While many people include the practice of natural search engine optimization with paid search under the umbrella term ‘search engine marketing’, experts divide the two. Search engine marketing, according to well-accepted definitions, is the practice of paying for inclusion in search engine results pages via pay per click advertising, sponsored results, or contextual advertising. What is search engine marketing, and what are the main issues surrounding it?
The best recognized form of search engine marketing (SEM) is pay per click advertisements. These appear in the right hand sidebar of Google, Yahoo and MSN search results pages, and sometimes above the natural results. They are usually differentiated from the ‘natural’ results for the search, and have a heading of ‘Sponsored Results’ or something equivalent.
The process of engaging in SEM is much simpler than SEO. You will determine the keywords that you want to appear in the results for, write advertisements that adhere to each search engine’s character limits, and input a bid for the keyword that will determine how high up you appear in the results. The company that bids the highest amount for a particular keyword or keyphrase will appear at the top, the second highest bidder will appear second, etc. Conventional wisdom states that there is little benefit in appearing outside the top three places.
PPC ads are generally seen as good value by companies, as you only pay for the advertising when someone is interested enough to click through to your ad. Of course, there are initial campaign set up costs involved also, as well as monitoring and testing. PPC does have costs outside of the actual click, so it is still in a company’s best interests to have a well-executed campaign.
PPC ads are not generally seen as being as trustworthy as natural results – and there is some legitimacy to this view. Relatively new players in the PPC game can get to the top of the results simply by spending more money. While Google’s algorithms for natural results favor the sites that offer real value to searchers, their program for paid search favors the businesses spending the most money in the short term. That could be you.
Search engine marketing is like many marketing activities on the net – something that appears simple, but can quickly spiral out of control with regard to time and costs if not managed properly. We recommend outsourcing at least some of your initial campaigns for best results.