What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing is not SEO (search engine optimisation), although it certainly includes it. Search engine marketing has as its objective the acquisition of quality visitor traffic to a website, this is achieved by various means, of which optimisation for top natural rankings is arguably the most important, but not the only one. Search engine marketing also includes areas such as pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, placing of links on related directories and portals and banner advertising. Of these additional advertising methods, pay-per-click is possibly the most important.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation employs experience and technological expertise to improve your site's ranking within today’s popular search engines. This is achieved by utilising keywords relevant to your business; link building; redefining the navigation structure of your site where necessary; and submission to the top search engines and relevant directories and portals.

With billions of sites on the web, there is increasing potential to market your product or service online, but this potential cannot be taken advantage off if your site is not easily found by your potential customers. Surveys have shown that search engines are tops in driving visitors to websites, with as many as 75 percent of Internet users using a search engine to locate information. The same research showed that almost 80% of the users abandon their query if they don't find what they are looking for within the first three pages of results. It follows that your site must feature prominently within the search results of the major search engines in order to reap the potential rewards.

Contrary to what most people think, search engine optimisation is just not a case of creating meta tags (trigger keywords hidden within the site), stuffing the pages with keywords and submitting them to search engines. We follow a tried and tested program, based on our years of experience when promoting a website.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the most dynamic way to advertise on the internet. According to Jupiter Research Agency, in 2004 advertisers spent $2.6 billion on PPC advertising, a figure which is expected to increase to $5.5 billion by 2009.

Pay-per-click advertising on search engines allows your website to appear in the search results right up there with the market leaders. In PPC, rankings are calculated for keyword phrases based primarily on the price that is being paid. You decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. The more you are willing to pay per click and the more popular your advert, the higher your site will appear in the results for the keywords you choose. You only pay for people who actually visit your site, visitors who are actively searching for your product and are therefore already potential customers.

Convert Visitors Into Customers

The correct search engine marketing plan, combining both optimisation for a top natural ranking and pay-per-click is critical if your business is to benefit from the possibilities offered by the Internet.

Steps in a typical SEO project: