Chance Spann Interactive Producer Suggestion: "Getting to know SEM"

In my last blog I grazed the surface of SEO and the importance of implementing SEO tactics into your overall web development strategy, you can review that article here: Suggestion 2/26/10 “The Acronyms 2”. Today lets just touch another acronym that can be helpful in the world of search engines called SEM (Search Engine Marketing). And let's go to the mecca of UGC... Wikipedia and to the world's definition and go from there: Wiki defines it as:

"Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. "

Let's just say for a good read in this article we will keep it light as once you pay the placement its pretty much done for you especially with Google, I'll just take you through the process so you can have a one stop shop for the understanding and quick implementation strategy of SEM. Lets get started. So once again lets use Google as an example, they have a program called AdWords. Three simple steps can get you started with a simple SEM program with Google AdWords.

1. Create the ads: ( Google has a nice little tool for this). You then choose keywords/tags = words or phrases that associate to your ads initiative, ultimately to be ranked by, then come up in a search under those terms or phases by users who are searching.

2. Place the Ads: This is very easy as Google has set a step by step process and its easily done. Once users search on Google and type in one of the words or phrases you associated to your ad, your ad may appear next to the search results. ( according to how many have clicked in the past, money you spent etc...) This allows for your ad to be shown to users who are interested in the topics your ads initiative is advertising in hope to get a "click" or 1000's ( ;. It's a good program as they use a PPC methodology, Ohhh an acronym I have yet to mention, "Pay Per Click" we will be getting into this in a later article, but basically you only pay a certain amount if a user clicks your ad. This can also work in reverse as in this case Google is a "Publisher", now Google is HUGE, they almost have to use this method, smaller sites with 1mm or under can utilize a CPM (Cost Per 1000 clicks) methodology and be much more profitable, add a contract to end of the ad at a certain time or at a certain amount of money usage etc... like I said I will get into this another day.

Google has lots of extras to help you to get placement in their rankings and to analyze them. These are very important as well, and might not be found in lesser markets. A couple you should research are " contextual targeting technology" this can automatically match your ads to pages in the Google content network that are most relevant to your ads initiative via the keywords or phrases you use. Also there is a very useful tool to most importantly measure and optimize your results: you can pay close attention daily to multiple ad placements performance on a site-by-site basis to see impressions, clicks, cost, conversion data, and use this data to identify well-performing sites to target more aggressively and low-value placements that require content optimization or need to end due to lack of performance.

Yahoo Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN Microsoft adCenter also have programs for paid ad placement that pretty much work under the same protocol and criteria as mentioned above, but with less eyeballs, and frankly less tools to combine all of the useful methods you will need to maintain your site. But to will want to get into them up to your "EYEBALLS" as well as some user only use these engines and you want their visits. A good read would be "What are Google Webmaster Tools". One may learn allot by typing this into a search engine browser.

Just my two cents.

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