1. What is Search Engine Marketing?
It's about increasing your site's visibility on the search engines and directories by obtaining prominent placement for relevant search terms. It's accomplished by optimizing your site and directory submissions by employing relevant keywords and phrases.
2. What kind of results can I expect?
It's difficult to summarize the kind of results you should expect. Just like other marketing efforts, factors such as objectives, planning, budget, timeframe and experience will affect the outcome. At the same time, Search Engine Marketing results are pretty easy to measure. So, in a short amount of time you will know if your efforts are paying off.
For some specifics on the type of results that can be achieved, I recommend the follow articles:
3. What is the difference between search engines and directories?
Generally the term "search engines" is used to refer to both search engines and directories. However, there are some distinct differences between them:
Search Engines:
Search engines typically "crawl" some or all of the pages on your site, creating an index of the content. The returned results link to the specific pages that they consider most relevant to the search term used.
Directories:
Directories don't crawl your site and therefore don't index the actual content. Results are typically based on the relevance of the search term to the name, description and category they have the site listed under--along with some other criteria. They usually only link to the homepage.
The four most widely used search engines are Google, Yahoo (directory), MSN and AOL. The specific order of their ranking varies based on the criteria being used.
- Learn more about the top search engines: Search Engine Ratings
[http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html]
4. What is the difference between Paid Submission, Paid Inclusion, Paid Placement and Search Engine Optimization?
Paid Submission:
Minimum Budget Requirement: $299/year for Yahoo
Typically paid submission doesn't guarantee a listing. It's the equivalent of paying an application fee. You pay to have your site processed and it can be accepted or rejected--although I've yet to see a professional quality, commercial site rejected.
"Yahoo! Express" is an example of Paid Submission. If you have a commercial site and aren't already on Yahoo, I suggest that it is time for you to get listed with them. At $299/year you can't afford not to be on Yahoo.
Paid Inclusion:
Minimum Budget Requirement: Approx. $30 to $40 per URL
As the name implies, paid inclusion simply means you pay to be included in the main results. However, it doesn't guarantee a particular position. Inktomi, Lycos, and Alta Vista are just a few of the search engines that offer paid inclusion.
Paid inclusion is not always necessary. If you do a good job getting your site listed on other important sites these search engines will likely pick up your site on their own.
Although, if you need to be listed in a short amount of time --or have particular pages on your site that you want to make sure get listed--paid inclusion can be the way to go.
Paid Placement:
Minimum Budget Requirement: Varies (see below for more info)
Paid placement provides you with the opportunity to purchase prominent listings for particular search terms. If you've seen listings marked as "sponsored" on Yahoo or Google, these are paid placements.
Google and Overture's programs cover most of the paid placements on the top search engines and directories. Google's "Premium" and "Adwords" programs provide the paid placement listings on Google and AOL. Overture's programs covers Yahoo, MSN, Lycos and others.
Both these programs are considered to be Pay Per Click (PPC). You pay each time your paid placement link sends traffic to your site. What you pay can vary considerably. Typically you must bid for the term and the position. If you're interested in a popular term, competition can drive the price up.
However, for less competitive terms, it might not be as costly as you think. Some companies allocate budgets as low as $200 a month. Also, no long term commitment is required, so you can test the potential with a limited budget to explore the marketing opportunities available through paid placement.
Learn more about:
Search Engine Optimization:
Minimum Budget Requirement: $2000+ per year recommended
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of preparing your site for indexing by the crawler-based search engines (such as Google).
You can submit your site to the search engines without first optimizing it but that would be like buying a new car and not putting any gas in it. Sure, it looks great, but it isn't going to get very far.
If search engine visibility is important to your website marketing efforts, you need to optimize your site. This is especially true if you're planning to participate in search engine paid listing programs.
But don't over-optimize it! What some consider search engine optimization techniques are actually considered spam by the search engines: a practice we strongly advise against. Also, if you go to the extreme in optimizing your copy you will probably lose visitors rather than gain them. Always keep your customers in mind first--rather than the search engines--when optimizing your site.
Search engine optimization usually involves the following steps:
- Researching and identifying search terms to target
- Determining website pages to optimize
- Reviewing and editing site copy
- Reviewing site architecture and file hierarchy
- Writing Title and Meta tags based on identified terms
- Submitting the site
- Analyzing site traffic reports
Learn more about SEO:
Search Engine Submission Tips
[http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/index.php]
5. What is the Google Dance?
Okay, this isn't really one of the most frequently asked questions but if you're involved with Search Engine Marketing you've probably observed it. Google Dance is the term used to describe the inconsistent search results you see on Google as they change from one index to another each month when they update their index.
Learn more about Google: Google Information for Webmasters
[http://www.google.com/webmasters/]
Submitting your site to Yahoo, Google and all the top search engines and directories is quite easy once you know where to go. That's why we have put together the following guide.
The following sites have been compiled from what I find to be the best and most current Search Engine Marketing resources.