|
A Handy Guide To SEM
Copyright © 2008 Steve Renner
Search marketing or search engine marketing (SEM) is
all about harnessing the search engines for marketing
purposes. For some, it's an obvious decision whether
or not to use search marketing. Others need a little
more convincing. But first, let's understand how it
works...
Well-known search engines display both free (also
known as "natural" or "organic")
results and paid results when someone uses them to look
for something. Each result contains some text (or
in some paid advertising, a image) that supposedly indicates
the nature of the relevant webpage, as well as a link
to that page. The paid advertisements can be specifically
written to advertise a given webpage (i.e. landing page),
while the free results usually incorporate the description
"tag" or specific text from the relevant webpage.
As a marketer, you main goal is to have your web pages
appear in the search engine ranking pages (SERPs) when
your target searches on words related to your products,
services or website content.
Is the very first position on the SERPs the best
position to have? Well, opinions vary. Many search
engine marketers believe that the top spot on the free
listings is the best... but not necessarily believe
that the top spot on the paid listings is as profitable
as, say, a couple of spots down. Ideally, in as far
as the paid listings go, this is something you should
test.
The search engines depict two sets of results -
"organic" results and paid results. The
organic results are based on the search engine's "opinion"
of the relevance of various websites (or, more accurately,
webpages) in relation to certain keywords. The paid
results are essentially ads that companies have paid
for. Since no one exactly knows how each search engine
determines the relevance of a website, optimizing a
site for the search engines - or "search engine
optimization" (SEO) - can be quite challenging.
Accomplishing a superior listing in the paid results
is much more straightforward. For most SEs, the
more you're willing to pay, the higher your listing.
Having said that, Google's formula for determining the
order of the results in its paid listings - known as
Google Adwords - also incorporates your click through
rate. The more people click on your listing, the higher
the click through rate, which in turn, raises your place
in the order. Another thing to keep in mind is that
you can pay every time someone clicks on your listing
or pay on the basis of how many times your ad is displayed.
Paid advertising, in particular pay-per-click, is
a good way to get started in search engine marketing
as you can limit how much you spend, while testing whether
you have an offer, product or service worth promoting.
You can also test keywords, ad copy and landing pages
that can all assist you when it comes to search engine
optimization.
Search marketing is well worth pursuing if you're serious
about building a web-based business. But given the work
involved, that does NOT mean that YOU need to manage
all your search marketing efforts. You can always hire
individuals or companies to optimize your webpages for
SEO purposes, or to run your PPC campaigns.
Author: Steve Renner
Steve Renner is a well known Internet Marketing Expert,
author, consultant and speaker. Get Professional Internet
Marketing training and resources at http://www.imtrain.com
Keywords :search engine marketing,search engine
optimization,internet marketing,internet marketing tips,PPC
Content Provided By : SubmitYOURArticle.com
|
