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Search Engine Marketing
by John Eberhard

There is a subject today entitled "Search Engine Marketing" that encompasses several important aspects of Internet marketing. And Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is itself one of the most important aspects of Internet marketing.

Search Engine Marketing combines the subjects of:

1.Search engine optimization
2.Link building
3.Pay-per-click advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As I've covered before, search engine optimization consists of actions one takes with the pages on a web site, to ensure that the site will be able to rank well in the search engines for specific keywords. The first step of this process is to select the keywords that will work best for you. I've covered how to do this extensively elsewhere in my articles and books.

Once you have keywords selected, then the next action is to ensure that those keywords are included frequently in your web pages, in the meta-tags, in page text, in your headlines, and so on.

Link Building

This means actions that one takes to build up links to your web site coming from other web sites. There are many ways to do this. But the ways I choose and recommend to do them that I think are the most cost-effective and time-effective are to submit articles to article directories (also called content hubs), and to write optimized press releases and submit these to online PR sites and put them on RSS feeds. I recommend both submitting articles to directories, AND sending out optimized press releases. I have noticed that the combination, with article directories creating volume links and optimized releases creating higher quality links, is the best strategy.

Link building is the most important aspect of SEM over the long term. It takes time to build up a good quantity of links, but Google considers the number of links to your site as the most important criteria in determining your rank for a specific keyword or phrase. So link building is the thing that will build up your ranking in the search engines, which is what will bring your traffic.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising, with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN, is the fastest way to build new traffic to your site right now. And it is an almost essential part of building traffic to a brand new web site.

Pay-per-click has many advantages, among them that you only pay for people that actually click on your ad and arrive on your site, unlike most advertising where you pay regardless of whether you get results or not. You can get a pay-per-click campaign up and running very quickly. You can also use pay-per-click to test different campaign ideas, and you will see the results pretty quickly.

You can run what is called an "A-B test," where you have two or more ads running simultaneously for a set of keywords. The system will display your two or more ads on an alternating basis. And it will track the clickthrough rates (the percentage of people that clicked on your ad compared to how many saw it) and conversion rates (how many people filled out your form on your site to become a lead or sale, compared to how many arrived). So running A-B tests is a great way to increase your results from a pay-per-click campaign.

2-3 years ago pay-per-click was an incredible way to build traffic, as there were not a lot of advertisers using it yet and many of the ones who were, didn't know what they were doing. And since the whole system is built on bidding for keywords, having fewer advertisers involved in the system was better for those that were involved, because that meant relatively low keyword bid prices.

Now here we are 2-3 years later, and the pay-per-click landscape has changed a great deal. There are quite a few more advertisers using pay-per-click, and the competition has driven up bid prices. In some cases, in certain markets, bid prices have gone so high that it is more of a challenge to run a profitable campaign. But that just means it takes more effort, expertise and testing to build a profitable campaign.

An Overall Strategy for Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing, as an inclusive subject that incorporates search engine optimization, link building, and pay-per-click, is the most important aspect of Internet marketing for building traffic to a web site. But what is the overall strategy? What pieces should you use and in what proportion?

1.Pay-Per-Click: I think that anyone starting Search Engine Marketing for the first time, especially with a new web site, should start out with pay-per-click advertising. The reason I push this is that you can get results relatively quickly, even considering the competition and testing you may have to go through to build a successful pay-per-click campaign. I usually recommend that a company hire an experienced person to set this up for them, especially with the increased competition level.

2.Search Engine Optimization: This is an important step, especially the keyword selection process, but is not nearly as important as link building. For instance, to do SEO and not do link building would be a bigger mistake than vice versa. This is for the most part a one-time process, but should be revisited at least every 6-12 months and adjustments made.

3.Link Building: This is the most important part of driving traffic, but it takes time to do it. You should think of a link building campaign as something that you do over a 6-12 month period. However, once you do a successful link building campaign over that kind of time period, you will find that your organic traffic, meaning traffic that comes from search engines but not from pay-per-click, will far outstrip your paid traffic. In other words, the goal of link building is to build up your search engine rankings so you rank in the top 10 on Google and Yahoo for your keywords. And once you do that, and have let's say 10-30 keywords in the top 10, your organic traffic will be far more than your paid traffic. Once you achieve that, you can stop your pay-per-click campaigns if you want. Or reduce them.

4.An All-Inclusive Program: Search Engine Marketing works best if all the pieces are done together: pay-per-click, search engine optimization, and link building. And as I mentioned above, the general recommended order would be to do pay-per-click advertising first, then optimize your site, and then build links. The pay-per-click will drive your traffic now, while the other things will drive more lasting, consistent, and higher volume traffic in the long run.