Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing or Search Marketing (SEM), is often confused with search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of “optimizing” on-page and off-page website content, links, navigation, and more to gain higher ranking or listings in search engine result pages (SERP’s).  Search Marketing encompasses a wider variety elements that are used to bring traffic to your website.

Search marketing promotes websites by increasing visitor traffic through the use of search engine result pages (SERPs) via SEO, PPC, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. However, SEM also utilizes a variety of additional online marketing and advertising channels.  These additional channels include article submissions, press reports, contextual marketing or advertising, social marketing, event advertising, and more advanced marketing methods including behavior marketing or re-targeting.

Compounding is the Key

As with SEO, keyword research and application is at the core.  However, apart from SEO, SEM utilizes keywords in a much broader sense.  The use of keywords for SEM are not as linear as they are with SEO.  Close attention should be paid to how the keywords are used in terms of customer interaction, calls-to-action, anchor text, links, and relevance to your website landing pages, categories, and silos.

A considerable use of keywords is contained in content that is not inserted on your website but instead are submitted to online portals that attract massive amounts of visitors.  Your content will be distributed for review and reading and hopefully will then visit your website to learn more about who you are.

WordPress make this process easy to create and employ.  The inherent architecture of WordPress combined with thousands of ready to use free plugins enables the connectivity and compounding of true SEM.  Users can simply connect their blogs, page content, social media, press reports, RSS feeds, articles and many more touch points of SEM.