Internet Marketing

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is not SEO, the two are very different and yet I hear the terms used as synonyms all the time – even by those in the business.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is getting your website noticed by Search Engines (SE's), so that your website gets traffic from those searching for a non-particular website, but a focused interest.

SEM is the set of skills used when utilizing the Search Engines (SE's) as the point of entrance into your web site for sales; such skills include the creation and monetizing landing pages. In other-words, SEM is making the sale once the SEO efforts have done their job.

If you are selling a product or your main monetizing efforts are not directly from the information you have on the website, then the two efforts and skill sets are heavily reliant on each other and affect each other on several major points. For example, if your SEO efforts are herding in traffic which is not responded to by your SEM efforts, then the result is going to be a large Bounce Rate. A large bounce rate directly effects the effectiveness of near-future SEO, making it more difficult every month to maintain the same level of traffic (and increasing the traffic level after a while becomes simply impossible).

SEM skills also include the use of PPC ads from various Search Engines, but not necessarily advertisement campaigns which are run on other websites or in affiliate-type systems. The skills here are in the writing of the ads, the targeting of the ads, ad tracking, and the ROI of those ads once they have been clicked on, and the prospect is on the landing page.

The two skill sets (SEO and SEM) are so divergent, it is rare to find individuals with experience levels in both -- high enough to be truly effective for your company website. It is not really a matter of intelligence but of experience (and time). It is not unheard of; the two areas inter-mix so much that after several years, an SEO will be exposed enough to the SEM areas (and vise-versa) that eventually she will pick up the skill set (forced to pick it up the skill sets to insure that efforts are not counter-productive).
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