Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 12:10am Tuesday 19 May 2009
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is term that describes marketing a website using various techniques to make it more visible on search engines. Search Engine Marketing techniques include search engine optimization (SEO), buying Pay Per Click (PPC) ads or using a combination of both of these options.
SEO is a pre-requisite for effective SEM. It's the first part in the SEM process, and involves performing market research, defining and refining keyword phrases to maximize what SEO professionals refer to as "keyword density" and minimize the effects of "keyword dilution". More on SEO in a later blog post.
The Recruitment Genome Report 2009 states that
- 82% do not have an effective strategy for Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- 74% do not have an effective strategy for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It is important for Recruiters AND Employers to understand how SEM and SEO are an important to your marketing strategy. The main focus of both strategies is to produce far more search results thus increases visitors to your website!
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves a combination of free website submissions and paid search engine listings. It is an umbrella term combining SEO with paid methods of marketing such as PPC campaigns and any paid for appearances or inclusions on the internet. PPC or Pay Per Click involves online ads that you pay for each time someone clicks through the ad to get to your site.
As Recruitment is a very competitive market; for which there are thousands of other sites offering the same product or service. PPC is often a way to get on the front pages of search engines while you work on organic or natural search.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art and science of increasing your website’s visibility to search engines for those important keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business.
Free versus Paid - You will need to decide which method of SEM marketing is going to suit your business. It is a good idea to have a mix of paid and free SEM. This way you can target users regardless of where they are in the search cycle.
Organic/Natural (Free) - There are ways to get listed for free on the Internet so that your business name will come up under various search engine queries. This method is called an organic or natual listing. An SEO search will rank the results according to how many times the keyword or key phrase, is found within the text of the document.
PPC (Pay Per Click) - With this method of online marketing, you pay a provider - such as Google or Yahoo!, a pre-determined amount of money you are willing to pay each time a visitor clicks on the link/advert.
PFI (Pay For Inclusion) - Directories are also maintained on the worldwide web. Depending on which directories are applicable to your business, the listings can cover broad topics or they can be more specific. Listings in some of these directories might be free, but more and more directories are beginning to charge a fee for your business to be included.
