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 through optimization and advertising.
Search Engine Marketing
There are four categories of methods and metrics used to optimize websites through search engine marketing.
1) Keyword research and analysis: ensures the site can be indexed in the search engines, finding the most relevant and popular keywords for the site and its products.
2) Website saturation and popularity: It requires pages to contain 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.
3) Back end tools: Include Web analytic tools and HTML validators, provide data on a website and its visitors and allow the success of a website to be measured. They range from simple traffic counters to tools that work with log files and to more sophisticated tools that are based on page tagging. These tools can deliver conversion-related information.
4) Who is tools: They reveal the owners of various websites, and can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues.
Comparison with SEO
SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO. SEM includes both paid search results and organic search results. SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click , article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done. SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.
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. SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO.
