Search engine marketing

What is search engine marketing (SEM)?
SEM is the act of marketing a website via search engines by purchasing paid listings

What are paid listings?

These are listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.

Paid listings:

1. Paid inclusions
- Advertising programs where pages are guaranteed to be included in a search engine's index in exchange for payment
- no guaranteed ranking
- payment made on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis
- eg Looksmart: a directory that lists pages and sites, not based on position but based on relevance. Advertisers pay to be included in the directory on a CPC basis or per-url fee basis with no guarantee of specific placement

2. Paid placements
- Advertising programs where listings are guaranteed to appear in organic listings
- the higher the fee, the higher the ranking

- eg sponsored links and Google’s Adwords
- can be purchased from a portal or a search network
- search networks are often set up in an auction environment where keywords and phrases are associated with a cost-per-click (CPC) fee.
- Overture and Google are the largest networks

Other internet marketing strategies

●Usability driven information architecture

●Effective copywriting (presented previously)

●Affiliate programs

●Email marketing and online newsletters

●Interactive customer relationships

●Web traffic analysis and web analytics

Conclusion

●If budget allows, undertake both SEO and SEM as SEM enables ROI tracking (leads and conversions)

●If budget is zilch, opt for SEO

●Recommendation for UniSA:
- SEO
- SEM for campaigns and international markets