The Basics of Search Engine Marketing

With Search Engine Marketing, your job as a marketer is to make sure your business comes closest to the top in the search engine results pages (SERPs) – for all types of search queries that are relevant to your business offerings. There are two basic ways you can get your business to the top of the SERPs – Search Engine Optimization and Paid Placements.
 
Search Engine Optimization – Its most basic definition: increase the visibility of a website in the organic SERPs (the unpaid placements). In general, the higher you appear on the SERPs the more likely it is that your link will be clicked on by consumers. Since, SEO itself is made of many different factors (which is why it’s considered it’s own marketing term in the first place), an SEO strategy to start with is to look at how search engines are returning results and what you’re your customers are searching for. Basically, with SEO, your job is to make sure your website is optimized for the search engines. This includes: using keyword focused anchor text, high quality websites link to your website (external link popularity), links coming from a variety of sources, and using keywords in your title tags and throughout your website content.
 
Paid Placements – These are also called Sponsored Links and as stated are “paid” placements in the SERPs. So, whenever a user clicks on the ad, the business owner, who paid for the ad, gets charged for the click. This is “pay per click” (PPC). The amount of money the advertiser pays the search engine for each click on the ad is the “cost per click” (CPC). These links show up on the top and the right side of the search results. Most are link to specific companies and after the top paid placements (usually about 1-3), the organic results start.
 
Have you ever noticed how many millions of results show up when you do a search? How many people do you know who will sift through millions results to find what they are looking for? Chances are they won’t even get past the first 10 – which is the first page most of the time in SERPs. With all of those results, and the search engines ranking them based on their own algorithms, it is extremely beneficial to ensure your business is showing up at the top of the list. Just remember, using paid placements can get you to the top of the list, but it’s important to analyze the conversions of those paid placements.
 
Search Engine Optimization alone can be very complex and there are many things you can do to get your business’s website showing up at the top of the SERPs. It takes dedication and patience. With paid placements you can get yourself off to a good start – building links from the most trusted search engines out there, such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Whether you use paid placements or not, Search Engine Marketing includes optimizing your website in multiple ways to ensure it shows up at the top in organic placements as well. And if you do participate in paid placements, it’s extremely important to make sure you analyze the campaigns you are running – evaluating which ads are working and which are just bringing your site clicks.
 
To learn more about Search Engine Marketing check out the VEM Global website or give us a call at 1-866-757-8229. We would love to discuss how we can help market your website for the search engines! 

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