Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

What is Search Engine Marketing?

 

Search Engine Marketing is a broader term than Search Engine Optimisation which relates to 'organic' or 'natural' placement, where as SEM includes a wide range of online marketing techniques. The traditional forms of improving as web site visibility include both free and fee based options which are :-

 

• Paid Placement
• Paid Inclusion
• Paid Listings or Directory Listings
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Social Media Optimisation

 

All of the major search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK provide their own form of fee based advertising.

 

Advancements in search engine technologies and ever changing searcher behavior patterns has resulted with additional marketing opportunities for improving a web sites visibility, many of these developing technologies are none fee based and include :-

 

• Audio
• Images
• Video content
• Interactive Advertising

 

What is paid placement?

 

The main search engines set aside areas of their search results page for sponsored links, usually at the top and right hand side of the page. Paid Placement is typically auction based with the highest bid taking #1 position, with the exception of Google who use the bid value and the click through rate to determine who takes the #1 placement.

 

Most of the search engines clearly distinguish sponsored link results from organically displayed results, however some do not.

 

Paid Placement offers quicker inclusion into the search engine results page than organic placement, within hours advertisement links to a website are displayed in the sponsored section of the results page. Fee based Search Engine Marketing is ideal for new business, new products and discounted items where instant visibility is required, although there is a cost associated to this service.

 

There is a high degree of control over the budget, with limits set for as many or as few keyword phrases as you choose, and the setting of maximum daily, weekly or monthly budgets.

The main budgetary benefit is that a fee is only charged when a user clicks the advertisement hence the terminology Pay Per Click (PPC).

 

 

What is Paid Inclusion?

 

Yahoo is the only world wide search engine to offer a paid inclusion service which it charges an annual fee. This service guarantees to include a website within its indexing database and display it results on its organic pages. The paid inclusion service also includes frequent visits by the crawler programs for regular indexing.

 

Although the websites are included within the database, Paid Inclusion does not guarantee high search ranking or placement on the results page.

 

The Search Engine Marketing Paid Inclusion service is beneficial where sites have indexing problems, where the crawlers pass over a site or where content is continually changing and frequent visits by the search engines are required.

 

What are Paid Listings?

 

Paid Listings and Directory Listings were the original fee based advertising portals of the web. The Yahoo Directory to this day remains the first and leading web based directory.

 

On line directories are usually maintained by human editors, where web sites are catagorised by subject. The directory listing usually includes a company name, contact details and a snippet of information relating to the web site.

 

The directory editors decide how to categorise a site, there is no way of knowing where a site will display on the results page or how many conversations you obtain from the link.

 

Developing Marketing Techniques

 

The search engines are continually developing new techniques to stimulate new ways of finding information. As the web continues to evolve Searchers are pushing the envelope of web technologies.

 

The popularity of video technology in the form of Google Earth and You Tube has lead to an explosion of new searching patterns. Search engine are quick to adapt and searchers can now search not just for text information, but limit their search pattern to just images, audio content, video content, etc.

 

Search Engine Marketing allow a websites visibility to be enhanced and display some relevant content whether it be text, images, video content or any future developing technology.