Internet Marketing/ Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are the only two on-line activities that are directly linked to search engines, the search queries and their results.
Unlike search engine optimization which relates to natural or free search engine listings, search engine marketing or internet marketing is a paid on-line listing in the form of advertisements. Search engine marketing works exactly on the same principles of search engine optimization. To completely understand the topic, let’s take an example.
Say a person/ company in USA is looking for a website development company to get a website developed. The person opens Google.com on his/ her browser (Internet Explorer/ Mozilla Firefox) and types “Website Development” in the search box and runs a search query by pressing enter. As a result of the search, Google returns a number of websites that somehow or the other contain/ represent/ relate-to information regarding the companies/ freelancers that develop websites. In addition to the free website listings on the main window, the search result displays a few paid advertisements under the heading of “Sponsored Links” both on top of the free listings in the main window and in the side bar on the right. These are paid listings and are a result of search engine marketing efforts.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a technique by which a company tries to make an effort that its web ad is displayed along the freely listed websites that are returned in response to a search against some targeted keywords, in the above example “website development”. The presence of a company’s web advertisement, in the search engine results, against some target keywords, means higher probability of potential customers visiting the company’s website, resulting in a higher possibility of increased sales.
The beauty of search engine marketing lies in the fact that a web advertisement is not charged unless someone actually clicks on the ad. Moreover, a company can define a number of rules for the ads to be shown in order to be highly targeted in its approach. To control on costs, a company can also set target budgets (daily and monthly) for its marketing campaigns, which means a company can never exceed the maximum budget it has set for the ad campaigns to run and yet be highly aggressive and targeted in its approach.
