Search Engine Marketing

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the overall term for a number of different disciplines, although it is at the same time only a sub-group of Internet marketing.

Search engine marketing can be defined as the use of any or all channels of marketing through search engines with the long term aim of increasing some measureable objective, such as sales, acquisitions, or customers.

How is Search Engine Marketing Different to SEO?

Search engine marketing considers all channels of marketing through search engines, although you might only employ some of those on any given project.  Search engine optimisation, on the other hand, is concerned only with the acquirement of quantity and quality of traffic through organic searches (i.e. the actual search engine results themselves).  Search engine marketing might also consider, PPC (such as Google Adwords), media buying in search portals, additional search channels (such as images, or product search), how one might maximise return from traffic gained from search channels, and how one might measure and feedback to improve the performance of such channels (using tools such as Google Analytics).

Typical Search Engine Marketing Activities

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is itself a subset of search engine marketing.  Organic search, as it is also known, is an important driver of high quality traffic when undertaken effectively.  Properly optimised website might source more than 80% of their traffic in this manner, although this figure will vary depending on the variety and use of other channels.

Pay-per-Click Marketing

Google Adwords is the most well known example, but other suppliers include Yahoo (formerly Overture), MSN Adcenter, and Miva (formerly E-spotting).

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a chargeable system such that you pay for the traffic based on the volume that is driven through the channel.  It is similar to search engine optimisation in the sense that the quality of the traffic through this channel is generally high as the users are likely to have been searching for something closely related to your business or services in order to arrive through a PPC channel.

Affiliate Marketing

Some search providers (most notably Google) offer a product search facility, similar to product comparison websites (who arguably can be included as members of this channel).  Such search services allow customers to search and compare products at the search engine, and then click on the product to be driven to the vendor in order to buy.

This process improves customer experience, and benefits vendors with large ranges of products, or those vendors who are generally price-competitive.

Media Buying

Like many websites, some search providers sell advertising space in some form or other.  Many of the smaller search engines sell banner advertising.  Some directory sites sell time-limited "premium" listings.  Traditionally an area of search marketing with a lower ROI than those channels listed above, media buying has somewhat declined in popularity.  However, innovations in media search, such as that demonstrated by the growth in YouTube, have opened dup new opportunities, such as media buying video advertisements in YouTube videos.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is probably the best known example of a web site usage statistics package. It provides detailed and summary information about many aspects of a websites usage, including identifying the sources of traffic, and the technologies employed by website users.

It allows the utilisation of a feedback loop, such that information gleaned on web site usage and traffic sourced can help direct.

Find Out More

If you are interested in utilising search engine marketing techniques to improve the ROI of your website, call us during office hours on 0871 900 8407, or contact us now.