SEM is short for Search Engine Marketing, but to understand SEM you also need to know about SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization - the process of aligning a website's on-page factors (meta information, titles, content, etc.) with off-page factors commonly referred to as link popularity. The amount and quality of links pointing to a specific site. SEO is a part of SEM, where SEM encompasses a larger strategy from the traffic coming from Search Engines.

SEM also utilizes the traffic coming from queries into the Search Engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing. There are other Search Engines, tons of them, but these 3 are really the main ones with the most traffic - Google being far ahead with 65% market share.

SEM Services generally include management of Paid Advertisements (PPC -- Pay-Per-Click) in addition to SEO for organic, free traffic. Organic traffic is wonderful accounting for about 70% of the clicks from searches - the other 30% is through the paid ads. So to really be effective in one's Search Engine Marketing efforts you would want to also collect traffic from Paid ads as well.

I like to think of SEM Services as the full package - beyond just organic Search Engine Optimization - to go for Social Media, Video Sharing sites and other sources for positions in the Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPs). Think of the SERP as the top of the funnel and you want to have as many 'holes' pointing to your sites. At TopSpot SEM we use a different strategy than other companies and go for multiple page 1 rankings - not just 1. You can see the advantage of having 7 out of 10 rankings for your desired keyword, as opposed to just 1. This blows away simply having a second ranking on the Paid ads - and it's free!

Why is Search Engine Marketing so effective?

Well...

• Search Engine Marketing was ranked as the #1 website promotional method used by e-Commerce sites. *ActivMedia Research
• 84.8% of Internet users utilize search engines to find web sites.*GVU Users Survey
• 71% of all Internet surfers reach web sites through Search Engines.*Nielson Media
• Research has proven that 93% of global consumers use search engines to find and access websites. *Forrester Research
• 85% of qualified Internet traffic is driven through search engines, however 75% of search engines users never scroll past the 4th page of results *Georgia Institute of Technology: Seventh WWW User Survey
• 55% of all Internet sales result from buyers finding the sellers website through search engines.
• 73% of global chief executives (CEOs, CIO's, etc.), say that they prefer to find out about new products online. *Research.net