Search Engine Marketing Revealed

Want a massive amount of web traffic coming to your website each day? One of the best ways to generate such traffic is via search engine marketing. Search engine marketing, also known as "SEM" or simply search marketing is about attracting people who search on particular words ("keywords") and phrases ("keyphrases") in the search engines to visit your website. Don't worry - it's not as scary as it might sound!

When someone users a search engine (SE) to look for information or something to buy, they type in words into the search form and up comes a list of sites and descriptions. There may one, two or literally hundreds of pages of these listings, known as search engine ranking pages (SERPs). There are paid results and free results.

In most cases, running an effective search engine marketing effort means having your listing appear at the top of the organic results, which appear on the left-hand side of the pages of the major search engines. However, it may be just as beneficial to have your ad appear in the first few listings in the paid results too. These appear on the right hand side of the pages of the major search engines. At the very least you want to be on the first page of results. And that, in a nutshell, is one of the major aims of search engine marketing.

SEM involves two distinct fields:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO); and

2. Paid advertising

SEO essentially involves trying to achieve a high "authority" status for your website, for the keywords or phrases your targeting. This, in turn, translates into a higher rank in the SERPs. The search engines' each use complex formulas to calculate the relative authority of different websites and webpages, and rank them accordingly. Such formulas are not publicly known, so search engine optimizers or "SEOs" use various tactics that they think will lead to a high position in the SERPs. Additionally, since the search engines sometimes change these formulas, SEOs have their work cut out for them. Because of the rather peculiar nature of SEO, it appeals to a certain breed of person - often someone who likes solving enormous puzzles!

Pay-per-click advertising is a matter of bidding for certain keywords or keyphrases in order to achieve a higher listing. However, depending on the search engine in question, it's not quite so simple as the higher the bid, the higher your listing. Google, for example, also bases the paid rankings on the click through rate achieved by a given pay-per-click ad. This rate is the percentage of clicks on your ad divided by all ad views (based on how many instances of the ad are viewed). In simple terms, the higher your bid price AND the higher your click through rate, the higher your paid listing. So... it's possible to bid less than someone else and still have your ad appear higher, just because you get more people clicking on your ad. In the case of pay-per-impression advertising, you are paying for each impression or view of your ad.

Buying paid listings is a great way to test product and service offers. That's why many people advocate that you master PPC before concentrating on optimizing your organic listings. However, there is also an art and science to running an effective pay-per-click campaign. Choosing the right keywords, writing effective ad copy, and having an effective bidding strategy are all essential to pay-per-click success. And don't forget, just like any form of advertising, you want to make sure that you end up with a positive return on your investment. It's one thing to get a lot of clicks... it's another thing to get clicks that convert into sales.

Some Internet marketers believe SEM is difficult or "technical". But, in reality, becoming adept at SEM is largely a matter of learning the various strategies, testing different approaches, and putting in some work. The reward - lots of traffic and customers - certainly justifies the effort!