Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is the process of getting customers to visit your site and then subsequently buy online, or enquire by telephone or email.

Search engine marketing services can bring prospective customers to your site in their droves, ultimately allowing you to dominate your business category.

Search engine marketing services comprise a number of components, but for now we're concerned with driving visitors to your website, which is carried out in two ways:

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, which makes your site so popular with Google and the leading search engines that you’ll easily be seen in any internet search on your keywords. Theoretically it’s free!

Pay per click or ppc advertising, including Google AdWords, Overture and MSN, which is the second way to bring traffic to your site. It's targeted, focussed and costs money. Maybe lots of money!

Both of the above work.

Now consider their pros and cons of the different search engine marketing services:


Pay Per Click - Pros & Cons

Fast: For the company marketer in a hurry, you can have traffic coming in tomorrow, and maybe appointments the week after

It Works: Many companies have increased their turnover by £1,000s a month using AdWords and similar pay per click.

Predictable: You can easily estimate likely traffic, and therefore calculate your spend. You can start planning your winning campaign today.

Inflationary: As more and more people catch onto AdWords, the cost per click goes up and up. Clicks that cost £2 each a year ago have gone up to £5 for some number one spots. How long before they cost a tenner? Be prepared to pay up and keep paying up. Who said search engine marketing services we're going to be cheap!

Search Engine Optimisation - Pros & Cons

Delivers free traffic: Visitors cost you nothing. What could be better. And why pay for all the visitors who don’t buy or enquire? Why pay at all?

Takes time: Nobody got to the top of a Google search overnight. Expect to spend 3 months before results start to show. Search engine optimisation is an ongoing analytical process so it pays to take the 12 month view as well as the 3 month view. Search engine optimisation never really ends.

Takes money: Getting top rankings requires a lot of professional skill and technological expertise, which will cost you money.

Long lasting: Generally, once you’ve achieved a high ranking it isn’t too hard to keep it. And the longer you keep at it, the more likely you can win that elusive but all-valuable number one spot. Search engine optimisation delivers long term value


Which is best?

If you've got the time, then search engine optimisation works and goes on working. And the big spend is in the beginning, with not so much later on.

But if you need leads today - and sales results tomorrow - then pay per click is the only option. But expect to pay and pay. And there's nothing left afterwards, if you stop paying (except all the new customers you gained while you were paying).

Also, pay-per-click customers never really get to understand the web, while search engine optimisers often grow in their knowledge and become information experts.

Importantly, both search engine marketing services solutions work.

The advice? Get both.

Search engine optimisation works

Search engine marketing services work!