ALL ABOUT SEM, SEO & PPC

What is SEM?

Most internet users use search engines to find information, products and services that they are looking for, in fact ‘93 percent of users worldwide use search engines to find websites’ - Forester Research.

SEM techniques allow you to be found amongst the millions of web pages available on the internet. Many of your competitors will already be using these techniques and benefiting from the traffic that their online marketing is producing.

SEM Benefits

Search Engine Marketing is great way to market your company’s products or services to online users in a direct and relevant manner. This can be achieved by bidding on keywords and key terms through Pay Per Click techniques and through Search Engine Optimisation techniques. Search engine marketing ensures you are delivering an almost immediate solution to online users that may not have previously known your website existed. The great thing about SEM is that its impact is directly measurable. You will be able to monitor the benefits you receive from the SEO and PPC techniques.

Why Should I Spend Money on SEM When I Have an Offline Marketing Campaign?

If you have a website, you need to make sure your website is found!

It’s not enough to rely on your offline marketing to drive traffic to your website. Audiences often forget website addresses or have forgotten about your marketing campaign by the time they actually need it! Online users want quick and relevant answers to their search queries. Search engines are focused on driving and delivering the most relevant search results to their users.

SEM (Search engine marketing) involves a range of marketing techniques required to maximize a visibility of the website on search engines so that it will increase visitor traffic. This typically includes:

O Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website

O Pay per Click Keyword Advertising (PPC)



The key benefit of SEM for your business is the opportunity to put yourself in front of a prospect that's already looking for what you have to sell. It's not low hanging fruit, it's in the basket waiting for you. All you have to do is be there to pick it up.

What is SEO?

SEO is a fundamental part of search engine marketing (SEM). It requires constant updating and continuous attention of the website content for solid, long-term effective results. 'Natural' Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of guiding the design and development of a website so that it will naturally attract visitors by winning top rankings on the major search engines for selected search key word phrases.

It is common that search engine rankings go up and down all the time. Many webmasters are unsure what they have to do to keep their web sites at the top of the search engine result pages. There are two main factors that influence the rankings of your web pages. This typically includes:

O On Page Optimization

O Off Page Optimization What is on page Optimization?

The term On Page Optimization refers to just that: optimization that is done directly on a specific webpage to achieve better search engine rankings. This could mean on the visible parts of the page (what the viewer or customer can see) or in the code or invisible parts of the page. This is all done directly on the .html ‘file’ or ‘page’ which is the reason for the name On Page Optimization.

(OR)

On-page optimization refers to factors that have an effect on your Web site or Web page listing in natural search results. These factors are controlled by you or by coding on your page. Examples of on-page optimization include actual HTML code, meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density,etc.

What is off Page Optimization?

Off-Page optimization refers to the ranking factors that are usually out of your control. The most important off-Page factor is the links to your web site. Link Buildings are part of Off Page Optimization. Search engines use these two main factors to determine the rankings of your web pages. SEO Process is a combination of on page and off page optimization in which off page optimization is most crucial to rank a website on major search engines. It helps to achieve, maintain and improve the ranking by chasing down major competitive keywords. This is why most of the companies go for off page optimization.Read more about SEO



What is Link Building?

In terms of traffic building, organic search engine rankings and internet sales, link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Link popularity or building simply refers to the mechanism of securing text links pointed at your website and strategic landing pages in order to increase rankings. This is often referred to as Off Page Optimization. Currently, link building - developing quality relevant one way links (also known as backlinks or inbound links) - to your website is one of the most important factors in SEO and achieving high rankings in the search engines.

The different types of links are, but not limited to:

-One way link building - Convincing any given website to link back to you by various methods are including Directory Submission, Article writing and content distribution and publication and Web 2.0 - social bookmarking and blog / forum links.

-Two way link building (Reciprocal linking) - you link to me from a page in your website, and I will link back.

-Three way link building - Three Way Link Building helps you build links while avoid reciprocal link building and other types of penalties resulting from it.

They way it works is that you give Website (A) a link to Website (B).

Website (B) gives a link to Website (C).

Website (C) then gives a link to Website (A).

In the end, (C) websites have links to each other, and yet none of them are reciprocal. Three waylinks are a subset of reciprocal links.

-Paid links - links secured on any given webpage by monthly or yearly payment. Read more about link Building.

What is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a search engine marketing technique that requires you to pay a fee every time someone clicks to your website from an advert you have placed in a search engine’s results. Therefore, you only pay each time someone visits your site.

(OR)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a performance-based online marketing model in which businesses bid for enhanced placement in search results on terms that are relevant to their business, and pay on a per-click basis. You set the price you're willing to pay for each sales lead and pay only when customers click through to your site, leading to a high return on your investment (ROI).

Research shows that advertisers receive the highest ROI from pay-for-placement search when compared to e-mail, banners and other forms of online advertising.

PPC advertising offers you an excellent solution to drive traffic to your website almost immediately. Another great benefit of Pay-Per-Click advertising is its advantage of being easily tracked so you can tell that campaign A just made $5,000 of profit whereas campaing B did not earn you anything.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter are the three largest network operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC), varies depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular keyword.

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.

Adwords: Name of the Google pay per click program. The Adwords advertisements appear in the top two positions above the natural listings and in boxes on the right side of the page. Google Adwords are visible in Google as well as their partner sites including AOL and AskJeeves. If “content match” is activated the ads will also show up next to magazine articles and other pages throughout the web.

Adsense: An advertising and money-making program run by Google where website owners can show Google ads on their site and generate revenue based on the Pay Per Click model. The website owner gets a percentage of the PPC revenue generated by clicks from their site. Read more about PPC