Why You Need To Know the Difference Between SEO and Digital Marketing

The main difference between SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and digital marketing lies in their scope and focus. SEO specifically concentrates on improving website visibility through organic search results by optimising content and enhancing website elements to rank higher on search engines. On the other hand, digital marketing encompasses a broader range of strategies beyond SEO, including paid advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and various online promotional tactics aimed at promoting a business across digital platforms. 

Believe it or not –

• 93% of online experiences start with a search engine (Forbes)
• 53.3% of all website traffic is achieved from organic search (BrightEdge)
• SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media (BrightEdge)
• Google uses algorithms with 200 ranking factors including page loading speed, mobile usability, reading level, domain authority, user-friendly layout, and more (Backlinko)

There is no question whether or not SEO should be used. A business should additionally deploy many other strategies of digital marketing to compete today. With evolving online trends, it is becoming harder to drive profits through a single marketing component. And, the lines do get blurred. That’s why it is important to understand the difference between SEO and digital marketing. 

SEO and Digital Marketing: What is the Difference?

To put it simply, an SEO strategy is that part of digital marketing focusing on continuously bringing organic traffic to your website. SEO best practices cater to optimising web pages and link building from other websites back to the main business website. Unlike digital marketing, it is not necessarily involved in the promotion of businesses through paid advertising, social media campaigns or other offline means. 

Planning an SEO Campaign

An SEO campaign is a long-term strategy that involves improving website health, analysing competitors, keyword research, creating content that is informative and shareworthy. It consists of the following steps.

• Auditing your website for finding out broken links
• Determining which pages draw the most traffic
• Keyword research with all variations including long-tail keywords and those with high search volume that come closest to your business niche
• Publishing keyword-optimised content that aligns with page-ranking factors
• Link building from sites that are authoritative
• Tracking results – click-through rate, web page dwell time, organic traffic, etc

Planning a Digital Marketing Campaign

Before businesses reap the benefits of digital marketing through multifaceted online and offline strategies, creating a typical campaign outline with the following is required. 

• Offering value proposition 
• Determining the buyer persona
• Creating both short- and long-term goals 
• Choosing relevant and the best digital marketing strategies that will be effective to meet the realistic business goals
• Evaluating the budget for paid ad campaigns and allocating budget for each strategy
• Developing a calendar
• Tracking results and performance

Strategies of SEO  

There are three commonly used strategies of SEO that together contribute to generating free organic traffic. 

• On-page SEO

This type of SEO strategy refers to optimising website content. Targeting keywords with thorough keyword research for your business niche helps in creating or refurbishing content that is valuable to the target audience. These keywords are included in specific sections such as headers, meta descriptions, content body and URLs, etc. Keyword optimisation is done so that Google (or other search engines) are able to understand what the web page is talking about. Based on that, Google ranks the page. Linking other high-authority but relevant pages of the same website are also part of this SEO strategy. On-page SEO is one way to rank higher on search engines and eventually drive leads and profits. 

• Off-page SEO

An off-page SEO strategy is used to gain traction externally from other websites. It primarily revolves around link building where other sites publish content referring to your web page. Using external links builds authority, and it is an important ranking factor, even if it is not direct, according to Google’s recent guidelines, like Experience Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness and Helpful Content Update. 

Do look into the on-page SEO and off-page SEO debate, when planning to dive deeper into the differences and their contribution to an overall SEO strategy.  

• Technical SEO

Technical SEO deals with enhancing the user experience with a website. When some web pages take longer to load, the website opens up fine on desktop but is not mobile-responsive or the website is difficult to navigate, this SEO strategy is essential. 

Other than these three main SEO strategies, there are a few more that fall under the realm of SEO marketing. 

• Local SEO – Used for targeting the local/regional market.
• Voice Search SEO – With the rise of Google Home and Alexa users as well as voice search on smart devices, this type of SEO strategy is gaining popularity. 
• Enterprise SEO – This strategy is necessary for large scale enterprise websites and not ideal for a small business.

Strategies of Digital Marketing 

The commonly used digital marketing strategies include the following. 

• PPC – The acronym for pay per click advertising, it is a paid form of marketing where marketers buy traffic for their website to place ads on search engines. Examples can be Google Ads and Facebook Ads. 
• Mobile Marketing – Using a combination of marketing messages on social media, SMS, and other mobile apps. 
• Social Media Marketing – Reaching out to the target audience on relevant social media channels, interacting with them, solving customer queries, building customer loyalty, etc to earn likes and shares. 
• Affiliate Marketing – The type of commission-based marketing that works externally from the business and influences customers to buy products or services. 
• Influencer Marketing – Collaborating with influencers to promote the product or service.
• Email Marketing – To stay connected with existing and potential consumers by personalising communication.
• Content Marketing – Choosing the right formats – video, written, graphic, audio, etc., and providing valuable information to make the buyer’s journey smooth from the awareness stage to the buying decision stage. 
• SEO Marketing – Optimising website to rank on search engines for driving revenue. 
• Offline Marketing – Utilising paid offline channels such as television, radio and magazines to convert offline users to online.

Choosing Both SEO and Digital Marketing for Business Growth

Integrating SEO and digital marketing is essential for small businesses, and large ones too, as at the end of the day, promoting the brand also requires website optimisation for visitors to find the site (ideally, on the first page of Google). Having a clearly defined SEO strategy can boost your digital marketing efforts and vice versa.