Search Engine Marketing – SEM – Internet Marketing

What is SEM anyway?

Search engine marketing or SEM is generally considered to encompass the overall marketing strategies and services for promoting a product or service via search engines. The term Internet Marketing is probably a better overall description, since other non-search engine methods, such as email and affiliate marketing, are frequently incorporated into the overall marketing mix.

Internet Marketing can include:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO – for organic listings)
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Pay For Inclusion (PFI)
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
• Email marketing and advertising
• Content Advertising (articles and press releases)
• Banner Advertising
• Contextual Advertising (like AdSense)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Performance Analytics

Getting Targeted Visitors is the first step to conversions

What do you really want from your website traffic? You probably want to convert visitors into sales. Finding the best way to reach your potential audience is the first and often most difficult step. Search engine marketing provides several ways to get the targeted traffic you need, especially if you are in a hurry or in a very competitive market.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of choosing the optimum keywords for your products, then enhancing and optimizing your web page’s wording and structure to make the page search engine friendly. This will improve the pages rankings in the natural or organic Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), as opposed to paid listings. See Search Engine Optimization for more information.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click advertising consists of paying a bid price for each “Click Through” to your site from an ad displayed on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) or affiliated sites. These ads are usually displayed on the right side or top of the SERPs when a person enters a search query. Google AdWords and Yahoo’s Overture programs are the major source of these ads. There are several other Tier 2 or 3 PPC programs that can provide inexpensive traffic for certain situations.

Generally the higher the bid, the higher your ad is placed on the search engine results, but this is only half of the equation with some programs. With Google AdWords the “Click Through Rate” (CTR) is the other component of the ranking formula. Selecting the correct keywords or phrases and optimizing the ad title and description are crucial to the success of your PPC campaign. Managing your bid price and monitoring your ad placement is critical to your overall PPC budget. We include all these services in your campaign management program.

Email marketing and advertising

Opt-In or Permission Email marketing can be a very effective method of gaining and maintaining customers. Utilizing direct email and/or email newsletters can help to cultivate new customers and convert existing ones for repeat sales.

Other internet marketing programs

There are several other forms of internet marketing which may fit into your overall mix.

Content advertising is a method of advertising via article distribution and press releases. Publish articles on a topic on which you are knowledgeable and distribute them on the internet and in print. Every article can be tailored to describe a problem and then offer your company as the solution. When your company does something newsworthy, distribute a press release through internet channels.

Banner advertising was the one of the first “Big Deals” in early internet advertising. This type of advertising started out using a Cost Per Thousand (CPM) impression model, where the advertiser paid the publisher a certain fee for their banner to be displayed on a publisher’s site. Although this type of advertising is still in use today, it has almost universally changed to a PPC model.

Contextual advertising is where you display ads related to your content on your site and receive a portion of the ad revenue. The most popular program of this type is Google’s AdSense. These ads are the flip side of Google’s AdWords program (described above in PPC). When you are the "advertiser" you pay for AdWords ads and when you are a “publisher” you display AdSense Ads and receive a share of the ad revenue.

Affiliate Marketing can be used two ways. It can be used to attract visitors to your site via an Affiliate Network or it can be used to generate income on your site by referring your visitors to products being sold on someone else’s site.

Performance Analytics

Performance Analytics is one of the most important parts of a successful Search Engine or Internet Marketing program. Simply put, analytics monitors the performance of your website and advertising endeavors. Much can be learned by tracking a visitor’s path through your site. When utilizing organic listings, paid ads or listings you can track the rate of conversion from different ad campaigns, landing pages and other factors affecting the visitor. This is a crucial step in determining your Return on Investment (ROI), the most important metric of all.

Not sure where to start? Contact us and let us help you with a free overview of Search Engine Marketing options for your web site.