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Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

by | Oct 7, 2014 | Articles

Search engine marketing was born when web site owners realized they could make sales from search engine referral traffic. Web design took on new elements and considerations, elements that not only draw search engines to the web pages, but draw search engines in a way that positioned the web page for potential traffic and relevancy to the search terms that pre-qualify your traffic as being interested in your products and services.

Search engines keep their search methods and criteria (their algorithms) secret to preserve their functionality and their competitive advantage. They also change their methods continually to enhance the speed, accuracy and relevancy of the results they provide. While exact algorithms and search engine methodologies are debated by certain segments of the search engine marketing community, you can be confident that if your goal as a search engine marketer is to effectively guide your visitors to the information you want them to find, you are playing along with the guidelines of search engines and can expect to benefit from your efforts to think of the user first and the search engine second.

With the value of commercial searches multiplying by the month, the ability for a web site owner to know how to participate in this brave new world is often difficult to align with the business model they have relied on to build their business. The result is a new industry of search engine placement consultants sometimes know as search engine optimizers.

Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) are different from other marketing professionals because they participate in a changing landscape of secret and competitive technology of which they can only offer consultation based upon their experience. They must focus on web services and technologies while also studying the actions of their client’s competitors. In addition, SEOs must learn about their client’s industries to effectively design SEM strategies to earn top rankings in increasingly competitive search term markets.

These are marketers that have to build strategies based on their experience with what is going on in their field of expertise. No search engine is going to reveal its search engine secrets. Search engine optimizers have to participate in trial and error to figure out how to get the best search engine positioning for their clients. It is part art, part intelligence, of the CIA kind, and, of course, very current experience.

Read more: Search Engines Offer Marketing