Any online business that reaches for success has to take up visibility on the web.

Not only your product/service has to be desired, but you also need to ensure your offer meets the consumers.

In a context of worlwide use of search engines, a specifically targeted marketing has emerged, creating a whole subcategory of Search Engine Marketing. It refers to marketing and ranking tasks involved in order to increase your website visibility on search engines.

According to the claims of Dominique Cardon in A quoi rêvent les algorithmes – Nos vies à l’heure des big data, online «visibility has to be earned or paid for ».

Thus SEM includes « search engine optimization » (SEO , the « earned » visibility, also known as organic or natural ranking ) but also « search engine advertising » (SEA , advertisement and sponsored links on search pages).

 

SEO & SEA in brief

SEO consists in earning a free spot in the search results by having the most relevant content for a given keyword search.

Organic ranking is costless and due to the authority others « netizen » credit to the content. One of the main limit of natural ranking is its slowness and its strong inertia.

As for SEA, it involves winning an ad spot or a sponsored link, the more often by auction. The process is cash-dependent, so it’s more expensive than SEO, but almost instantaneous.

 
« Think as your target does ; be highlighted when it is needed »

It is important in SEM to acquire an accurate knowledge of the targeted market.

Indeed, you better know the right keywords associated to the requests that are leading to your products, in order to get a high click/search conversion rate. Otherwise be afraid losing prospect clients.

What’s more, if the main concern of SEM is to enhance your page ranking and settle an ad displaying, it has to be consistent with your customers profiles and behaviors.

As search engines are the meeting point of internet users & advertisers, search engine marketers have to manage the promotion of their offers (products, services, cause) not to drown the search engine users in irrelevant ads.

While Big data is rising, SEM is more than ever a « data-driven marketing ».

A propos de Martin REBOULLEAU