Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is another form of Internet advertising that involves intentionally increasing a websites visibility in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) through paid advertising or through optimization of the website.
Search Engine Marketing has two components to increase web traffic: paid search advertising and search engine optimization (SEO).
What is Paid Search Advertising?
Website promotion through paid search advertising covers the following functions:
- Pay per Click (PPC) or Cost per Click (CPC)
- Cost per Impression (CPI) or Cost per Mille (CPM)
Both functions are considered contextual search that is based on pre-defined keywords. To put it briefly, website owners pay an advertising fee for their website to come out on top of search results page when online users search using the keywords they identified.
To put things briefly:
- Pay Per Click (PPC) OR COST PER CLICK (CPC) charges you every time a user clicks on your ad.
- Cost per Impression (CPI) or Cost per Mille charges your every thousand impressions or every “x” number of times your ad comes out in SERPs.
Paid Advertising is good if you wish to get your website on the top spot immediately. On the other hand this form of Search Engine Marketing will last only until your have budget to allocate.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is a more cost-efficient approach to increase website visibility but takes more time to build up. Search engine optimization aims to list the website organically or through unpaid means on top of the SERP.
SEO in general is the practice of considering how the search engine works, what people search for, the exact keyword or phrase that they use to search online and what specific search engine the target market use. The top search engines today include Google, Yahoo! Search and Bing.
Once the above items are identified designing the site and creating relevant content that will address how the search engine will see you webpage will ultimately result in a page rank. SEO is done to reach the top space in page ranks.
Search Engine Optimization as a form of Search Engine Marketing takes time, effort and a lot of strategic thinking. But this is the most cost efficient and enduring form of SEM as it is founded on a solid website design and content plan that will be seen and indexed by search engine as a website with high authority and relevance for a specific target market.
Note: Take caution with SEO practitioners who claim that they can get your webpage on top of the SERP in very little time. These practitioners most likely practice Black Hat SEO.
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Using either approach depends on what your ultimate goal for internet advertising is. If you would like to find out more about your options for Search Engine Marketing, talk to us.
Get Hooked 360, Digital Marketing Agency Philippines, Vietnam.