uses the web as a medium to spread awareness of its target product. Internet marketing has emerged as a cheap yet dynamic way to distribute information in the global market.
SEM seeks to promote websites – and the products being sold on those websites – by increasing their visibility through search engine results pages.
The development of SEM is an off-shoot of the success of the Internet in the global arena. As more and more people started using the web, more and more sites on a variety of topics started being created. In the mid-to-late 90s, search engines were developed to help people find the information they wanted quickly.
Soon search engines developed business models to finance their services such as pay per click programs.
A pay per click program is a small text ad that appears next to results from an on-line search. A marketer buys the rights for their ads to appear on a web page or a search engine. The ads are tied up to key words. When a searcher types in a particular query to a search engine, the engine not only offers up a listing of relevant websites but also the marketers “ad”.
The first pay per click programs were offered by Open Text in 1996 and Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com changed its name to Overture and was purchased by Yahoo in 2003 and is now Yahoo! Search Marketing.
SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.
Search Engine Optimization is a strategy by which you attempt to improve the vol