Search engine marketing

In Internet marketing, search engine marketing, or SEM, is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs). SEM strategies include:

Search engine optimization attempts to improve rankings for relevant keywords in search results by improving a web site's structure, content, and relevant backlink count.
Pay per click advertising uses sponsored search engine listings to drive traffic to a web site. The advertiser bids for search terms, and the search engine ranks ads based on a competitive auction as well as other factors.
Paid inclusion feeds listings into search engines, typically comparative shopping sites like Nextag.
Social media optimization promotes by placing ideas within online communities with the hope that they will spread virally.
Video Search Marketing attempts to promote a business by strategically placing short video clips on websites such as YouTube to be picked up search engine spiders or promoted through internal rating systems.

Search Engine Marketing Objectives

SEM is most important for the businesses who sell goods and services online or who use their websites to generate sales leads. Other goals for SEM including: building a brand, enhancing reputation with investors, generating media coverage, and driving traffic to physical business locations. Organizations such as non-profits, universities, governments, and political parties also use SEM to promote their ideas.

History of Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing originated in late 1990s and was the result of dramatic increase of websites on the Internet. As users started using Internet more and more a need for tools to find information more efficiently was required. Those "tools" evolved into what we know as Search Engines.

Internet Marketers have noticed the trend of wide-spread search engine use and have responded by attempting to beat search engine algorithm's to get websites that they were optimizing into top SERPs. Search Engines, on the other hand, have responded by improving their algorithms to minimize the abuse by irresponsible search engine marketers.

As the "search engine optimization" game evolved Pay Per Click programs such as Google AdWords (year 2000) and Yahoo! Search Marketing (year 1997, formerly known as Overture) have entered the arena. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines. Agencies specialising in search engine marketing and Internet advertising have also emerged in the late 1990's.

Ethical considerations

Many forms of search engine optimization only amount to ensuring compliance to search engines' guidelines for inclusion and removing any technical barriers that might keep the website from reaching a proper ranking. However, other methods of search engine optimization such as keyword spamming are often viewed as "gaming the system" and considered unethical. See the article on search engine optimization for details.

Displaying advertisements or sponsored results in an area visually separated from the algorithmically determined results is generally considered ethical. However, some search engines allow the ranking of a website to be influenced with a payment and provide little or no indication to the end-user that this has happened. Since the search engines give the impression or claim that the rankings reflect the relevance or popularity of the websites, this is often seen as unfair or deceptive.

Be careful of websites who claim guaranteed search engine positioning. There are three common traps to be mindful of when shopping for search engine positioning services.

The FIRST misleading guarantee is the empty promise of, "We guarantee you top rankings or we will continue to work on it until we do." In most cases, this simply means that they will continue to sit on their hands and do nothing. Why? Because they already have your money. They are not really interested in renewals, they are very happy to simply take your initial fee. There is no real risk to them.

The SECOND misleading offer is when a company promises you first page listings on Google and/or Yahoo, but fail to tell you that they are talking about “sponsored listings” and not “natural listings." They charge you a set monthly fee and end up spending only a tiny portion of this fee on traffic from sponsored listings.

The THIRD and most common misleading guarantee is the "money back guarantee." This includes a guarantee that a certain percentage of your target keywords will receive top rankings within the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. However, read a little deeper in their service agreement and you will see that their list of "major" search engines include seven or more small and outdated search engines which are very easy to generate top rankings in. This is the catch. While they will verbally focus on Google and Yahoo over the phone, the small print reveals the truth. They end up easily meeting their guarantee and you are still no where to be found on the search engines that really matter.

Only the search engines themselves can truly guarantee top placement, and for ethical reasons, they can only do so legally through sponsored listings. Searching for a reliable Search Engine Marketer should rely on sample success stories and client referrals.

Paid inclusion has not caused much concern. However, it has been suggested that search engines should improve the speed they pick up new websites and that paid inclusion services thus create a conflict of interest that discourages improving service levels across the board.