Online Search Engine Marketing

SEM or online search engine marketing consists of Internet promotional strategies that aim at improving the business chances of websites on the electronic market. The purpose of this type of marketing is to enhance web page visibility in search engine result pages, preferably by placing the websites as high as possible in rankings. The methods that online search engine marketing resorts to are paid placement or PPC, advertising in context and paid inclusion. Although pay per click is related to search engine optimization, the two processes are different even if related to online search engine marketing in specific ways. According to the New York Times our term refers to paying in order to be listed in a search result.

Taking each method one by one will better clarify what online search engine marketing is. Let us refer to PPC first a sort of advertising conducted on search engines, blogs, advertising networks or various web sites regardless of content, in which advertisers pay the site that hosts the ad only when the ad gets clicked. With search engines it is a little different because this time, online search engine marketing specialists need to select and bid on keywords that are most likely to be used by their target consumers. Pay per click advertising takes into consideration both the query of the web surfer and the keywords used by the advertiser to describe products and services.

Next comes contextual advertising as another product or method of online search engine marketing. For a better understanding of the concept let’s imagine that there is a frame within a frame. With this advertising platform, even ads are targeted. It means that there is a system that will identify keywords in the content of the web site accessed by the user and, starting from the keywords, only relevant ads that include those keywords will get displayed. So, based on the larger frame, we have another frame, that will actually present its content as the actual Internet site that you, as a potential consumer, are to get to eventually.

Paid inclusion is also worth mentioning in relation to online search engine marketing. The web site owner has to pay for being indexed in search engines according to a scheme practiced by Google and several other similar web giants.

Filed Under: Search Engine Marketing