Search Engine Marketing
“Search Engine Marketing” is a somewhat contestable term. Some industry professionals define it as a blanket phrase that encompasses all listings – both Natural and Sponsored – within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Others hold to the notion that Search Engine Marketing only qualifies as the Sponsored or Paid Listings within the SERPs. We at the DMA take the more inclusive approach that Search Engine Marketing, or SEM as it is abbreviated, refers to all listings within the engines including, which are typically thought of as Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, Ask, and others.
Learn more with one of these DMA programs:
The DMA offers a SEM Certification for professionals who master the art of this nuanced medium as well as a variety of in-person seminars, online courses, webinars, and even in-company trainings and conference intensives all focused on SEM including both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Sponsored or Paid Advertising within the Search Engines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
On the Natural or Organic side the listings that appear in the SERPs do so as a result of relevancy of the relevancy of the page(s) to the keyword being searched. The possible methods for improving website pages’ abilities to rank in the Organic results are often times referred to as Search Engine Optimization. Basically modifying and “optimizing” a website and it’s content so that it has a better chance of positioning for the most important and relevant keywords. SEO is a long-term, ongoing endeavor of improvements on your website and the results are rarely predictable, especially given the frequency with which the search engines modify or change the criteria they use to rank pages (their algorithms).
Sponsored or Paid Listings
On the Sponsored or Paid listing side, positioning is based on more controllable factors. In Search Engine Advertising, the ads are available based on a bidding environment. Ad position is based on a combination of the amount the advertiser is willing to bid and, in some search engines, relevance or quality of the ad copy and its corresponding landing page. Unlike SEO, Search Engine Advertising can be modified and/or turned on and off in a predictable manner in order to manage advertising budgets and / or promote certain products / services for limited-time campaigns or based on seasonality. Also, unlike Natural Search results, sponsored listings though the engines have the ability to show up in a number of other formats on partner sites including as part of Contextual advertising, for example.
The most important factor in allocating resources for Search Engine Marketing is to test different methods, track the results of your efforts using Website Analytics, measure conversions from both Natural and sponsored listings in order o understand your return on investment for each, and adjust over time to maximize performance.
