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Search Engine Marketing Defined
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Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing  their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings.
Search engine marketing involves click costs. Search engine optimization works through free traffic. Those two facts are the basis of a popular myth: that it's easier to get good ROI through SEO than it is to get the same ROI through SEM.
In SEM, you decide the landing page your visitors see. In SEO, a search engine spider decides on the landing page visitors see. That's a difference in control, and that difference makes all the difference.
In both SEO and SEM, you only hit ROI if your searchers convert. An SEM firm might require a higher initial investment than an SEO firm does (because SEM requires the management cost, plus the PPC cost; while SEO only costs the price of management alone) - but you're also likely to get better conversions through SEM, because you're likely to get better landing pages through SEM. And it's only conversions that will get you ROI.
So good SEO is absolutely vital to strong internet marketing. But saying that SEO will get better ROI than SEM - because organic traffic is free - ignores the most important element of SEM: control. And it's control that makes all the difference between getting traffic, and getting traffic that converts (http://www.dmnews.com/SEO-Isnt-SEM/article/89604/).
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Most Recent Search Marketing Clips
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Search Engine Marketing Trends and Statistics
New Study Reveals Display Advertising Significantly Lifts Search Activity | clipped by: fuordigital
today unveiled new research that shows display advertising significantly lifts search activity. The study leverages 12 months of proprietary Specific Media Ad Effectiveness data backed by comScore, tracking more than 60+ Specific Media campaigns to draw averages demonstrating the direct correlation between display advertising and search.
The study demonstrates that consumers exposed to display advertising were more likely to search for brand terms (i.e. automotive manufacturer), and segment terms (i.e. vehicle class), than unexposed consumers. Segmented results include:
| Display Advertising Lift on Search Activity |
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| Advertiser Category |
Search (Brand & Segment) |
| Automotive |
144% |
| CPG |
22% |
| Health |
260% |
| News & Media |
144% |
| Personal Finance |
206% |
| Property & Real Estate |
125% |
| Retail |
69% |
| Travel & Tourism |
274% |
| Average Lift |
155% |
| | 12/6/2008 12:40:02 PM |
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Search Engine Marketing Trends and Statistics
1 in 10 Brand Searches Led Away from the Brand Website | clipped by: fuordigital
1 in 10 Brand Searches Led Away from the Brand Website
Our analysis considered the 30 leading e-commerce brands in the Airlines, Appliances and Electronics, and Insurance categories and revealed that in the four weeks ending September 27th, 2008 an average of 87% of searches for the top branded search terms (i.e. “southwest airlines”, “usaa”, “best buy”) sent visits to the brand owner’s website.
This week we are publishing a report on online brand protection. This issue is huge for marketers with our research showing that more than 1 in 10 US Internet searches for leading brands is led away from the brand owner's website. When you search for a brand in the phone book, you don't find that brand's competitors listed. But when you search online, that brand's fiercest competitors often appear in the sponsored listings. Online businesses need to be aware of the extent of the problem and to understand the best ways to deal with threats.
| | 11/24/2008 5:33:41 PM |
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Search Engine Marketing Trends and Statistics
How Yahoo! Actually Leads Paid Search | clipped by: fuordigital
The Undiscovered Best: How Yahoo! Actually Leads Paid Search Looking at paid clicks, or referrals, as a % of total search queries, we see a fairly familiar picture.
However, not all queries are created equal. As Jeremy Crane pointed out many queries do not lead to referral. Many of the unfulfilled queries are probably due to searchers not finding what they’re looking for. Many queries are also informational and can be answered right there on the SERP.
As you can see, Google answers the query on the top of the SERP with a handy conversion calculator, while Yahoo! doesn’t. Instead, Yahoo! offers paid results from Calibex and BizRate.
For users, it’s great to get the desired information right there on the SERP, without having to click-through to another page. For search engines, it’s a missed opportunity to monetize a search.
Thus a more appropriate online metric for measuring search monetization might be paid referrals as a % total referrals.
| | 11/3/2008 7:13:38 AM |
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Search Engine Marketing Trends and Statistics
MSN Cashback Search Strategy Successfully Attracting Visitors | clipped by: fuordigital
MSN Cashback successfully attracting visitors
This week MSN announced the launch of SearchPerks!, a new promotion that rewards visitors that use Live Search with tickets redeemable for various prizes. The latest endeavor is separate from the Live Search Cashback rebate program launched a few months ago, but certainly uses a similar tactic (pay for search) to reach the same goal (drive search activity) on MSN’s search properties (including both MSN Search & Windows Live Search). So far the question has been are people using Cashback? Is it a successful promotion - particularly with the launch of another?
Who is visiting MSN Cashback? For the 4 weeks ending Sept. 27, 2008, the visitors to MSN Cashback were skewed slightly more female and represented 55% of traffic. Nearly half of the visitors were between the ages of 25 to 44: 22% were aged 25 to 34 and 27% aged 35 to 44. The majority of the visitors have a HH income of under $100k.
| | 10/4/2008 8:25:23 PM |
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Search Engine Marketing Trends and Statistics
Asian Search Marketing by Country July 2008 | clipped by: fuordigital
| Country |
Audience, 000 |
Searches, mln. |
Searches
per user |
| Total Internet |
335,124 |
27,059 |
80.7 |
| China |
143,502 |
10,994 |
76.6 |
| Japan |
61,117 |
6,162 |
100.8 |
| India |
23,397 |
1,192 |
51.0 |
| Korea |
20,429 |
2,101 |
102.8 |
| Taiwan |
10,002 |
748 |
74.8 |
| Australia |
8,380 |
855 |
102.0 |
| Malaysia |
6,710 |
431 |
64.2 |
| Hong Kong |
2,812 |
228 |
81.0 |
| Singapore |
1,662 |
152 |
91.2 |
| New Zealand |
1,564 |
136 |
87.2 |
| Source: comScore |
| | 9/28/2008 2:57:09 PM |
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