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What Is Search Engine Marketing (Internet Marketing)

Search Engine Marketing (Internet Marketing), also referred to as Search Marketing or SEM, is fast emerging as a powerful online customer acquisition channel. A lot of companies are now taking Search Engine Marketing very seriously because, done well it has a fantastic return on investment, and has tremendous potential for

• Lead generation
• Increased sales
• Superior brand awareness and
• Better corporate visibility

SEM is all about using the Internet search engines and Directories to deliver targeted traffic to web sites. By targeted traffic, we are really talking about driving prospective customers to your website.

Search Engine Marketing is actually a blend of two core techniques. One is Search Engine Optimisation, also known as SEO or Natural Search or Organic Search. The other being Paid Search related.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) pertains to building and maintaining your website in a manner that would rank it high on search engine results for the keywords that your customers would type to look for your business. High Search Engine Positioning or Search Engine Placement is what you would look for from your SEO efforts. SEO is also called Natural Search or Free search because, once you optimize your site, you don't need to pay to get listed on Search engines. If your sites are optimized well, you will be shown in the top pages of major search engines, which becomes a source of free leads coming to your website. Of course, you need to maintain your website to keep and improve its rank over a period of time. But the search engines do not charge you to be ranked higher up in the engines. The drawback of this approach is, it takes time and a lot of expertise to get your website into the top pages on search engines. After that you need to maintain the position by constantly monitoring and modifying the web pages.
In addition there are link campaigns, directory submissions that you need to conduct to help you boost your page rank and display your link popularity.

Unlike SEO, Paid Search is a quick and effective way of getting your website visible in the search engines and directories. Paid Search has picked up tremendous momentum in the recent times and is showing signs of incredible growth in the "marketing spend" for the foreseeable future. More and more companies are allocating increasing budgets to this relatively new marketing technique. Pay-Per-Click, or PPC as it commonly referred to as, is a mechanism by which companies can "buy" top positions in search engines.

PPC: Pay Per Click or Paid Search

Unlike SEO, Paid Search is a quick and effective way of getting your website visible in the search engines and directories. Paid Search has picked up tremendous momentum in the recent times and is showing signs of incredible growth in the "marketing spend" for the foreseeable future. More and more companies are allocating increasing budgets to this relatively new marketing technique. Pay-Per-Click, or PPC as it commonly referred to as, is a mechanism by which companies can "buy" top positions in search engines.

As opposed to its free counterpart, PPC is an instant way of reaching your customers via the Internet. With PPC, you simply bid for keywords that you think your customers would type in search engine to find your site. If your bid is the highest, your website or your Advertisement will be shown in the top position, giving you instant exposure to your customers. Of course, this is an expensive option, but for companies with the budget and the hurry to get noticed on the Internet, this is a very good option.

Monitoring your Search marketing efforts

1.	Just ranking high on the search engines (paid or free) is not the end goal. Search Engine Marketing is not just about generating traffic. It's all about generating the "right" traffic. You need prospective customers to come to your website.

2.	With Search Engine Marketing, you need to continuously monitor the traffic. You need to analyse the traffic and keep an eye on how many of your visitors actually convert. By convert, we mean is the visitor doing what you want him to do on your website? For example, you may have a retail shopping website: Is the visitor actually buying? Or if you have a lead generation website, is the visitor leaving contact information? If you have want visitors to download certain white papers from your site, is he doing that? You need to track and analyse these statistics to determine if your search engine marketing is giving you the right returns.

Both techniques of SEM require a lot of time, effort and expertise. Done well, SEM could prove to be a boon for the Marketing Department. The key is getting the right Search Engine Marketing professionals to guide you through this complex but rewarding channel and reaping the benefits of online marketing.