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Making your ‘needle’ a ‘giant in the haystack’!
What is Search Engine Marketing?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the combination of paid for and non-paid for means to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Paid for SEM can take the form of;
Search engine Pay Per Click (PPC) where companies pay for their ads to be listed at the top or to the right of search engine result pages (e.g. managed via Google Adwords or MSN).
Paid-inclusion, where search engines charge for each website that appears in search listings (many smaller search engines use this model, but it is against Google’s ethos).
Contextual search advertising where relevant ads are served into website pages, depending on the keywords on that page. These appear next to the content (e.g. managed via Google Adsense).
Carrying out PPC campaigns, even as a test, can inform us about what keywords people are using to find your content, and how visitors who have searched on various keywords interact with your site.
Non-paid for search is referred to as Search Engine Optimisation; the art of elevating your website up the natural or organic search engine results for relevant keywords. There are many factors that affect your listing, both on-page (i.e. your code, structure and content), and off-page (i.e. who’s linking to you and talking about you). Importantly, the algorithms that search engines use to calculate who is number one are top-secret and change with the wind. In fact they are often named like hurricanes as they can easily blow big players off the prized top spot.
What’s new in SEO: does Google favour brands?
Google makes updates to their natural search algorithms hundreds of times per year, so that they stay ahead of the game and guard against false SEO listings. A recent, “minor” algorithm change named “Vince’s change” (Vince, btw, is a guy at Google who did most of the work), has caused some consternation, especially for the sites that it swept off the top spot.
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It appears that Google’s updated algorithm favours brands. SEO Book shows that brands that were previously way off the top page, were propelled up the listings. Google’s SEO Supremo Matt Cutts claims however, that this was not directly attributable to “Vince’s change” saying that they still rank according to: trust, authority, reputation, page rank, and high quality content on the site. In practical terms it appears to be good news for brands, in spite of Google’s claims that “there’s nothing to see here, move along quietly”. |
Contact McCann-i
If you’d like to know more about how you can optimise your website for organic listings, and how your PPC and SEO can work together to enable you to gain ground on the competition, give us a call or arrange a meeting with:
Claire Banks
Head of Interactive
McCann-i
Claire.banks@europe.mccann.com
07816 271 162
