Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Depending on the need of a website owner, SEM services may be the more logical route to obtaining high rank through services such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing (aka Overture), MSN adCenter or many other Pay-Per-Click (PPC) programs.

The positive attributes to SEM;

• The ability to get your website listed on the first page of search result queries
• The ability to rank for any keyword phrases of your choice
• Able to control the cost through budget options in the PPC program you use
• The PPC interface offers many useful tools to help you optimize your ads for better audience reach

How SEM Works

Unlike Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where top placement is most commonly paid for on a fixed rate basis, PPC Marketing has a unique price structure of it's own. With PPC Marketing, you will actively bid for placement against competitors for your position on the search engine results page. The highest bidder gets the top spot on the page.

What you are actually bidding on is keywords, specifically high search volume keywords that will bring you more traffic. The pricing of these bids vary and will fluctuate multiple times throughout the course of a day. If your target audience searches for keywords A,B, & C more than D,E, & F then you will find yourself paying more for the first 3 rather than the last 3.

Things To Consider With Search Engine Marketing

PPC marketing has the disadvantage of putting you into a bidding war with your competitors in order to rank. This can become costly as you can imagine and could divert efforts to help your site rank naturally, or "organically" through other online marketing avenues.

Bottom Line

Pay-Per-Click Marketing is a great tool for a new website needing to rank ASAP while organic ranking efforts are being developed and implemented. Also, PPC Marketing is good for sites that have such niche content that there is low search volume for what the site has to offer.

Other Pay Marketing Resources

As more social gatherings and hubs are created all over the internet, the possibility for further audience reach becomes available as does the need for those site owners to get funding. These site owners are known to create their own forms of marketing programs which serve as both income generators as well as branding tool. Not often considered a part of Search Engine Marketing, these other forms of paid marketing can be beneficial to you as well. This includes;

• Ad Networks - A graphic or text ad for your site will be distributed across a designated chain or network of participating sites.
• Paid Inclusion - There are a number of industry specific directory style websites that will display your website for a fee. These are usually higher quality compared to most free directories, therefore help you in the search engines with a higher quality link.

Bottom Line

These kinds of extra fee based advertising methods can be a great alternative to pricier PPC marketing campaigns, but can bring you less traffic. However, in combination with an existing SEO campaign, these two marketing avenues might prove complimentary of each other in certain areas of exposure and branding.