Search engine marketing 53
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by
increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual
advertising, and paid inclusion.[1] Depending on the context, SEM can be an umbrella term for various means of
marketing a website including search engine optimization (SEO), which "optimizes" website content to achieve a
higher ranking in search engine results pages, or it may contrast with SEO, focusing on only paid components.[2]Market
In 2008, North American advertisers spent US$13.5 billion on search engine marketing. The largest SEM vendors
were Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.[1] As of 2006, SEM was growing much
faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[3] Because of the complex
technology, a secondary "search marketing agency" market has evolved. Some marketers have difficulty
understanding the intricacies of search engine marketing and choose to rely on third party agencies to manage their
search marketing.History
As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people
find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click
programs offered by Open Text[4] in 1996 and then Goto.com[5] in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name[6] to
Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers
through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000
through the Google AdWords program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers[7] for
search engines. In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an
alliance. The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and
Europe in February 2010.[8]
Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the
advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and
advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan
in 2001[9] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search
engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and
individuals.SEM methods and metrics
There are four categories of methods and metrics used to optimize websites through search engine
marketing.[10][11][12][13]
1 .Keyword research and analysis involves three "steps:" (a) Ensuring the site can be indexed in the search
engines; (b) finding the most relevant and popular keywords for the site and its products; and (c) using those
keywords on the site in a way that will generate and convert traffic.
2 .Website saturation and popularity, how much presence a website has on search engines, can be analyzed
through the number of pages of the site that are indexed on search engines (saturation) and how many backlinks
the site has (popularity). It requires your pages containing those keywords people are looking for and ensure that
they rank high enough in search engine rankings. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in
their ranking algorithms. The followings are major tools measuring various aspects of saturation and link
popularity: Link Popularity, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap's Link Popularity and Search Engine