Search Engine Marketing is the term used to describe promotion and advertising that generates traffic from Search Engines. Marketing websites through Search Engines allows qualified traffic to be generated, this is because people have already typed a criteria into the Search Engine. Their criteria entered is queried against the Search Engines Database and relevant websites will be displayed.
The Wikipeida definition of Marketing is:
“Marketing is an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion often referred to as the 4 Ps) for products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations.”
Interestingly, Wikipedia references the the four new P’s that are now more common due to technology making such a strong impact. These new P’s are:
- Personalization: Where people are now receiving marketing messages that are specifically targeted to their needs.
- Participation: When people who use the brand are participating with a real experience that is associated with the brand.
- Peer-to-Peer: Consumers are now able to interact with other consumers, discussing and recommending the brands that they trust and have used. Messages created by the big brands may not be as strong as they used to be, the Internet allows a open platform for the consumer message to come through.
- Predictive modeling: Predicting the outcomes of consumers from the actions that are taken with marketing activity’s.
In the cut-throat world of internet business, one of the most important considerations is how to draw visitors to your website. You could have the most exciting and original content, the most innovative approach and the best features of any site around, but if nobody knows the site exists then it will not do any good.
One of the key factors in becoming a success online is to have your website well placed on the popular search engines and to effectively advertise your product or services. The term Search Engine Marketing (SEM) was originally used to describe paid visibility within the search engines. It has now become a somewhat blanket term to describe Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It encompasses all the activities that involve marketing your website to generate more site visitors.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the practice of matching your content to how you wish to be found. This may involve keyword writing or meta-tags with keyword lists and other more subtle tweaks. There are two things to bear in mind with SEO:
You cannot control exactly what people will search for, and hence you cannot control exactly what the user will find. This means that you cannot decide in advance which of your pages will get the most visits.
There are no ongoing costs involved, only the initial outlay of having your website’s content optimized.
There has been some controversy surrounding certain SEO practices, some of which make the content of a website very unclear or full of spam. The major search engines will penalise a website for overuse of bad SEO practices. If you choose SEO, make sure you get someone who really knows what they’re doing or you may end up with negative search engine positioning results.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
With pay-per-click advertising, you get advertising space on a website, and pay only when somebody clicks the link. While this can lead to increased traffic to your website and increased sales, you must ensure that the provider you choose has adequate protection measure in place against “click fraud”.
Another form of PPC advertising comes in the form of search engine services like Google AdWords. This gives you not only paid inclusion in search engine results but also advertising across a range of subscriber sites. You can even use image, banner and video ads with this method.
PPC Marketing is one of the most flexible internet marketing methods available, in comparison to other website marketing techniques it provides instant, targeted results to boost your customer enquires.
From outsourcing your PPC management to a PPC consultant or internet marketing organisation allows you to benefit from expert experience and qualifications to deliver the best pay per click results possible.
Other Methods
There are other ways to advertise online such as buying advertising space for your banner or video ads on popular websites. Some will offer an advertising model where you pay for space rather than clicks. Others online marketing methods offer pay for impressions, where you pay for a predefined amount of impressions that your advert will be displayed to potential customers. This can be very effective if the advertisement is placed on a complimentary website.
