HYBRID SEO
The Future of Search Engine Optimization Marketing
The days of pure organic SEO are long gone. In today’s search engine landscape, you need to be using a variety of tactics to stay competitive. One such strategy is Hybrid SEO; which is similar to traditional SEO but includes paid advertising, organic SEO, aspects of local SEO, conversion optimization, and social media. In this article, we’ll discuss what hybrid SEO means for businesses, how it differs from other types of online marketing, and why you should consider adding it to your strategy.
"Hybrid SEO is preparing for the future of online marketing instead of reacting to it when it arrives."
Table of Contents:
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What is Hybrid SEO?
Hybrid SEO is an emerging form of marketing that combines traditional SEO with paid advertising, social media, and many other components of the digital marketing spectrum. The idea behind Hybrid SEO is to promote a company or brand by utilizing all of these online marketing channels, rather than focusing on just one or two. A Hybrid SEO campaign can include:
- Organic SEO
- Paid Promotion
- Content Marketing
- Local SEO
- Social Media Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Conversion Rate Optimization
This ensures greater visibility for your business across various channels without having to wait months or years for results, while also methodically establishing your brand online for continued and consistent future growth.
How does Hybrid SEO Work?
Hybrid SEO seeks to unify organic search engine optimization with paid advertising and social media marketing to gain immediate results while still building a future proof brand.
Hybrid SEO works by combining the tried-and-true search engine optimization processes with paid digital ads, social media marketing, and other forms of online marketing, to gain the advantages of a top-notch organic search engine optimization campaign plus the instant visibility and brand recognition of paid ads.
How Does Hybrid SEO Differ From Traditional SEO?
Traditional SEO is still very relevant, but Hybrid SEO seeks to supplement that with paid online advertising and social media marketing.
The main difference between traditional SEO and Hybrid SEO is the focus on the short term versus the long run, respectively. Traditional search engine optimization methods always stress building a brand over time through steady content creation and organic links. On the other hand, hybrid marketing campaigns are designed to raise visibility in a short amount of time and then continually build upon that success with additional marketing efforts.
Why Should You Invest in Hybrid Marketing?
There are three main reasons the Hybrid SEO approach is superior to traditional marketing:
- It requires less time to implement, and thus pays for itself faster, than a purely organic search engine optimization campaign would.
- You can use it to quickly accomplish specific company objectives that would otherwise take years of organic search engine optimization work or paid advertising, and it can even be applied to specific services or products.
- Numerous streams of data. You have much more data to work with, both in terms of SEO and marketing ROI.
The hybrid marketing approach is not a replacement for traditional SEO, but it serves as an excellent compliment that can boost your rankings quickly while building up your brand presence over time. The hybrid marketing method is also more relevant in today’s online world where social media and other channels play such a key role.
What Are The Benefits of Hybrid SEO?
There are numerous benefits to using the hybrid marketing approach, including:
- It’s a proven model. Hybrid SEO is based on a combination of best practices from digital marketing and traditional search engine optimization. This allows for more rapid results than purely organic SEO would provide, while still allowing your site to rank high in the long term.
- It is more cost-effective. Search engine optimization, social media marketing, paid online advertising and many other forms of digital marketing require separate fees. This can get expensive fast if you utilize all of them, but by focusing on just one or two at a time while using hybrid SEO, a company can save money in the long run.
- It allows you to create a truly integrated online brand . Social media, paid advertising and personal branding all contribute to the overall image of a company.
- It’s more flexible than traditional SEO methods . You can apply hybrid search engine optimization strategies on an individual product or service level, for example, and then use those results as “proof” for other new products or services.
- It provides data across multiple marketing channels . By using hybrid SEO methods at the same time as social media campaigns, personal branding efforts and paid advertising, a company can seamlessly integrate the results from each into its overall business strategy. This creates a more comprehensive picture of your brand’s online presence.
What is Traditional SEO?
Traditional SEO is a form of marketing that relies on organic traffic from search engine results pages and social media to attract visitors without the need for any paid advertising. Traditional SEO is generally broken down into three categories:
- On-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the content and layout of a website to improve its rankings in search engine results pages.
- Off-page SEO: This form of marketing involves creating links between websites with similar or complementary products, services, or audiences.
- Technical SEO: Technical SEO refers to the way a website is constructed and configured to rank higher on search engine results pages.
What is Organic SEO?
Organic SEO is a form of traditional SEO that focuses on growing traffic to your website through search engine results pages without the need for any paid advertising. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing rank webpages based on relevance to a query. Organic SEO helps boost a company or brand’s presence in search engine rankings by building its online visibility through the use of keywords and links, among other tactics.
An example of how hybrid SEO can supplement organic is to run paid campaigns for specific products, then use the increased traffic and contact information to gain organic SEO results for other related products.
What is Paid Ad Promotion?
Paid promotion is the use of paid ads as a marketing strategy, typically across social channels or on search engines. Paid promotion can be an effective way to generate traffic and new leads for your business in the short-term.
