The Key Elements of Search Engine Marketing

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a wide variety of ways to go. Here are the top approaches, to wit, the key elements of search engine marketing.

The Key Elements of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is a very general term that more or less encompasses most types of online marketing. It is by far the most effective way to generate traffic to your site. Traffic simply refers to the number of people coming to your site. Unlike rush hour on your local freeway, you want as much traffic as possible coming to your site. With search engine marketing, there are a couple of different ways to go about this. 

Pay-per-click marketing is the simplest form of search engine marketing. It is also the most expensive and the least credible. With “PPC” marketing, you are simply paying for the placement of a small ad on the search engine in question. The problem, of course, is you are paying! If you are not careful, your return on investment can be atrocious and wipe you out within a few months. To make matters worse, many people fraudulently click ads just to use up your budget. This, of course, makes your return on investment even worse. PPC has its place, but it should never be relied upon as a total solution to your marketing needs.

Search engine optimization is the next method in the search engine marketing arena. With “SEO”, the goal is to get your site ranked in the top 10 in the search results for specific keywords. All the clicks you then receive are free, which makes your return on investment very high. The downside to SEO is it takes time to get those rankings. A new site can expect to wait six to nine months before even getting a sniff of a ranking on Google. Yahoo and MSN take less time, but not much less. Most sites run PPC campaigns during the first year while they wait for the rankings. 

Article marketing is the third and newest element of search engine marketing. With this approach, you write articles for your site and submit them to clearing house sites known as directories. Webmasters for other sites can then use them so long as they also publish an author byline including your name and a link to your site. When the article is published on other sites, people start clicking the link and you have traffic.

For most sites, all of these elements of search engine marketing are used at one point or another. The ultimate goal is to get rankings through search engine optimization and sit back while the free traffic rolls in and sales occur