SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING Search Engine Marketing YOU ARE HERE!

EFFECTIVE SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

Effective Search Engine Marketing Includes ALL Promotional Activities Involving Search Engines, and NOT Just SEO Campaigns.

80% of over 186 million Internet users in US are utilizing the search engines as a search tool to find products, services, or other information on the Internet. The most important objective of online marketing and promotion is to get your website recognized by the search engines, so the potential customers can actually find it. Beside obviously providing a huge potential customer base, search engine marketing is the most powerful online strategy available currently, because it delivers the better ROI than other methods. A report by Forrester Research revealed that "search engines reach valuable, motivated, and ready customers."

Although many people use search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) terms interchangeably, SEM includes all promotional activities involving search engines, and not just SEO campaigns.

Before you can actually carry out search engine marketing, you must understand how search engines work.

SEARCH ENGINES & DIRECTORIES

According to Google Web definition, a search engine is:

"a tool that enables users to locate information on the World Wide Web. Search engines use keywords entered by users to find Web sites which contain the information sought."

There are two types of search engines, spider indexed and human indexed.

Spider indexed search engines are huge databases of web pages that have been gathered automatically by spiders / crawlers / robots. A spider is nothing more then a computer generated program. They crawl through the World Wide Web from link to link, identifying and analyzing webpages, and gathering information. Websites may also be submitted to search engines for crawling and inclusion in their databases.

Websites are then indexed in the search engines database. To search with a search engine, a user enters keywords or phrases. The websites returned in the results are ranked by relevancy. In ranking indexed web pages, search engines follow specific set of rules - algorithm, which vary from one engine to another.

Human indexed search engines, often called directories, are created and maintained by human editors, not spiders or robots. When you submit your website to a directory, the editors examine your website and select sites for inclusion in their directories on the basis of previously determined selection criteria. Directories are typically organized hierarchically into browsable categories and subcategories. Websites are manually indexed and categorized, therefore directories usually deliver a higher quality of content. Directories may also include a search engine for searching their own directory. Users can search by category as well as keyword. The websites returned in the results are ranked by category and relevancy.

Natural or organic listings are the unpaid portion of search engine result pages (SERPs). Typically it would take months to appear at the top of spider-based search engine results for selected keyphrases in non competitive fields, while in competitive fields it could sometimes take years.

If spidering a website is difficult, due to the URL structure or other technical reasons, paid-for-inclusion programs could be used, which guarantee website inclusion in the search engine index. There are also some search engines that offer just paid-for-inclusion programs, as Teoma/Ask Jeeves and Inktomi. Inclusion fees paid to search engines are per page URL, and usually guarantees that pages are re-spidered regularly (every 2 - 7 days).

Directory inclusions could also be free, like on DMOZ, or through paid-for-inclusion programs. Directory inclusion fees are by website, and not per page. Note that Yahoo's directory fee ($299 pre year) is per website, and does not guarantee inclusion - just editor's review in 7 days, so it's actually pay for consideration program. A paid-for-inclusion program does not guarantee a placement.

Effective website marketing solution should include promotion across search engines and directories. Search Engine Marketing Strategies >>

User Oriented Design & Ethical Website Marketing Strategies by Distinctia, 2006