Search engines are nothing new and as marketers we are very aware of the prominence search plays in the lifestyles of consumers. We have worked for years to perfect our search strategies and optimize our websites. We have collectively built various search marketing platforms such as paid search into mature marketing channels. Even now, more than 10 years after Google emerged from a Stanford dorm room, internet search marketing continues to build at a mind-boggling pace.

While the 100 billion searches in the past year is a truly impressive number, the real news is that this represents a 40% increase since last year. And just so you don’t think that the old dog is getting run over by the new pups, Google continues to set the standard seeing a 58% rise in executed searches over the past 12 months.

Forrester put in context how important search will become in a related report last week predicting that spending on online marketing will top $55 billion in over the next five years (up from $25 billion this year). Search marketing will continue to see the largest investment – rising to $31 billion in 2014 from $15 billion in 2009 – dramatically outpacing the spending on other online channels.

What does this mean to marketers? Several things:
• Search will remain the preeminent online marketing channel.
• Competition for consumers via search will increasingly require a strategic approach.
• Targeted search, such as mobile and local will continue to build.
• Related online marketing channels will continue to gain prominence in the integrated marketing mix.

If search is part of your marketing mix now, bravo. Get used to it; it will become even more important to you. If you haven’t yet engaged you have your work cut out for you. You need to catch up to a fast moving train that continues to build steam. Take a deep breath, grab a strong cup of coffee and get to work.

There are approximately 4000 beans in a pound of coffee – 100 billion beans would yield 25 million one-pound bags. It took one cup of coffee and 7 google searches to produce this post.

Today, I run a business that offers a solid blend of brand strategy, public relations, interactive/web, multicultural and creative/design services. But these areas of focus are blending, mixing, converging together at the speed of light. As clients’ needs become blended from traditional marketing to online visibility, so must we, as a service provider, be able to meet those needs. A PR advisor who knows how to pitch a story must also know how to develop a creative piece to support the story. The web developer must understand how a site will work to support the client’s online reputation. Social media is all the rage and is typically PR-driven, but the marketing strategists need to know when it makes sense to employ, as well. Print designers have to add online and interactive design to their repertoires.

As I see it, this is much more of an opportunity than a challenge. As long as we continue to focus on the client’s brand first, identifying their true distinction in the market, the rest follows suit. I’d much rather have a team with blended capabilities than individuals with a single focus. After all, why would someone hire a website-only company without considering the need for that site to be optimized online, to support lead generation and online social sentiment? We can address all of those things with a single brand voice.

Our challenge is to stay one step ahead of the speed of change and ensure that we are using all of the tools in the marketing and PR toolbox to ensure our clients get the results they need. As those tools evolve and new ones are added every day, we must stay abreast of them so we can do what we do best—create marketing and PR results as efficiently and effectively as possible. It’s not easy to stay current, but it sure is a fun, challenging and energizing time to be in this industry.

There is no doubt that a well-optimized website and a dedicated effort to continually manage and expand the effort yields results. High natural or organic rankings can produce almost magical results; but a #1 organic ranking in Google, the holy grail of search marketing, is nearly as difficult to achieve as the one sought by Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, to say nothing of the effort to keep it.

There is also little doubt that paid search, primarily pay-per-click (PPC) – dominated by Google’s AdWords product – can yield terrific results while stoking the marketer’s desire for quantifiable results and near-instantly scalable engagement. Nothing says “return on investment” like real-time cost of conversion tracking, but the intricacies of sophisticated PPC advertising can be overwhelming.

So, back to the original question: What is more effective, SEO or PPC? The answer, yes, lies in employing both in simultaneous synergy. A combined effort, executed cooperatively, will yield better results than employing one strategy or the other.

For example, a paid effort typically starts with a sophisticated keyword research process that is usually more involved than a corresponding organic effort. Most importantly, the paid effort will reveal high-value keywords that the organic effort can leverage to focus its content generation and optimization efforts. Segmentation of users based on entry points could help hone an effort to focus paid traffic on revenue-producing activities and organic traffic toward more informational content.

Similarly, consistent messaging that spans key optimization points and directly relates to paid ad development can have a tremendous effect. In the case of ad group landing pages, a key element of the paid effort, organic optimization techniques can increase the quality rating of the campaign, which leads to better positioning and lower bids.

Combined analytics and reporting can also yield benefits and allow practitioners of both strategies to learn from each other.  Performance of particular paid campaigns might reveal content holes that the organic effort should address. Popularity of organic content can make difficult bid determination decisions easier.

Often, multiple agencies or internal departments have divided responsibility for different search objectives. Sometimes, a predisposition toward one channel or the other segments the effort. There is a case to be made for a synergized search effort that leverages paid and organic techniques to produce better results.  The prudent marketer who engages a search effort in his/her online plan will leverage the whole channel.