Search Marketing
Ask ten people to define search engine marketing and you’ll probably get ten very different answers. So what, exactly, is search engine marketing, otherwise known as SEM? It’s not Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Search Engine Marketing is the ability for ad agencies and their clients, marketing firms, and basically anyone who owns a Website and has a search advertising budget to pay for sponsored listings on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay Per Click) basis. Search engine PPC programs such as Google AdWords are examples of search engine marketing programs. Search engine marketing may be a quick fix to driving targeted traffic to your site but it’s also the most expensive way to get this traffic. That’s because you pay for every single visitor that comes to your site via the search engines, regardless of whether they purchase anything, or even if they clicked on your link by mistake. Tire kickers can get expensive in a hurry.
Search Engine Marketing Advantages
Search engine marketing does have a few advantages vis a vis search engine optimization:
- Listings are virtually instantaneous.
- You can determine your most profitable keywords in a matter of days, instead of months.
- You control the ad copy.
- You can always be the first listing for a keyword if you’re willing to pay enough for it.
- On-page factors associated with SEO are non-existent.
- Simple tracking of search engine marketing campaigns.
- Easy tracking of conversion ratios on each keyword phrase.
- You control the landing page the visitor gets to when they click.
- No need to submit your site to the search engines.
History of Search Engine Marketing
What we now know as search engine marketing began in 2002 with Overture, the first PPC search engine. To be the first site listed for a particular keyword or phrase required outbidding the other Websites who were interested in that keyword. The highest bidder for the keyword or keyword phrase got the first position. As you might imagine, this is much more expensive than natural search engine optimization. However, it’s also much quicker, so many advertisers bought into it. Today, PPC is a $2 billion industry.
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