Paid promotion is not organic SEO, so the results will not stand the test of time. What Hybrid SEO will do is get you the traffic and page authority you need quickly, then use content marketing and other channels to keep that high level of visibility for months or years.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the use of content on your website and social media channels to attract new visitors. Content can take many forms: it could be
- Articles and blog posts
- Videos
- Infographics
- Ebooks
- Whitepapers
- Case studies
- Webinars
- Slide presentations
- Downloadable PDFs
- Checklists
- Quizzes
- Surveys
- Free software or tools
- Courses
- Picture and project galleries
- Animated GIFs
- Interactive website elements
- Podcasts
- And more…
Inbound Marketing is a form of content marketing focused on creating valuable pieces of information that will be published across a variety of channels, including social media. Inbound marketing accomplishes several objectives at once: it encourages new visitors to find your website via search engines or social media advertisements and provides information that prompts them to make purchases.
With a hybrid approach to inbound marketing, one can use paid advertising to increase traffic, then run SEO and content-based marketing campaigns to convert as many of those visitors as possible into customers. There are many hybrid strategies that can supplement an inbound marketing campaign.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a type of SEO that is dedicated to optimizing a business for local searches, specifically customers in a certain geographic location. This type of SEO is extremely effective for location based businesses like restaurants, retail stores and professional services.
A business may invest in this type of marketing to increase their visibility in their geographical area to potential customers and increase the odds of making a sale.
Local SEO is the perfect channel for a hybrid SEO approach. A business can create and optimize their Google My Business listing, then use paid maps advertising to place that listing at the top of Google Maps, or Google’s local 3-pack, putting your business right in front of your ideal customer in your city, or any city you choose!
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a type of content marketing that is used to establish a brand’s presence on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It can be an effective way to link your company’s profile across multiple platforms and connect with potential customers at the same time.
Social Media also allows a business to showcase their products and stay on top of what customers are saying about said product. Another benefit of using Social Media for marketing is the fact that it allows companies to advertise or promote themselves 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
An example of a Hybrid Social Media campaign is promoting your products on your social media channels while also promoting them on your website, Google My Business, YouTube, guest posts, influencer blogs, and paid opportunities to gain maximum exposure with one integrated campaign.
What is Video Marketing?
Video marketing is another form of content marketing that can be used to promote a business. In essence, video marketing uses videos hosted on a business’s website, Youtube, Vimeo, or social media channels to attract new visitors. Videos are a great way to supplement an article or blog post on your website because
They can help a visitor understand, or visualize, the main points of your post in a dynamic way, and
They keep your visitor on the page longer, sending valuable time-on-page and engagement signals to Google increasing its authority and SEO value.
A video marketing campaign is not just about the videos you create; it’s also about how you make those videos available to people who may be interested in them.
A hybrid approach to video marketing may include creating a series of videos on YouTube about your product and then advertising those videos to prospective customers through Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Banner Ads, YouTube, and many other various channels.
The advantage of using a hybrid approach to video marketing is that it allows you to connect with more people where they are, and in many different ways at once.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing (also known as email newsletters or e-newsletters) is a type of content marketing that uses email to deliver company updates, product information and promotions directly to your customers’ inboxes.
To make the most out of email marketing, you need to ensure that all subscribers are opted-in by requesting their permission, rather than sending unsolicited emails. Opt-in email lists are usually better for conversions, and they help prevent your business from being blacklisted or penalized by the search engines.
Hybrid SEO is a great strategy to increase your subscribers. For example, you can use a combination of blog posts, social media posts, paid campaigns, and videos on YouTube and other platforms to advertise and generate new interest in your newsletter. As you increase your subscribers, you increase your reach, you increase your opportunities to communicate or sell to your prospects.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is a process of improving the amount and quality of leads, sales, or other actions taken by users on your site. This can be done through increasing the time someone spends on your site, the number of pages visited per session, or by improving your page load time (which can decrease your bounce rates).
To understand conversion optimization and how to do it well, you need to know what problems are preventing users from converting. You can identify these obstacles as well as other opportunities not obvious at first, by reviewing recorded website visitor sessions and heatmaps that are available through conversion optimization software.
Traditional and Hybrid SEO drive people to your homepage; conversion optimization helps convert those visitors into customers.
A hybrid approach to conversion optimization would be identifying opportunities (or obstacles), and implementing video, additional content, social proof, trust badges, guarantees, reviews, or even paid strategies to improve user experience, trust, and ultimately conversions.
What is an Example Of a Hybrid SEO Campaign?
The team at Inspired Marketing & Design has been implementing a Hybrid SEO approach for our clients for years with amazing success. To demonstrate the effectiveness of Hybrid SEO, we have launched a real time case study journal to share our process and the results. We are so confident in the viability of hybrid SEO, and the inevitable success of this campaign, we are sharing it as we go for all to see.
(more information coming this week…)
