What Is Search Engine Marketing? - A Beginners Guide
by Brian Cotsen

The term Search Engine Marketing or SEM has become very confused with Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. Many online advisors and consultants refer to SEM when they are really talking about SEO.

In reality Search Engine Marketing covers many stages in the process of developing and building your successful online business, one of those stages being Search Engine Optimisation.

Lets look at the different steps in the process of Search Engine Marketing.

 

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What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the bringing together of a number of factors both on your website and on the internet, to effectively drive highly targeted visitors to your website.

There are many factors that have a bearing on how successful your SEM is. In fact for the beginner, and a few who've been at it for years, it can be quite overwhelming.

But fear not, the great news is that you can proceed one step at a time and, once you are confident, can build a highly effective stream of 'ready to sign up', ready to purchase' or just 'ready to read' visitors to your website.

This page will introduce you to each of those essential steps in good Search Engine Marketing.

From each step you can click to more detailed information to get your website performing at it's best.

Let's get started.

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Keywords, Key phrases & Search Terms

Any successful online business, or for that matter any successful website, needs to know it's customers.

More than this, you need to know the sort of words that your customers/ target audience will use when looking for your website.

Why?

Because they will be using the search engines to find you and search engines use the search terms/ keywords/ key phrases that your customers type into the search box, to decide which websites pop to the top of the search results.

Your whole Search Engine Marketing campaign will revolve around the use of these carefully chosen keywords, key phrases & search terms.

To find out about:

1. Why you need to focus on the right keywords, key phrases & search terms.
2. The importance of these keywords & search terms.
3. Some great help in the form of tools, books & guides to find your perfect keywords.

Take a look at my guide on 'How To Choose The Right Keywords & Search Terms'

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Website Search Engine Optimisation

The next step in good SEM is Website SEO. Website Search Engine Optimisation focuses on building and developing a web site that will be highly searchable and rankable by the Search Engines.

It is really necessary to plan and build the website well from the start to avoid unnecessary reworking or rebuilding in the future when you find that your website isn't performing as you'd like it to.

Get it right from the start.

We'll take a look at:

• Choosing you website name effectively including the right domain extension i.e. .com, .net, .co.uk etc
• The importance of the 'Title Tag'
• The relevance of the 'Description Tag' & other meta tags.
• Content and copy.
• Folders & files i.e. the importance of organising your website structure.
• Navigation & linking within your website.
• How 'Tables' or 'Frames' can hamper your SEO efforts.
• Using scripts on your websites and how they effect SEO.
• Who you can turn to for help - Books, guides, courses and services.

For more on understanding Website Search Engine Optimisation & how it fits into effective SEM take a look at my guide to 'Search Engine Optimisation'.

Search Engine Submission

In the past it was necessary to submit your website to many search engines to ensure that they knew of your website's existence and crawled your site. These days it is not so necessary to submit your site individually to search engines, no matter what Search Engine Submission companies may claim.

However there are still some very important search engines & directories that you need to focus on and submit to for you to fully maximise your SEM.

Take a look at my guide to Search Engine Submission to learn more about this important factor in the process of search engine marketing.

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Building Inbound Links & Link Popularity

Any good business will network, that's short for making contact and building relationships with other 'like' businesses or communities that might find your business useful for themselves or their own customers.

Building good internet inbound links is much the same.

The number, quality and relevance of your inbound links plays a major factor in SEM. Working hard in this area can generate good results in the search engines rankings for your website.

Good search engine ranking will create a flood of good quality, highly targeted traffic to your website.

In my guide to 'Building Inbound Links & Link Popularity' we'll look at:

• What the terms 'link' & 'link popularity' mean.
• How to get inbound links to your site.
• How to keep an eye on the successfulness of your link building campaign.
• Things to avoid doing when building your inbound links.

Take a look at my guide to 'Building Inbound Links & Link Popularity' to learn more.

 

Paid For Search Engine Marketing - Pay Per Click Advertising

Although I would always advocate that a website is only truly successful if it works to fully optimise itself 'Naturally' in the Search Engines, that is that the website is built and developed with a view to appearing in the 'Natural' or 'Free' searches, to maximise it's business potential.

I accept that there are good reasons to employ paid for search engine marketing, often known as pay per click adverting or PPC for short.

In my guide to 'Understanding Pay Per Click Marketing' we'll see:

• What PPC is.
• Why you might consider using it.
• Where you can advertise - Search Engine networks that run it.
• Things to consider when deciding if PPC is right for your business.
• Books, guides, courses and services that can help you to both plan and set up a successful PPC marketing campaign.

Take a look at my guide to 'Understanding Pay Per Click Marketing'

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Website Analytics and Traffic Logs

For many years only the biggest of corporations could afford to gather in depth analysis of how their website was performing.

Now, with the advent of free tools like Google's Analytics, any website from a single pager to those with hundreds of dynamic pages can use this powerful tool to see highly valuable data like:

• The true number of visitors to a website
• Where those visits come from - both country and source of visit e.g. direct from a search engine or referred from another website.
• Search terms that they used to find your website.
• Which pages they looked at.
• How long they spent on your website.
• The bounce rate - visitors who leave as soon as they arrive.

This sort of information is absolutely essential to know when you are crafting and perfecting your websites Search Engine Marketing.

Take a look at my guide to 'Using & Understanding Website Analytics' and where you can get more help and advice on understanding and using this valuable information.

 

Onsite Search Boxes or Onsite Search Engines

There are certain tools or facilities that today's website users expect to find on websites.

One of these tools is a 'search box' that helps those visitors quickly find what they are looking for.

Using a search box has some great advantages for those wishing to maximise their Search Engine Marketing campaigns success.

Some of these are:

• Helping visitors to quickly find what they are looking for, and so keeping them on your site for longer.
• Giving the website owner valuable information about 'what' visitors are looking for when they come to the website.
• Helping to identify popular areas of the website.
• Helping to identify things missing from the website.

Take a look at my guide to 'Putting A Search Engine or Search Box On Your Website'.

Time to get planning & building your Search Engine Marketing Campaign.

Feel you need more help and guidance?

Click on the links of each point to learn more about that item.

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