Search Engine Marketing
5.1 Introduction
Every day, all around the world, millions of people use search engines to find content on the Internet. Search engines are Web-based programs that index the Web and allow people to find what they are looking for. “Search,” or “search marketing,” is often used to refer to the industry that has built up around search engines.
5.2 Search Engine Optimization
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Learn how search engines work.
Understand the difference between PPC (pay per click) and SEO (search engine optimization).
Google, Yahoo! and now Bing are all well-known international search engines. Google is by far the leading player in the market. A comScore study of worldwide search engine activity, released in July 2009, showed that Google has just over 67 percent of the global search engine market share. [1]
When we talk “search,” we refer to two different kinds of results: organic search results and paid search results.
Figure 5.1 Global Search Engine Market Share
Organic Search Results
Organic search results are the primary product of a search engine. These results are the listings generally found on the left-hand side on the search engine results pages (SERPs). They are not influenced by financial payment and are therefore also called natural search results. Organic search results need to be consistently reliable to attract (and keep) users. Google’s growth and success as a search engine can be directly linked to its superior search algorithm, which returns highly relevant organic results.
Paid Search Results
Paid search, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, involves the displaying of sponsored results alongside the organic results. Advertisers bid for placement and pay the search engine when their advertisement is clicked on. Paid search results must be distinguished from organic results, since paid placement introduces bias. PPC advertisements are usually displayed at the top and on the right side of the SERPs. Search engines attract and keep users through organic search, but they make most of their money from paid search.
Figure 5.2 SERP Example
The Importance of Search to a Marketer
As search engines have become essential to a Web user’s Internet experience, so has search become essential to a marketer. Search is important for a number of reasons.
Search Is Goal Oriented: People Use Search to Find the Things They Want and Need
The Internet is a highly competitive environment, with literally billions of pages in existence. So how does anyone find the page they are after? Web users find what they need primarily via search. Search drives targeted traffic (and therefore sales) to Web sites. A Web search is a signal of intent from a Web user.
The Search Industry Is Big
The daily search-volume numbers are in the hundred millions. According to comScore figures, there were more than 14 billion searches in the United States alone in October 2009. [2] That’s around 466 million per day.
To Be Found, You Must Be Visible
If yo