Make consumers discover you and what you sell and connect with customers who are searching for what you actually sell. Search Engine Marketing does just that, it will give you your needed visibility that will capture the customers to your site. Search Engine Marketing or SEM promotes websites by increasing its visibility in search engine result pages (SERP); it is a form of internet marketing. A non profit professional organization, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) an industry organization for search engine marketing firms, was organized to provide educational resources to member and consumers. According to this organization SEM methods include: search engine optimization (SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Search Engine Marketing is also defined as the practice of buying paid search listings.
The birth of search engines was primarily to help people find information quickly. Later, the pay per click program was offered by Open Text in 1996, and then GoTo.com came in 1998. GoTo.com changed its name to Overture (2001) but it was later purchased by Yahoo in 2003, which has become Yahoo Search Marketing. Google offered advertisements in 2000 through the Google Adwords, a paid search result pages. Today, there are four global search engines with Search Engine Marketing programs and these are: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live and Ask.com. SEM program for China is Baidu; Russia has Yandex and Rmmbler; while Hong Kong has Timway.
There are also search engine marketing professionals whose services include developing, implementing and managing both the natural search engine optimization (SEO) and the paid search advertising campaigns. The objective is to increase the quality and quantity of prospects visiting the client’s site, which would maximize the return on online sales and marketing investment or to maximize the potential of search engine marketing. Search engine marketing professionals offers solutions according to individual business needs. The keyword to achieving successful search engine marketing is "customize". Each firm has their individual capabilities and marketing goals and SEM professionals should be able to work around these areas as they develop, prioritize and implement a custom tailored campaign.
There are different search engine marketing services available to suit the different needs of businesses. Each one is designed to help firms exceed their online marketing goals that would enable them to achieve their highest potential online marketing return of investment. There are at least five available search engine marketing services namely; Natural Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising Management; Paid Inclusion Management; Feed Management; and the International Search Engine Optimization. The use of any one of the search engine marketing should generate the highest sales and marketing results for the business, utilizing even the largest and most complex sites on the Web.