Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
In a nacient industry, we have over 8 years experience in Internet marketing tactics, but for six of those years, Pay-for-Placement search (also known as P4P, PPC, Paid Placement, Google and Overture search) has been a primary passion. We have handled campaigns from $100 usd per month to those in excess of $1 million usd. It actually might be more than a passion... perhaps an obsession? This drive makes us qualified search engine marketing specialists.
Depending on who you speak with, SEM may mean several different things. In the most basic form, SEM has three primary disciplines: Paid Placement, Organic Search, and Paid Inclusion.
Paid Placement Search
Part art and part science, paid placement search has been the public rage since Google's IPO several years ago. The basic principles are simple to understand; consumers are looking for something specific and advertisers are able to bid for placement at the point of a consumer's search. Engines have a way to monitize their service. Advertisers have a way to precisely target relevant consumers. Consumers can find products and services that are likely to be more relevant than organic results.
There are four US-based search engines that garner the majority of today's Internet traffic. These companies, called Tier I engines, are Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask. All four have paid placement programs that are similar in nature, but different in execution. Volumes of data could be cataloged to explian each one, but for general purposes there are basic tenents to each.
Advertisers purchase keyword phrases or "terms" for which they want their ad to display. Each advertiser bids for placement, but the highest bidder does not always get the top placement. With "Quality Scores", it is possible for someone in 1st place position to pay less than someone in 2nd or 3rd place. A job of the specialist is to identify terms that convert best for an advertiser, while generating good quality scores for those terms with each engine's algorithms. If a company only purchases a few terms, this can actually be accomplished by nearly anyone. But, when advertisers purchase thousands of terms, management of these scores, different messages, and conversions become extremely difficult.
Advertisers can guage customer acquistion costs for P4P programs (actually ALL online marketing programs) by taking the average cost-per-click for all terms, and dividing this dollar amount by the average website conversion rate.
Cost Per Acquistion (CPA) = Average Cost Per Click (CPC) / Website Conversion Rate (Conv%)
CPA = CPC / Conv% ::: CPA = $2.00 / 5% = $40
Search engine marketing specialist try to improve acquistion costs by lowering the average cost per click, and by increasing the website conversion rate. If one were to purchase the ten most popular keyword terms, your average cost per click would be relatively high and these terms are likely to be rather broad in scope. By adding less popular keyword terms, yet including those that are even better matches (consumers' demand to advertisers' products), the aveage cost per click declines rapidly while conversion rates increase dramatically, yeilding more business at a lower cost. It is the job of a specialist to identify these better terms, adding them to the keyword inventory for advertisers.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a unique discipline for which there is tons of valid and invalid information available on the Net. The primary goal is to match consumer keyword phrases with those found on an advertiser's website. As a general rule, website content should describe services and products well, while not attempting to target irrelevant keyword terms.
Each situation requires a different tactic to rank higher in search engines, but the basic principles can be easily applied to help most websites rank better. Relevance, awareness and referrals are the three fundimental legs of an SEO strategy.
Content that is RELEVANT to keyword queries is mandatory for SEO success. The computer programs, called spiders, built to index web pages are not as "smart" as a humans. If there are characters of text, these programs can identify, or "see", the characters, occasionally recognize synonyms and then lable your site, individual pages, and metadata for inclusion into their engines. If consumers are looking for "red widget" and you sell "red widgets" - plural - there is a good chance you will have missed a good opportunity to sell your products. Getting more targeted terms into website copy also helps, as the more specific you can be, the greater chance your site will have to cut through clutter. Again, if you sell "red widget doorstops for home" and there is consumer demand for this entire phrase/term, there is a greater chance of higher rankings than if you were just selling "widgets". Relevant content is critical to success.
After a site contains content, AWARENESS that the site even exists, is the secondary task that must be performed. The primary method of notifying search engines your site is live, is through "search engine submissions". Some engines are free, some aren't, but directly notifying these engines to "please" review a website is the best method to build this awareness. Other tactics to achieve this same goal include "linking strategies". Press releases, signatures with your website included, and even placement of linked keyword terms on popular sites are all common "linking" tactics to build awareness.
Getting REFERRALS can be a tough job for anyone, and not all referrals are equal. The easiest way to explain this tactic is through a practical example. So, if you were to move to a new city and needed a heart transplant (after stressing over your organic search rankings), you would likely start to ask co-workers, family and friends if they could recommend an excellent surgeon. You receive recommendations from the janitor who had the surgery, your dentist who knows many surgeons, and your orthopedic surgeon. Chances are high that you'll trust another surgeon first, then a loosly related recommendation, followed by a recommendation from someone who may not be the best resource.
Linking referrals work the same way. If you sell mechanical hearts and there are three Internet links pointing to your site, the search engines would give more credibility to links located on heart related sites (very specific), some hospital related sites (kinda related), and likely no credibility from links originating on janitorial services sites (way off). The heart related sites would be "authorities" in the industry. Having to assume they know their industry best, and can give the best link recommendations, increases the power of a referral link. In SEO strategy, gaining quality links from reputable sites can be even more important than the first two legs combined.
