Search engine marketing 55
In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the
commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition. Such
usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine
optimization and search retargeting.
Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM). SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social
media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[19] Some of the latest
theoretical advances include search engine marketing management (SEMM). SEMM relates to activities including
SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of
mainstream SEO). SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means of
achieving top in search engines, and pay per click SEO. For example some of the attention is placed on the web page
layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor.Ethical questions
Paid search advertising has not been without controversy, and the issue of how search engines present advertising on
their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[20][21][22] by Consumer Reports
WebWatch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[23] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure
of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy
group with ties to Ralph Nader.
Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement. The
debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway
for years. In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid
on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term.[24] Though the
policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.[25]
At the end of February 2011 many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links
for the purpose of passing off the rank. SEM has however nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic
SEO and PPC management.Examples
A successful SEM project was undertaken by one of London’s top SEM companies involving AdWords. AdWords is
recognised as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords which can deliver adverts explicitly to web
users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service. This project is highly practical for advertisers
as the project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing, thus the payment of the service only applies if their advert has
been clicked on. SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO
services. This promotion has helped their business elaborate, offering added value to consumers who endeavor to
employ AdWords for promoting their products and services. One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of
this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested. Moreover, SEM
companies have described AdWords as a fine practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on
Internet advertising. The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for
presenting to clients the performance of their canvass from click to conversion. AdWords project has enabled SEM
companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass. The assistance of
AdWord canvass could contribute to the huge success in the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s
website, by as much as 250% in only nine months.[18]
Another way Search Engine Marketing is managed is by contextual advertising. Here marketers place ads on other
sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of
browsers who are seeking information from those sites. A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the