resources
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing
From advertisers who are just dipping their toes into search engine marketing in the UK to businesses that are looking to move their search strategies up a level, browse this page to find the inspiration and resources you need to make sure you are fully maximising search for your brand.
Visit our glossary if you come across any unfamiliar words or phrases
Introducing Search Engine Marketing(SEM)
Search engines allow the consumer to access anything they might ever need to know, including information about your company, within a click. With 87% of the population using search as their primary means of finding websites, brands without a search engine marketing strategy run the risk of being invisible to a significant share of their potential customers.
There are two main ways of ensuring you are driving traffic to your site from a search engine. You can either do this in-house or hire a search engine marketing specialist to manage it for you, either way you need a dedicated resource as its an ongoing commitment and necessary part of your internet marketing strategy.
Paid for Search or PPC (Pay Per Click) allows an advertiser to bid on certain keywords so that a short description and URL for their site appears in the paid listing section - normally in a sectioned off area to separate it from natural search - when someone searches for these terms. The advertiser pays a certain price each time someone clicks on their link (the cost per click or CPC). What they pay and their subsequent listing depends on how much they are prepared to bid for the term and on the search engine's own ranking policy.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process whereby a website can be 'optimised' to be 'search engine friendly' in order to improve its position in the natural rankings. Sites appear in the natural listings (as opposed to the paid listings) because a search engine has indexed them as being of relevance to the keywords searched on by the user.
