Theory of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization - Article Example

Theory of Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Introduction “The biggest benefit of digital media delivery is in advertising” (Ramos & Cota 20) and almost all media get the larger share of their revenues from advertisement. The Internet has altered everything, from news, advertising, business, relation to others, getting information, and being entertained. It has change how people practice religion, how they data, how they decide on things, how they spend their leisure time, and how they work. Consequently, search engines were used to market merchandise and services. Businesses learned to use the power of search engines and engine optimization to enhance their ranking and increase their sales. The following section discusses the functions of search engines, the relationship between the Internet and direct marketing, and the theory of search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Search Engines on the Web In 1990, there was only the Internet and the World Wide Web does not exist. FTP or File Transfer Protocol was the common method of receiving files which gives computers a common way to transfer files over the Internet. This was the method most file sharing was done and anybody who required to share a file needs to set up an FTP server in order to make the files accessible to others. Consequently, people who want to share files have to post messages on message board on the location of a particular file so people would know where to download. The first ever search engine according to Michael & Salter was named ‘Archie’, which was designed in 1990 by Alan Emtage. ‘Archie’ is a search engine with expression matcher that allows retrieval of files from a user typing in a search term or query. In other words, it matched the files it had found with search queries, and returned results from its database. In 1993, ‘Veronica’ was developed by University of Nevada and was similar to ‘Archie’ but designed for Gopher files rather than FTP files. Another major advancement in search engine technology was developed by Matthew Gray which he named the ‘World Wide Web Wanderer’ and considered the first robot on the Web. Its initial function was to track the Web’s growth by counting web servers but later began to count URLs as well. WWW Wanderer ultimately became the first database of websites but previous versions of this software caused loads of functional problems as they scoured the Web and retrieved single pages over and over in a day. However, many web programmers were enthused by Word Wide Web Wanderer and developed exceptional web robots. Consequently, at the later part of 1993, three search engines were launched that were powered by advanced robots- the JumpStation, the World Wide Web Worm, and the Repository Based Software Engineering Spider or RBSE. However, these web ‘spiders’ do not have any actual acumen as there were not capable to work out what it was they were indexing. Because of this, ‘Elnet Galaxy’, a searchable and browsable directory resembling Yahoo was created. ‘Elnet Galaxy’s website links were organized in a hierarchical structure, which was divided into subcategories and added subcategories until users arrive to the website they need to go. The engine also includes Gopher and Telnet search features, with supplementary web page search feature. The subsequent momentous phase came with the conception of the Yahoo directory in April 1994, which contains a list of student’s favorite web pages (2-3). The Internet and Direct Marketing In the infancy of direct marketing, means of getting customers include packing an envelope thick with advertisements and coupons and sending them out to different households. Progressively, such endeavor paved the way to a more targeted campaigns such as 1-800 numbers which grew in popularity as marketers went to television to get instant result. At present, with the establishment of extensive databases that systematically gather information on households and individuals, direct marketing is rapidly realizing the most aspired one-to-one promotions and incentives, and integrating innovative style of interactivity. By using mail, telephones, computers, and television, facts on potential customers is being transformed to profits. Knowledge of this type is extremely valuable and is utilized in order to produce influential online brands. Thus, online marketing fundamentally altered the means in which information about customers is gathered, explored, and utilized (Lee 2). The competitive forces of direct marketing industry are shifting rapidly with the introduction of the Internet. In a survey a decade ago, nearly 30% of the 97 million U.S. households are online. Electronic commerce generated $32 billion in online purchases in 1998 alone. Thus, online advertising surfaced as one of the most modern growth areas for direct marketers. They are going to the Internet as it is more economical but with profound customer interaction and access to a global audience. With the facility to connect directly to the customer, the Internet has the potential to become the best one-to-one marketing medium (Lee 2). Effectively Promoting a Business on the Web Publicity is considered a primary secret in Internet selling and the solution to World Wide Web marketing promotion both