is the best way I know of to drive specific traffic to a specific page that is designed for a specific purpose, provided you have a budget to do so.
These are not mutually exclusive, if you have a site, you can focus on one or the other or both. Depending on the site, the goals of the pages, the time sensitivity, and dozens of other factors affect which makes more sense.
At my company, we have more SEM’s than SEO’s, but the SEO’s we do have work every day to drive free traffic, where the ROI is substantially higher, even if the overall profit is not. The SEM’s drive more traffic, but it is all paid. It requires far more time and effort to manage these programs due to the constant fluctuations.
As a super affiliate, we have made an effort to focus on SEM for one reason “A change in the algorithm’s is unlikely to put us out of business in a single day”. That said, once you have a great site built, SEO’s can further monetize that in a substantial and very profitable way. A better site with bad SEO is probably preferable than a bad site with great SEO. But I much prefer a great site with great SEO. Don’t You?
For example: On a recent day in one of our verticals, Google SEM drove 337 sign-ups for one of our products. That resulted in about a 60% ROI. On the same day, SEO drove 63 sign-ups, but it drove about 50% as much profit as 5 times the paid search traffic, since it was essentially free. I don’t want one or the other, I want both!
This is not an us vs them environment. We are fighting the same war together. The war for traffic and conversions. Ideally if there are 10 ads on the page and 10 natural results on the page, aren’t I better off if I control more of those possible links? if you could have all 20, would anyone not take that?
February 12th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
[...] wrote about how stupid I thought this was awhile back. I still feel that way. Why would you not want traffic from both [...]