Search Engine Marketing : All that you need to know
Note : Search Engine Marketing is NOT an alternative to proper Search Engine Optimization. They can well go hand in hand.
Search engine marketing is extremely important now to reach out to readers online. When you have a blog or website this is how you can proceed.
- Buy hosting and domain. Configure and host the site.
- Write good posts with relevant content. Build inbound and outbound links.
- Optimize the site for SEO following some basic guidelines.
- Now to make your site highly public and popular you need to market it. Actively.
Search engines are smart. So you also need to be smart to get listed in them with a good rank. Search engine marketing is a massive topic as a result. It can be broadly categorized into the following :
- Pay Per Click
- Cost Per Impression
- Web and Search Analytics
Pay Per Click and Cost Per Impression are the two major methods for search engine marketing and almost all search engines support them. Web and search analysis is done to do research on which keywords to focus on and the like.
What is Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click or PPC is one of the oldest marketing techniques in the Internet. It is also called Cost per Click (CPC). The way it works is simple. The advertiser bids on certain keywords aiming at the target audience. The search engine promotes these links when someone searches with those keywords. When the user clicks on the ‘promoted’ link the search engine is paid for it. PPC is extremely popular and is in use in all the major search engines. PPC can also be sub divided into Bid based and Flat based rates. Flat based rates are simple – a single advertiser pays a fixed amount for each click. While in Bid based ones multiple advertisers bid for similar keywords. For more details Wikipedia has an excellent article on this.
So What is Cost Per Impression?
Cost Per Impression or CPC also known as Cost Per Mile(CPM) is another search engine marketing technique. In this case the advertiser pays the money to the page owner when the ad is visible to the viewer. For example, an advertiser puts up a banner on a page like say example.com. When you visit the page example.com, you see the advertisement. The advertiser pays to example.com for the impression or the view.
So what about Web Analytics?
You are investing money as an advertiser. Indeed hundreds of dollars are pumped into a search engine marketing campaign. In such a situation you need to know what to bid for. You need to decide which method to use. Ideally a mix of both does wonders.
For Search Analytics there are many ways you can analyze the keywords. For the trending keywords Google trends offer a superb and free alternative to the paid SEO solutions. You will get links and everything from search demographics and the like.
As for Web Analytics, again Google has it excellent Google Web Analytics. Bing also has a respectable offering in this case. You might as well try it out.
With all these ground information you can begin to chalk up a plan for your marketing. Search engine marketing, like any other marketing, requires a lot of planning and analysis, especially the trends change very quickly.
So get ready and start your search engine marketing if you feel the need to. Good luck!
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