online and offline (Cohen 281). Site traffic building allows a seller to bring in potential customers to his website without expensive marketing promotion. Using search engines and directories as virtual conduits linking a seller’s customers to his product provides him with the opportunity to use his marketing fund efficiently. Site promotion gives a seller a chance to boost website recognition, inform existing and prospective customers of a seller’s offerings, and pack sales pipeline with fresh visitors and would-be buyers. However, in order to drive additional traffic, a seller must assess his circumstances and study his strong points and limitations. Site design is very essential and prior to the optimization development, he should think about some fundamental factors that need to be deal with in a site’s design that can be difficult for search engines if not eradicated. For instance, frames hinder a search engine’s ability to index content on each page of a website. Another are problematic symbols in the URLs particularly on websites that are delivered animatedly like ASP, and flash intro pages that cannot be index by search engines (Roman & Hornstein 171). Search engines seek for keywords within a document that are appropriate to the website’s objective and employ other condition regarding the content. For instance, they take into account the frequency of keywords, how intimately they appear with other keywords, how natural or coherent the words are, and how frequently other related keywords emerge within the content. Speed is also a search engine concern as pages that load swiftly tend to have a high ranking if other factors, such as significance and attractiveness warrant high search engine placement. Thus, using lower quality pictures or alternate text for pictures and plug-ins will make page load fast and enhance a page’s ranking (Wagner 27). Search Engine Marketing Search engine marketing or SEM ordinarily means using search engines to get in touch with buyers of a specific product directly (Scott 242), a discipline of understanding and influencing how a specific search engines transform the query into results (Roman & Hornstein 170), and it is regarded as one of the most efficient way a seller can market and advertise his website on the Internet (Safko & Brake 373). These search engines include general search engines like Google and Yahoo! as well as vertical market search engines that are specific to an industry or the people a product seller is aiming to reach. SEM is generally a marketing function (Fiore 118), and there are two types of SEM. One is ‘paid inclusion’ where seller buys the top-ranking position in the search results for a specific search term. The other is ‘paid placement’ where a seller or service provider bids on and buy a small pay-per-click ad on search engines, such as Google.com and Overture.com, and only charge when someone clicks on their ad. The substantial divergence between the two is the actuality that paid inclusion strategy assured a seller or service provider top placement in the search results while the paid placement only assured an ad to show in the top position on the sponsored websites if seller bid for those positions higher that its rival (Fiore 119). The SEM advertising system first appeared in 1998 when Jeffrey Brewer introduced the Pay-Per-Click concept. In 1999, Google offered its own version, an impression-based form of search engine advertising, the CPM or Cost-Per-1,000 impressions. They also introduced Adwords in year 2000 to enable their users to create their own ads for placement on the Google Search Engine result pages. However, Google switched to PPC in 2002 to follow Yahoo’s successful advertising model (Safko & Brake 374). SEM and SEO are oftentimes viewed as two dissimilar types of marketing but SEM in reality deals with the actual practice utilized to place a website within search engines to attain utmost exposure. SEO is just one of the two approaches for SEM, the other is paid listing. It is a distinct method that is aimed for to enhance ranking in search engine listing and can be viewed a division of SEM (Keillor 171). However, SEO and SEM both symbolize skill sets that need some technical knowledge of HTML and how web pages operate (Safko & Brake 377). According to Thurow & Musica, search engine marketing professionals frequently research keyword phrases to find out searcher’s intent. Keyword research tools help them find out how people search and the estimated volume of keywords utilized on a monthly basis. Data from web analytics software and site search engines can also explain how searchers are putting together queries. However, they also oftentimes look beyond this data and look at the big picture. This is because if they only concentrate on how many times per month people searched for a certain word; they would not recognize why searchers created that query (39). Search Engine Optimization In implementing search engine optimization, one would need to have familiarity of what people looking for, his own requirements, and how best he can put them into practice. Moreover, he must understand that each search engine optimization campaign varies from one another, depending on several factors as well as the purpose of the website, and the funds on hand to use on the SEO. According to Michael & Salter, the most important techniques and