What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is, in a nutshell, buying or earning traffic and recognition from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The goal is to have a link to your website appear before your competition when someone searches for your services. Over 60% of clicks on a search results page go to the top three spots on Google. Gaining that prime real estate (either organically or by paying your way to the top) can direct an unbelievable amount of leads to your website.

Top rankings can be earned by performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO involves manipulating the content and meta information on your site with the ultimate goal of convincing Google that your site is the most relevant site available for a given set of search terms. For example, an Italian restaurant will modify their website such that they are the first result shown when a user in the area searches for “Italian restaurant”, “Italian food”, or other closely related terms. If they manage to climb to the top spot for “Italian food”, users searching for that term will be shown that site as their first option. That means more traffic to their website, and more clients for their business.

Featured placement on search engines can also be bought with Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC). Ads can appear in a number of places. Primarily, however, they’re seen as search ads – ads which appear above the list of organic search results on Google, or display ads – which appear on sites visited by the advertiser’s target audience. The order in which ads appear is determined largely by the quality of the site, the wording of the ad, and the budget set aside for advertising.

SEM is shown to have some huge benefits. 57% of B2B marketers believe SEO is the biggest driver of lead generation. The opportunities for SEO to benefit your business are pretty abundant, as 81% of purchase cycles start with web search for B2B companies.

Realnets offers high-quality SEO and PPC Solutions. We’re driving clicks  and traffic to our clients’ sites and propelling them up the rankings of major search engines. Call Realnets today to see what Search Engine Marketing can do for you!