Basics of SEM
Search Engine Marketing covers a broad range of activities designed to sell or market your products and services on the internet through the search engines. There are thousands of these engines out there and they all want a piece of your marketing budget. There are two primary channels for harnessing the power of the search engines to deliver your message: organic listings and paid or sponsored listings.
Organic listings are those that are chosen by the search engines from their vast databases as the most important and relevant web pages to the search. These listings are free to the site owners and therefore are in high demand. To find out how to get your site listed in the organic listings see the Basics of SEO page.
Paid or sponsored listings are delivered alongside the organic listings. Placement is determined by auction, sometimes combined with a performance factor. In some cases the company that is willing to pay the most gets the highest position, in other cases the top spot goes to the ad that combines a high bid with a high click-through rate.
Paid listings have grown in popularity over the years so that bidding is extremely competitive. It is easy to spend more than the traffic is worth to you. The most valuable part of any paid listing campaign is tracking results.