SEO: above or below the line?

Most companies have become aware of the value of search engine optimisation and are actively engaging in this activity to give themselves a competitive advantage. A question that often arises is: which budget should the costs associated with SEO be allocated to? This post provides suggestions as to whether SEO should be classified as above the line or below the line and to which budget it should be allocated.

For the uninitiated, let’s first explain the difference between above and below the line.

Above the line marketing refers primarily to all marketing activities which you plan and book through an advertising agency or where advertising material gets printed, displayed or broadcast on an independent publisher’s platform. Most types of advertising activities can be classified as above the line. Traditionally it never requires (or seeks) any response or interaction from the audience and is principally used to create awareness, build brand recognition and loyalty.

Below the line marketing activities refer to all those where the communication medium used is not owned by an independent company and where there is no need for an advertising agency. Email and direct mail campaigns are good examples of below the line marketing. Public relations activities also fall into this category, although many organisations separate this activity too.

So where does SEO fit into this? Many organisations allocate SEO expenses to their digital marketing budget which ultimately falls under their advertising budget. The basic purpose of SEO is to increase traffic to your website from internet search engines. It’s purpose is NOT to create awareness, build brand recognition or loyalty. Those tasks should be achieved by your website. You can also not pay a search engine for higher natural search rankings, this can only be achieved by your site design, keyword use, inbound and outbound links and various other elements.

This means that SEO expenses should ultimately not be reconciled to your advertising budget. So, should they be allocated to PR?

Public relations is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its target publics. Once again it seems like SEO does not match this definition either. But it does. In order to see why, we have to take a deeper look into how you optimise search engine rankings.

Search engines examine a variety of factors in order to rank sites in terms of importance. These include the specific words you use, how often you use them as well as the number of inbound and outbound links to and from your website. To get higher up search engine rankings, companies spend a great deal of time building links to other relevant organisations. These organisations will only build links with companies they know and trust, therefore it is the SEO expert’s role to build relationships with them. This is exactly what PR is but in this case its all done online.

Recognising that SEO is a PR function should have a profound effect on how you plan your budgets. Allocating SEO costs to your advertising budget can have a negative effect on brand loyalty and eventually on your search engine rankings as well. How so?

Lower advertising spend = less chance that people will search for your company or product by name.

Less advertising could reduce the number of online conversations surrounding your brand. Get more people talking about your brand online and your search engine rankings will improve.

Other website owners will be more willing to link to yours if they have heard of you somewhere before and believe that other people have as well.

Obviously, advertising activities must be well planned and implemented to achieve these benefits.

It is therefore generally easier for companies with stronger, more established brands to improve their search engine rankings. However, neglecting SEO will eventually reduce their competitive advantage and brand value as more competitors consistently outrank them on search engines.

SEO and advertising are becoming more and more dependent on each other, but their costs should not be allocated to the same budget.