Cantaloupe Interactive | Online marketing

Search engine marketing

People use search engines to find information on the internet. Search engines index the content on the internet so that people can find what they are looking for.

Google dominates the search engine market with over 85% share of the market. Search engine marketing is an industry built around search engines.

There are 2 different kinds of search results:

AOrganic results

Also called natural search engine results. These results are not influenced by a financial payment to Google. Google's reputation and success as a great search engine is its ability to consistently serve up relevant and reliable results thus giving people what they are looking for.

Search Engine Opitmisation aims at improving a website's ranking in the natural search results.

BPaid results

Also called Pay Per Click (PPC) is the inclusion of sponsored results along with the organic results. Advertisers bid to have their advert placed as close to the top of the page as possible. Each time their advert is clicked on the advertiser pays.

PPC involves budding for placement in the paid results section.

The diagram below illustrates organic and paid results:

3 reasons why you should include SEM in your plans to drive traffic to your website:

1Search engines are used by people looking for something specific. Their search is goal oriented and can deliver targeted traffic to your website.

2To be found you must be visible, your site must be found at least within the first 30 results on the search engine result page. Above the fold on the first page is best!

3People trust organic results. 71% of people have more trust in organic results than paid results. Paid results are great for quickly getting the message out as the advert is dynamic and is good for advertising specials and promotions.