Sunday, November 2, 2008

Search Engine Marketing and its advantages



Search Engine Marketing is the method of marketing your products over the internet through the use of search engines. Search Engine Marketing is one of the most complex but successful methods of marketing available for products. The product visibility achieved through the internet cannot be matched with any other marketing strategy. Search Engine Marketing is rather advantageous as it requires a minimum cost and can result in High Traffic for Websites.

With a rise in the number of internet promotions, websites and the frequent use of the internet, Search Engine Marketing is required by all websites for even minimum visibility. Various techniques for Search Engine Marketing are Search Engine Optimization, paid inclusions and paid placement. There are a number of different techniques available such as Blogging and Directory submissions etc. though these are less frequently used.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing traffic to a website through advantageous visibility through the internet. This is one of the primary and most efficient Search Engine Marketing strategy available as a Higher Ranked Website on a search engine like google would result in a huge increase in visibility. Paid placement also known as Pay per click is a more conservative and less costing strategy as advertisers only pay when a customer clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertisers website. Paid inclusions on the other hand is where the search engine is paid to include the advertisers website in their search index. There are many other engineered methods as well which could be a combination of one or more of the methods mentioned above. Combining paid inclusions and paid placements ,an engineered product available though yahoo, would lead to increase in net traffic as well as visibility though it would cost more.

Search Engine Marketing is achieving popularity and is growing at a faster rate than traditional methods of marketing. Search Engine Marketing is preferred over other online marketing alternatives due to effective results. The Search Engine Marketing market in North America saw advertisers spending US$9.4 billion on advertising which is substantial in comparison to traditional marketing methods. By 2011 the market in North America is predicted to double to around $18.6 billion. One of the most commonly used and popular form of advertising in Search Engine Maketing is the search engine optimization method.

The benefits of using Search Engine Marketing while tapping enormous resource of the internet is obvious and does not need to be enlisted. Regardless it is noteworthy to state that if the resources used to advertise through other channels such as television and radio are applied to the internet it could lead to an upsurge in product sales and visibility as well.

Controversies have touched the Search Engine Marketing as well and the Federal Trade Commission has issued a letter stressing on the importance of disclosing the advertisements which have been paid for as well. This can be seen as a part of an Anti SEM propaganda as there are various methods used by advertisers such as movies, TV series etc where there products are shown and there is no disclosure regarding the companies having paid for the same.



No comments: