Discipline
Search (SEO and paid search)
Being found when people look: organic search and paid search ads.
Search means being found when people look: in organic results earned with useful pages, and in paid ads bought per click. It reaches people at the moment they ask, so it suits goals with a measurable action, such as a lead, a sale or a booking. Search harvests demand rather than creating it: it collects the interest that advertising, PR, creators and content build elsewhere.
Start with the 101Search (SEO and paid search) 101: the whole pictureHistory, how it works, where it is used, what it costs, the rules, its limits and when to choose it, with every claim sourced.Read the 101Need a hand with this discipline? Ask members who practise it.
What matters when choosing
- Evidence that people already search for your category, your problem or your name.
- Paid search for results within weeks, and organic work in parallel for the long run.
- Ads and landing pages good enough to earn better positions and lower prices.
- Measurement on cost per acquisition and return on spend, not on clicks.
- Incrementality tests on brand-name terms, which often attract people who would have arrived anyway.
Questions to ask vendors and agencies
- Which queries bring customers rather than visits, and how do you know?
- How will you separate searches for our brand name from new demand in your reports?
- How are you adapting to answers shown on the results page that take clicks away?
Common mistakes
- Cutting brand building to fund search, and shrinking the demand that search depends on.
- Trusting last-click credit for brand terms instead of testing what they really add.
- Shortcuts such as mass-produced pages or borrowed domains, which search engines' spam policies target.
What it is good at
- Reaching people at the moment of intent.
- Paid campaigns that can start, stop and change every day.
- Organic pages that keep working long after they are published.
What to watch for
- It only reaches people who already ask.
- Popular queries are bid up, and organic positions are never guaranteed.
- Answers shown on the results page reduce the clicks that pages used to earn.
How it is bought and priced
Organic search pays no fee to the engine: the cost is people, content and technical work on the site. Paid search is bought in auctions, usually per click, where the quality of the ad and the landing page affects the price; agencies usually charge a monthly fee or a share of the spend to run it.
Typical disciplines Search (SEO and paid search) Content marketing Digital advertising Advertising (TV, radio, print, cinema)
Platforms that fit (5)
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- SemrushCovers Search (SEO and paid search)Strong match100
- Google Analytics 4Covers Search (SEO and paid search)Strong match100
- AhrefsCovers Search (SEO and paid search)Strong match100
- Google AdsCovers Search (SEO and paid search)Strong match100
- Amazon AdsCovers Search (SEO and paid search)Strong match100
