The Surprising Impact that Blockchain will have on Search Marketing

Most notably, blockchain technology has made a deep groove in the following industries:

• Finance
• Real estate
• Voting
• Insurance
• Loyalty cards
• Identity industries
• Smart contracts

Now, the marketing industry can expect to see some benefits from blockchain. So, should search marketers prepare for a revolution in the industry? We’d say so. Especially when this report by Epstein claims that blockchain has already made its way into over 30 marketing applications.

Let’s take a look at how blockchain is set to impact SEM and SEO services.

What is Search Marketing?

Traditional search marketing encompassed both SEO (search engine optimisation) and SEM (search engine marketing). The difference between SEO and SEM can be confusing, so let’s break it down first:

• SEO: The process of earning traffic to your site through unpaid methods. This is all about boosting your ranking on search results through organic methods, like keywords and good, consistent content marketing.
• SEM: SEM is the process of earning traffic to your site through paid methods. Things like Google AdWords and paid search listings help to get site visitors quickly. Results are more instant than those you’d get with organic SEO, but it’s best to combine both strategies if you want to see long-term benefits.

Nowadays, we tend to use the term SEM (or search marketing) to refer only to paid marketing strategies.

In the marketing industry, central authorities like Google Display Network and Facebook connect website owners with advertisers. Google is used to place ads onto websites and onto search results, to benefit both parties financially.

Essentially, it’s the middle-man that permits that level of trust in digital transactions such as this. So, when we add blockchain into the equation, what changes?

How is Search Marketing Impacted by Blockchain Technology?

Benefits of Blockchain for Search Marketing

Following in the footsteps of a growing number of industries, the marketing industry can expect to see multiple benefits from the ongoing adoption of blockchain. The main attractive points for the revolutionary technology are:

1. It will reduce online fraud. The internet is rife with fraudsters claiming to be someone they’re not. Blockchain will reduce this dramatically. As a distributed ledger, it will provide complete transparency for all parties involved in a digital transaction. They’ll have no need to share their personal details and they can count on it that every party will honour their side of the agreement.
2. It will save money. Advertisers and website owners will no longer have to pay Google to act as a middle-man. Instead, they can communicate directly and blockchain takes care of everything and ensures that the agreement is valid.

Other aspects of the marketing industry that are likely to be shaken up by blockchain are content marketing, influencers, analytics, remarketing and more. With such dynamic applications that are moving at cut-throat speed, don’t be surprised to hear of more sectors taking on blockchain in the near future.

Blockchain is about to disrupt the entire marketing industry. Are you prepared? Very soon, your marketing campaigns, websites and SEM strategies will have to be shaped around the consideration of blockchain technology.

In these early days of this exciting technology, small to medium businesses might be unsure about how they can take advantage. If that’s the case, consult blockchain experts that can transform your digital services and offer an unparalleled experience to your clients.

One Stop Media offers blockchain services to forward-thinking companies around Australia.