What Is Search Engine Marketing (sem)?

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By strict definition, search engine marketing refers to strategies that are aimed at boosting a company’s web-based visibility, meaning that it shows up near the top of search engine results (i.e. Google or Yahoo). This is typically done a couple of different ways: through paid placement, like Google’s Pay per Click model Adwords, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Paid Placement

This particular model is also referred to as “Pay per Click”. Google Adwords dominates market share for Paid Search, largely due to its performance and reputation as the “go to” Search Engine for the past decade. Advertisers are driven to Google Adwords due to the dominant market share; they want to be where the searchers are. In this way, Adwords attracts advertisers the same way as Nielson ratings attract advertisers for radio and TV. However, searchers are much more targeted in Paid Search because ads are displayed based on the searchers keyword entry. So the advertising is much more targeted than that of traditional media advertising.

Paid ...
... Search therefore requires a very targeted and well defined skill set and set of processes to be effective:

1. Keyword Research †know what your target market is searching for.
2. Ad Creation †efficient use of words and wording to provide relevancy ad copy targeted on the keyword used by the searcher.
3. Landing Page Design †to optimize the percentage of visitors who actually convert (buy, sign-up, subscribe, etc) vs. the total number of visitors that merely clicked on the ad.
4. Monitoring and Testing to optimize the 2 most important non-financial metrics in Paid Search, (a) Click Through Rate (CTR) and (b) Conversion Rate.
5. Financial Analysis †understanding on a 24/7 basis, the cost, the revenue and ultimately the ROI of the entire Paid Search Campaign as well as each component of the Campaign.
6. Conversion Optimization †to use the information (stats) and financial analysis to optimize the campaign; globally and granularly (keyword by keyword, ad by ad, landing page by landing page).

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is NOT an advertising process. It is an online marketing process that is primarily focused on increasing organic visibility, generally speaking, on the 3 major search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing. There are countless processes and sub-specialties that are essential to SEO. However, there are two main tracks to SEO … (1) Onsite Optimization and (2) Offsite Optimization.

As the name implies, onsite optimization, involves important SEO elements that can be created, edited and controlled directly on the webpage or website. These elements include URL selection, Page Titles, Page Descriptions, metadata, meta keywords, sitemaps, W3 Validation and much more. While all of these on-page elements are important, they only form the foundation for good SEO and search engine visibility. By themselves, you are very unlikely to gain top page positions for even moderately competitive keywords.

Offsite Optimization is the most important piece of SEO to achieve top rankings. This set of processes is completely dependent on the weekly generation of new content in the form of articles and blog posts mainly; but also videos, podcasts, Press Releases, etc. The content provides the fuel need to generate a level of authority as compared to other web sites in your field. The content is professionally optimized and syndicated to potentially 1,000’s of relevant locations including article or publishing sites, Press Release sites, Social Media Sites, Social Bookmarking Sites and much more. This syndication process generates Backlinks; Backlinks are the most important factor search engines use to differentiate websites in their ranking systems. Backlinks, particularly the quality of backlinks is what ultimately determines your authority level compared to others.

If this sounds like sophisticated stuff, it is. It is also in a constant state of evolution as the web evolves.

Search Engine Marketing is all about being found and seen by the right people and for the right reasons. Paid Search deals with Advertising on the pages where searchers land. SEO achieves the coveted natural listings simply by earning those positions in the eyes of the search engines.

Are you ready to be more visible today? Contact us for an initial consultation. It’s free!