What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of online marketing that drives targeted leads to your Web site – sometimes called Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. However, Search Engine Marketing with Network Solutions goes way beyond traditional Pay Per Click advertising. We provide lead tracking and reporting on calls, e-mails, forms and landing page traffic to your site generated through paid listings.

Search Engine Marketing involves creating and placing ads in the prominent positions on search engine result pages. Internet viewers see your ad when they type in a search word or phrase related to your business. In order for your Search Engine Marketing campaign to be effective, our experts will help you bid on keywords that best define your business. Your ad will then appear on appropriate search result pages.

Search engines

Search engines are one of the primary ways that Internet users find Web sites. That's why a Web site with good search engine listings may see a dramatic increase in traffic.

Everyone wants those good listings. Unfortunately, many Web sites appear poorly in search engine rankings or may not be listed at all because they fail to consider how search engines work.

In particular, submitting to search engines (as covered in the Essentials section) is only part of the challenge of getting good search engine positioning. It's also important to prepare a Web site through "search engine optimization."

Search engine optimization means ensuring that your Web pages are accessible to search engines and are focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found.


This next section provides information, techniques and a good grounding in the basics of search engine optimization. By using this information where appropriate, you may tap into visitors who previously missed your site.

The guide is not a primer on ways to trick or "spam" the search engines. In fact, there are not any "search engine secrets" that will guarantee a top listing. But there are a number of small changes you can make to your site that can sometimes produce big results.

Let's go forward and first explore the two major ways search engines get their listings; then you will see how search engine optimization can especially help with crawler-based search engines.

The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways.

Crawler-Based Search Engines

Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through what they have found.

If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.

Human-Powered Directories

A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.

"Hybrid Search Engines" Or Mixed Results

In the web's early days, it used to be that a search engine either presented crawler-based results or human-powered listings. Today, it extremely common for both types of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another. For example, MSN Search is more likely to present human-powered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially for more obscure queries.

Internet marketing

Internet marketing, also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it refers to digital media such as the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media; however, Internet marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing does not simply entail building or promoting a website, nor does it mean placing a banner ad on another website. Effective Internet marketing requires a comprehensive strategy that synergizes a given company's business model and sales goals with its website function and appearance, focusing on its target market through proper choice of advertising type, media, and design.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times working with comScore published an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from advertisements served from advertising networks, the authors found the potential for collecting data upward of 2,500 times on average per user per month.

search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Search Engine Marketing Tips

The competition is on rise and so are the competitors in a world of business. Every one is constantly engaged in finding new and better marketing tips to promote their products on the websites or engines. Comet Search Engine Marketing is one such firm that not only offers search engine marketing solutions but marketing tips to its clients.

Search Engine Optimization Tips

• Title - Many search engines weigh the data in your title more heavily than other data in your page. Make sure that your title has keywords that represent your site effectively. For the most part the title should be short but always include your keyword(s).

• Meta tags - Use the meta-tag description and meta-tag keywords attribute on every page of your site that you want the search engines to index. If you don't want a page indexed, then try the robots exclusion tag. The robots.txt exclusion protocol has more support with spiders.
  
  

• Content - Write great content using your most important keywords prominently throughout your web site. Visitors who read great content will link to your web site and recommend it to others.
  
  

• Keyword planning - Always do keyword planning on both the search engines and directories to determine the best set of keywords and keyword phrases your target audience is using. Look for "related searches" in search results for ideas.
  
  

• Alternative text - Put alternative text in your graphic images that clearly describe the graphic image and using your keywords whenever possible. Do not put text in a graphic image that has nothing to do with your web page.
  
  

• Frame Pages - Most search engines simply can not index a frames page. They get to your site and can't go anywhere. Consider frames like a big 'GO AWAY' sign. If your site does use frames, doorway pages are ideal for better rankings.
  
  

• Don't try to fool the search engines. This is probably the biggest trap people fall into. People come up with ways to 'fool' search engines, and they work for a little while...sometimes. But then the search engines catch on and write routines that penalize sites that use this practice. Examples of this include, but are not limited to: repeating keywords over and over; using invisible text (white text on white background); using very small text to jam the keywords in a small area.
  
  

• keep the important content near the top of your pages. The actual text on your website is very important. Search engines (spiders) read this to determine rankings. Some engines will place a higher rating of importance based on where they find the text in your page. Closer to the top is usually better. But having keywords throughout your page develops a "theme" and that too is important.
  
  

• Don't stuff the top of your pages with data the engines can't read. As with the last example, something higher up in your page can be more important that something further down. Therefore, HTML formatting, images, scripts, etc. toward the top of your page can result in lower ratings.
  
  

• Website Content should be your #1 priority. Your quest for high placement must start with a good website. It is important to have a lot of text describing what you do. Use your keywords in the content, but don't repeat them over and over. Many search engines rate sites based on 'keyword density'. This is usually a formula that looks at META Keywords, words in your TITLE, words in paragraph text, words in links to other pages, and even words in the 'ALT' text on your images. They will even look at different forms of your keywords. For example, if an important keyword for you is 'CLOTH', the word 'CLOTHING' in the body of your document will raise the confidence in the word 'CLOTH' on some engines
  
  

• Keep your site updated. Make sure that your site is up to date. No one likes to go to a page that never changes or that is very out of date. Make sure that the data in your page portrays the message that you want to send. Check the links on your site every now and again. Make sure the links are still active. Dead links are not only an inconvenience for the visitor, but can also negatively influence your rankings.