Search marketing, also known as search engine marketing (SEM), is the practice of using search engines to market your web site and generate traffic. The reason it is seen as so important is that search engine traffic is so targeted - the visitor will be looking for web sites in precisely the the topic in question.
There are two ways to get search traffic and two kinds of traffic from search engines. These come from the two results search engines display: there are the main results found from relevant sites and the sponsored results that are bought by advertisers.
Marketing in the paid results is knows as PPC marketing, because the ads are paid per click. You have to pay an amount for each visitor who clicks on your ads. The price of one click depends on the popularity on marketing for the keywords the search was for, and is determined by the search engine or by the market.
Pay per click advertising is a good way to get targeted traffic without much effort, since you can decide for which searches to market and the text in the advertisement. It costs money, but as long as your return for investment (ROI) is positive, you can just increase your marketing budget and keep the money coming in.
The main search results are also known as organic results and the traffic from them as organic traffic. They are often more prominent and a larger share of searchers will click on them than the sponsored results. Working to improve your ranking is search engines is known as search engine optimization (SEO).
The organic search results are based on relevance, which the search engines attempt to determine by considering the page content - text - and the importance of the site. Importance is determined by looking at the links to your site, which are known as back links. Both of these are important for this kind of search marketing.
Relevance is usually optimized by using popular keywords in page content. Both the number and position of keywords are important, and keywords should be mentioned in both page title and headings. Using too many or unrelated keywords, keyword stuffing, can lead to penalties or bans from search engines if noticed.
Link building is the other important part of organic search engine marketing. Good search engines, like Google, consider both the number of back links and the importance of sites that link to your web site. Links from relevant sites are also valued more than links from totally irrelevant sites.
Search engines and search marketing is a good way to generate targeted traffic to your web site. Search marketing is divided to pay per click marketing and search engine optimization. Which you choose depends both on your budget and the amount of effort you are willing to put into search marketing.
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