Growth Marketing is the process of designing and conducting experiments to optimize and improve the
results of a target area. SEO is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website
traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users.
GROWTH HACKING Vs SEO
At present, growth hacking is a new word for a lot of people. However, the concept of growth hacking has been used for years now by a lot of digital marketers. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), on the other hand, is a widely known concept. The two concepts are often used interchangeably by people yet they are not the same. Here’s a guide that breaks down SEO and growth hacking.
GROWTH HACKING
Sean Ellis came up with the term ‘growth hacking’ in 2010. The practice had, however, been in practice for years before then. Growth hacking is a strategy that companies use to reach a big audience as fast as possible. It’s perceived as a method to hack your marketing strategy simply so you can catalyze the rate at which you achieve your marketing objectives. A growth hacker is an individual who is focused on growth using both conventional and unconventional methods of marketing. Naturally, this has brought about a lot of controversies.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
SEO is the process through which companies make certain changes to their website to make it highly attractive to search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and Bing. Search engines deliver web results based on a web search conducted by a user. To achieve this, the search engine will scan different websites to gain artificial intelligence about the website. This helps them deliver highly relevant results to the user. Organizations use SEO so their websites can rank highly across search engines.
SEO Vs GROWTH HACKING
While SEO is understood to be more of a search engine marketing practice, growth hacking applies to any platform or means that intends to offer a shortcut to gaining online growth. People who use SEO do it with the aim of gaining a high ranking on search engines. Growth hacking, however, is an effort that involves efforts to improve a brand using any technological means available. SEO experts usually adhere to certain practices governed by search engine algorithms so that their websites can gain a high ranking. This might be achieved through the use of blog posts, social media, or backlinking. Growth hackers usually use technology to come up with innovative strategies to gain maximum growth. Some of these strategies they use do involve the use of SEO tools but growth hackers do so much more to achieve their goal.
Another aspect that sets the two apart is the different objectives SEO and growth hacking strategies aim to achieve. While growth hacking involves growing a business rapidly regardless of means, SEO is used to widen the visibility of a website by improving the company’s online reputation. SEO strategies do have growth among their objectives but it’s usually projected for the long run. Growth hackers look for shortcuts to use so as to gain growth very quickly. However, certain SEO strategies will deliver instant results in a very short time depending on certain factors such as the uniqueness of keywords used or the niche the company is involved in.
MEASURING SEO AND GROWTH HACKING RESULTS
Getting a measure on your ROIs from investing in SEO is fairly easy. This is because you can get the answer directly from looking at how much web traffic you have attracted from search engines and social media. Your ranking on search engines will also show you what you need to know about where your website ranks online. Measuring your growth hacking results involves looking at how many visitors visit and leave your website, at which point they do so and why.
Growth hacking and SEO are efficient methods of gaining traffic. However, growth hackers are believed to have a better understanding than the otherwise usual digital marketer. This is because they employ different skills such as coding to implement whatever creative ideas they might have. Regardless, both are quite different and can prove very useful to your business depending on your marketing goals.