The people I asked are novice marketeers that have some experience with Internet marketing but are by no means pros. What I found out is I’m not doing that good of a job explaining things so I thought I’d back up a little and start at the beginning and explain what search engine marketing is.

What is Search Marketing?

Search Marketing, also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), is part of a businesses online marketing efforts to increase the number of visitors to a website and then turning those visitors into buying customers (known as conversion).

Three Methods used in Search Marketing

There are three methods used in SEM. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Listing (pay-per-click or paid inclusion) and Web Analytics.

The first part, commonly referred to as SEO,  is the process of getting organic search engine rankings. Or a more simplified explanation; the natural position of a website in the search engines for certain keywords that people are searching for.

The second part, Paid Listing/pay-per-click, is paying a search engine for the inclusion of your website into their index or as a sponsored listing (PPC) in advertising.

For many new website owners paid listing and pay-per-click may seem like the fastest methods to attracting more visitors but this method can end up costing a lot of money and may end up breaking the bank before your reach the desired goal – buying customers.
 
For this reason many website owners, including me, choose the SEO method. If done properly this can result in what is called organic (free) rankings . Although search engine optimization is more time consuming the results of your efforts are much better and a heck of a lot cheaper.

The third and probably the most important part of SEM is what is referred to as Web Analytics. This is about gathering, analyzing and using information about your visitors, their details, their behavior on your website, the ways they found you, the efficiency of referrers and your advertising, conversion rates and together with all this data you will have a much better understanding of your visitors habits and what it takes to get them to buy.

So, what you should understand about the goals of Search Engine Marketing is a) to improve your web visibility and get as much traffic (visitors) as you can b) improve traffic quality by getting high rankings for keywords that bring in converting (buying) visitors and c) track and learn your visitors habits in order that you can learn more about what a they are lookiong for and how they find it.

I hope this clears up any confusion that I may have caused by starting in the middle instead of at the beginning.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Expert

Search Engine Marketing Explained