What is Search Engine Marketing ?

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Simply put, it gets someone at the top of search results.

Search engine optimization attempts to improve rankings for relevant keywords in search results by improving a web site's structure, content, and link relevant and backlink count.

There are several different ways to get into search results;

This includes some of the following;

• Building relevant "content pages" about the products or services you sell
• Having related and "peer keywords" embeded throughout out website
• Having related and peer keywords throughout your Navigation links
• Using related and peer keywords in your PPC advertising

2) Pay Per Click
Pay per click advertising uses sponsored search engine listings to drive traffic to a web site. The advertiser bids for search terms, and the search engine ranks ads based on a competitive auction as well as other factors.

3) Paid Inclusion
Paid inclusion feeds listings into search engines. This does not guarantee that you will be on the front page of search results or anything else except that your site will be listed on that search engine (somewhere).

4) Peer sites
Social media optimization promotes websites by placing the site or ads within online communities. An example of this is a travel website being listed directly or indirectly on other websites which promote travel services.

Be careful

Be careful of websites which claim guaranteed search engine positioning. There are three common traps to be mindful of when shopping for search engine positioning services.

The FIRST misleading guarantee is the empty promise of, "We guarantee you top rankings or we will continue to work on it until we do." In most cases, this simply means that they will continue to sit on their hands and do nothing. Why? Because they already have your money. They are not really interested in renewals, they are very happy to simply take your initial fee. There is no real risk to them.

The SECOND misleading offer is when a company promises you first page listings on Google and/or Yahoo, but fail to tell you that they are talking about "sponsored listings" and not "natural organic listings." They charge you a set monthly fee and end up spending only a tiny portion of this fee on traffic from sponsored listings.

The THIRD and most common misleading guarantee is the "money back guarantee." This includes a guarantee that a certain percentage of your target keywords will receive top rankings within the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. However, read a little deeper in their service agreement and you will usually see that their list of "major" search engines include several or more small, irrelevant or outdated search engines which are very easy to generate top rankings in. This is a catch. While they will verbally focus on Google and Yahoo over the phone, the small print reveals the truth. They end up easily meeting their guarantee and you are still no where to be found on the search engines that really matter.