What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing is defined by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) as:

The entire set of techniques and strategies used to direct more visitors from search engines to web sites.

Search Engine Marketing involves a number of different techniques and strategies including:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO),
• Search Engine Advertising (or Paid Placement or Pay per Click)
• Paid Inclusion.

1. Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) means modifying a web site to improve its ranking in the organic search results of search engines. Search Engine Optimisation techniques include: keyword optimisation, optimisation of web page attributes used by search engines (modifying the HTML and CSS code), removal of barriers to search engine crawlers, link campaigns and other link building tactics.

2. Search Engine Advertising

As well as unpaid (or organic) search results, Search Engines show paid text advertisements based on the search terms (keywords) entered by a user. Advertisers pay a fee each time a user clicks through on the advertisement (i.e. pay per click).

This type of Search Marketing is variously known as Search Engine Advertising, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, Paid Placement, (Google) AdWords and Paid for Performance Advertising.

3. Paid Inclusion

Paid Inclusion is a method whereby Search Engines charge website owners for inclusion in their search index. This form of Search Engine Marketing is less popular these days than it used to be. In terms of the two primary search engines in Australia, Google has never offered this service, and Yahoo used to offer this option, but no longer does so.

The screen shots below show the placement of both organic and paid listings on a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and a Yahoo Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Google Adwords = Pay per Click Advertising
Organic Search results = Search Engine Optimisation
 

Search Engine Statistics

While there are a large number of search engines in existence on the web, the most popular search engines in Australia are Google, Yahoo and Ninemsn, which between them comprise approximately 91% of the search market in Australia (i.e. over 90 percent of all searches made online by Australians are made via Google and Yahoo!.

Australia's Most Popular Search Engines

Worldwide, these same search engines have similar shares of the search volumes. So when considering Search Marketing activities primary attention should be given to these two dominant engines.

International Search Engine Market Share