Search Engine Marketing is the promotion of products through the search engines available on the World Wide Web. Search Engine Marketing is one of the most complex but successful methods of marketing available for products. No other Marketing Strategy can gain the product visibility available through marketing on the Internet Search Engine Marketing is rather advantageous as it requires a minimum cost and can result in High Traffic for Websites.
With a rise in the number of internet promotions, websites and the frequent use of the internet, Search Engine Marketing is required by all websites for even minimum visibility. Methods under Search Engine Marketing include Search Engine Optimization, paid placement and paid inclusions. Various other techniques though less frequently used are present such as Blogging, Directory submissions etc.
SEO is the method of increasing visibility on Search engines which leads to increased traffics to the website. This is one of the primary and most efficient Search Engine Marketing strategy available as a Higher Ranked Website on a search engine like google would result in a huge increase in visibility. Paid placements cost rather less as payment is related to the number of times users click on the advertisement which leads to the advertisers website. Paid inclusions on the other hand is where the search engine is paid to include the advertisers website in their search index. Combining the methods given above a number of other customized products are available for the advertisers convenience. A combination of paid inclusion and paid placement could increase internet visibility remarkably though it would lead to increased costs.
Search Engine Marketing has seen an upsurge and is growing much faster than other traditional marketing methods. Search Engine Marketing is preferred over other online marketing alternatives due to effective results. In 2006 around US$9.4 billion was spent in North America on Search Engine Marketing alone disregarding other online advertising strategies. The market is predicted to grow upto $18.6 billion in North America by 2011. One of the most commonly used and popular form of advertising in Search Engine Maketing is the search engine optimization method.
The benefits of using Search Engine Marketing while tapping enormous resource of the internet is obvious and does not need to be enlisted. If the resources used to advertise through traditional means such as the Radio and Television are used to advertise through the internet there would be a noticeable difference in the product sales as well as product visibility.
There have been controversy regarding paid search advertising and the Federal Trade Commission has stressed on the disclosure of paid advertising as well. There are a number of movies, TV series etc where products are depicted and there is no way to determine whether the advertisers have paid for the same or not, thus these controversies regarding the internet marketing can be seen as inconsistent with other media.