Search Marketing: Is it the same as Search Engine Optimization?
No - and here is the difference: Search Engine Marketing is the pursuit of a plan or strategy that accomplishes the marketing and business objectives of an organization using Internet search. Search Engine Optimization is a tactical approach to optimizing a website's code and linking architecture to form but one element of an overall search engine marketing plan. Summary of Search Engine Industry:
The evolution of the search industry was swift and aggressive, resulting in an industry in which marketers were confused and unsure of the best way to make the most of search engines.
Search engines were designed initially to find the proverbial needle in a haystack and make sense of the millions, now billions, of web pages on the Internet.
Search is a rapidly growing industry, providing new opportunities for all marketers, as a surprisingly large number of organizations are no search strategy whatsoever.
Companies learned that optimizing a website to gain stronger rankings in search engines was a good way of gaining prominent listings under certain searched terms, giving birth to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
As optimization presented businesses the opportunity to become visible on search engine, it also provided the opportunity for less-than-ethical practices aimed at “tricking” the search engines. These practices contributed to search results becoming less relevant to the searcher.
New and tighter rules about relevancy resulted in paid mechanisms that then went a stage further, allowing non-optimized websites to be listed based upon the amount advertisers were willing to pay. These ads are extremely effective and are commonly seen as “Sponsored Listings”.
Today, search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, moving into what is called, “Behavioral Targeting”, whereby a person’s behavioral history on their computer is used to determine the most relevant ads to display.
Search engines are most commonly used for driving awareness, branding, and website traffic and, as they continue to evolve, will become even more of a pervasive force in the Internet industry. |