The definition of Search Engine Marketing is this – a form or marketing to users on the Internet through natural search engine result listings as well as paid advertisement placings.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet or Online Marketing done by businesses. This involves promoting websites to enhance visibility through optimization of web content. This kind of marketing requires search engine optimization techniques (SEO) to achieve better rankings in SERP (Search Engine Results Pages); it can also use PPC (pay per click) listings to enhance rankings.
SEM is a multi-billion dollar industry growing everyday; spearheaded by popular search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo there are two types of SEM – organic (free) and inorganic (paid). Free or organic engine marketing is done through usage of on-page and off-page tactics and strategies to optimize a website pages and help engines understand them better.
The nature of internet searches is growing rapidly and become more complex. However, the concept behind SEM is really very simple – when a consumer or business surfer is searching the web for information, that person is in ‘hunt’ mode; this sends signals through search engines to the marketers that the ‘hunt’ is on for information of either a direct or indirect nature. To online marketers, this means that the searcher is going through a cycle of purchasing – either the beginning, which is choosing stage; the middle or comparing stage or end, which is the purchase stage. Through these stages, the searcher is looking for information to ‘digest and act upon’. All this information is made available to the searcher by the engines which pull out classified and indexed data based on relevancy factors. Thus, search engine results are some of the best sources of web traffic, whether paid advertising listings or unpaid search listings.
As we know, these engines use algorithms to calculate relevancy of information requested by a searcher based on keyword optimization. They also take into account the searcher’s device, identity, location, operating system, previous search behavior and others. The more specific a search algorithm for unpaid or paid results, the better the results for the searcher. There is constant incentive and need for improvement and innovation because these engines are in intense competition for the eyes and ears of the searcher.
Marketers must therefore know how to effectively use both organic and inorganic SEM to leverage the power within the highly targeted traffic but also have realistic expectations about the results they hope to achieve with each methodology.
SEM is unique for the following reasons:
• It is a non-intrusive mode and tactic of marketing because it is ‘just-in-time marketing’.
• It originates from voluntary search behavior displayed by searcher – explains why some pages or web content are chosen over others because the searcher chose the particular query that resulted in a particular website being displayed.
Organic SEM is the best practice as it involves creativity, technology, online promotion and usability; by basing searches on relevancy algorithms, search engines are able to optimize content element and content source.
Inorganic or paid listings are increasingly creating visibility in marketers’ minds because of their adaptability to mobile devices.
While some online marketers use ‘tricks’ to improve relevancy of site content within search engines to optimize ‘crawling’, some of these methods do not work at all or may result in negative relevance as search engines can penalize marketers and sites that try to manipulate relevancy and rankings. That means that there is compelling reason to believe that SEO optimization backed by legitimate efforts in organic SEM is the best way to improve website rankings in the long-term.