Search marketing or search engine marketing (SEM) is all
about harnessing the search engines for marketing purposes.
For some, it's an obvious decision whether or not to use
search marketing. Others need a little more convincing. But
first, let's understand how it works...
Well-known search engines display both free (also known as
"natural" or "organic") results and paid results when
someone uses them to look for something. Each result
contains some text (or in some paid advertising, a image)
that supposedly indicates the nature of the relevant
webpage, as well as a link to that page. The paid
advertisements can be specifically written to advertise a
given webpage (i.e. landing page), while the free results
usually incorporate the description "tag" or specific text
from the relevant webpage. As a marketer, you main goal is
to have your web pages appear in the search engine ranking
pages (SERPs) when your target searches on words related to
your products, services or website content.
Is the very first position on the SERPs the best position
to have? Well, opinions vary. Many search engine marketers
believe that the top spot on the free listings is the
best... but not necessarily believe that the top spot on
the paid listings is as profitable as, say, a couple of
spots down. Ideally, in as far as the paid listings go,
this is something you should test.
The search engines depict two sets of results - "organic"
results and paid results. The organic results are based on
the search engine's "opinion" of the relevance of various
websites (or, more accurately, webpages) in relation to
certain keywords. The paid results are essentially ads that
companies have paid for. Since no one exactly knows how
each search engine determines the relevance of a website,
optimizing a site for the search engines - or "search
engine optimization" (SEO) - can be quite challenging.
Accomplishing a superior listing in the paid results is
much more straightforward. For most SEs, the more you're
willing to pay, the higher your listing. Having said that,
Google's formula for determining the order of the results
in its paid listings - known as Google Adwords - also
incorporates your click through rate. The more people click
on your listing, the higher the click through rate, which
in turn, raises your place in the order. Another thing to
keep in mind is that you can pay every time someone clicks
on your listing or pay on the basis of how many times your
ad is displayed.
Paid advertising, in particular pay-per-click, is a good
way to get started in search engine marketing as you can
limit how much you spend, while testing whether you have an
offer, product or service worth promoting. You can also
test keywords, ad copy and landing pages that can all
assist you when it comes to search engine optimization.
Search marketing is well worth pursuing if you're serious
about building a web-based business. But given the work
involved, that does NOT mean that YOU need to manage all
your search marketing efforts. You can always hire
individuals or companies to optimize your webpages for SEO
purposes, or to run your PPC campaigns.
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Steve Renner is a well known Internet Marketing Expert,
author, consultant and speaker. Get Professional Internet
Marketing training and resources at http://www.imtrain.com
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