areas that works include having straightforwardly searchable content on a website, links to and from the website to other well-liked websites, using a paid placement programs, and optimizing site content to persuade users to come again after they have visited (1). SEO or Search Engine Optimization is commonly known as a disparate set of activities that one can carry out to enhance the quantity of desirable visitors who come to a website through search engines. In other words, it is the “art, craft, and science of driving web traffic to web sites” (Davis 2) and guaranteeing that the words and phrase on a website, blog, and other online content are located by the search engines (Scott 242). These activities include altering text and HTML codes and communicating directly with the search engines, or following other sources of traffic by requesting a listing of links. Moreover, tracking, research, and competitive review are also part of the SEO package. Although SEO includes some advertising components and communication task similar to PR, it is not advertising or PR (Grappone & Couzzin 4). Search engines are extremely intricate implementations of software technology that afford access to the information on the Internet thus efficient SEO necessitate a deep appreciation of how the bits of search engine technology interconnect. A superior SEO must take into account search engine mechanisms such as discovery or finding web sites, storage of links, page summaries, and related information, ranking, and return of results. Discovery, Storage, Ranking and Return are all important to SEO as search engine, Google for instance, uses PageRank algorithm to order the results returned by specific search queries thus knowing how these things work is crucial to the success of SEO. The underlying idea behind PageRank is to provide an objective method of scoring the relative importance of a page. Therefore, the more inbound links a page has, the more likely it is to have a higher PageRank. However, not all inbound links are equal weight since a page gets a higher Page Rank if another significant source links to it than a trivial site with less traffic. Thus, if one web site wants to have a high PageRank, it needs to get as many high-ranked sites as possible to link it. Outbound links on the other hand draw traffic to the linking site and encourage others to return the favor as they respect the quality of the links the original sites provides. However, there is a graceful balancing act that should be done with outbound linking because extra outbound links reduced appeal of a web site (Davis 12). The major purpose of SEO is to attract traffic to a web site. However, there are some ethical matters that must be upheld since SEO like other technology has to abide by justifiable, industry-accepted procedures. The general idea to what is disreputable is ‘unfair manipulation’ (Rognerud 112) since many judged that SEO by itself is manipulative approach. For instance, the very act of maneuvering the search engines into ranking a website higher. However, SEO and SEM are actually comparable to producing advertising messages for various media with an upright principle of attracting the interest of target audience. These audiences are the public that requires and desires a product and not being misleadingly influenced into buying a product or service. Webmasters who use ‘white hat’ SEO strategies (in contrast to ‘black hat’) are as apprehensive about their visitors experience on their web sites as they are with ranking high on search engines. Therefore, they focus on crafting content that both their visitors and search engines are starving for; forming rightful relationships with other web sites for link building, and correct use of meta-tags (Rognerud 113). SEO is basically the science of crafting a website to take advantage of search engine rankings and thus of the elements of a website should be created with the aim of achieving high search engine rankings. These elements include entry and exit pages, page titles, site content, graphics, and web site structure. Moreover, a website owner or webmaster must also take into account factors like keywords, links, HTML, and meta-tagging. The concept of SEO is therefore not based on any single element but on an infinite number of elements and strategies, and a continuing process that does not stop once a web site go live (Ledford 14). Conclusion Since the first search engine emerged in the 1990s, technology related to information search on the Web were further developed and recently become a tool for product promotion and direct marketing. Online advertising became the hottest growth areas for direct marketers because it is cheaper but creates a deeper customer relationship and access to worldwide audience. Consequently, site traffic building become very important to businesses and search engines were used as virtual conduits to connect businesses to potential buyers. SEM is one of the most efficient ways to market and advertise a website or a product and SEO is the ‘art’ of making these things happen by optimizing a website for search engine ranking. Work Cited List Cohen, William. The Entrepreneur and Small Business Problem Solver, US: John Wiley and Sons, 2005 Davis, Harold. Search Engine Optimization, US: O'Reilly, 2006 Fiore, Frank. 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