Here’s a little gem from perhaps the best blog post I’ve seen from the MSN Live blogging team:
It’s an odd entrenchment since PPC and SEO are different ends of a single continuum—keyword marketing. Both serve a common purpose but they serve it in different ways.
This isn’t just hitting the nail on the head. It’s popping it into place with one whack.
The most important thing any company can learn from pay per click advertising is that it falls into a broader category that also includes search engine optimization (SEO). The category is search engine marketing (SEM). The whole point is to use keywords effectively to attract new business by driving those keywords to the proper place in the SERPs. Call it keyword marketing if you must.
Keyword marketing boils down to just one thing: Effective use of the right keywords. Two keys there – “effective use” and the “right keywords”. Effective use really means using SEO and pay per click advertising together in a targeted campaign to reach the right audience through the search engines. The right keywords are the ones that are most profitable. How do you find those? Through research and testing. And when you do it right you’ll know it.