Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a sub-category of Internet marketing and aims to improve Search Engine rankings through a series of marketing and promotional strategies. The most popular forms of Search Engine marketing include Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising and Paid Inclusion, however there are an array of techniques and strategies that support the objectives of Search Engine Marketing.

Search Engine Marketing is a relatively new field, and there are organizations like SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) to help gain insight into the Industry. Below are a list of topics that contribute to Search Engine Marketing:

• Keywords

  To understand your audience, you must first understand how they search. The terms that people use to find information are known as keywords, or keyword phrases. To determine these phrases, a Keyword Analysis must be conducted utilizing Keyword Research Tools.
  

• Search Engine Optimization

  Creating a website that is search friendly is at the heart of SEO. Understanding how the search engines operate and how they view the information on your site is essential to Search Engine Marketing.
  

• Search Engine Submission

  Once you have conducted Keyword Research and optimized your website for search, you will then want to submit your site to the search engines to ensure that it is listed in their index. There are also a handful of trusted directories that are worth submitting to which help in gaining exposure.
  

• Link Popularity

  This refers to the amount and quality of inbound links pointing at your website. Link Popularity is a significant factor to ranking high within the search engines which in turn generates traffic to your site. Understanding how to obtain high quality links is extremely important to Search Engine Marketing efforts.
  

• Paid Inclusion

  Some Search Engines will allow you to pay them to expedite the process of getting listed in their index. Although not as popular as Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click Advertising, Paid Inclusion is still used to ensure indexing.
  

• Pay Per Click Advertising

  Paid Search traditionally refers to the sponsored links you see when conducting a search. Google, Yahoo! And MSN all have various forms of Pay Per Click Advertising that give publishers the ability to pay only when someone clicks on their ad.
  

• PageRank

  This is the algorithm that Google uses to assign numerical weights to the elements of a hyperlinked set of documents. The goal of the algorithm is to determine the importance or relevance of each element within the set. In the case of the World Wide Web, PageRank is used as one of many factors that contribute to the ranking of pages for a given search.
  
  Other topics related to Search Engine Marketing include: Web Analytics, Blogs, Branding, Copywriting, Viral Marketing, A/B Testing, Conversion Rates, Link Building, Reputation Management, Social Media, Universal Search, Local Search, Image Search and Usability.