In an earlier age, there was the crystal ball. Today we have the Search Engines. The Internet traversed the distance from science labs to classes, bedrooms and boardrooms very fast. This universal acceptability meant content generation evolved at a fast pace – much before any proper system could evolve for arranging the information generated.

The Search Engines evolved as a medium by which we could index the information properly, and then look for them systematically. Thus, even though organization could not be attained, the internet being such a decentralized platform, search engines provided users with instance access to information. Today, when information is prized and the search engines have attained a primacy in the scheme of cyber things, keeping the search engines happy is the only way to let others know that you exist. It is no good making a website unless people know about – Search Engine Marketing is a marketing approach to making your site known. This results is more people knowing about you and your products, and hence more revenue.

Search engine marketing consists of marketing your website – making sure that more people know about it. There can be two aspects to this marketing strategy. One is called Organic SEM, or more popularly Search Engine Optimization that strives to naturally rank a webpage as decided by its algorithm. This involves making a website compatible to a search engine’s algorithm and score high against the parameters that are vital in a search engine’s algorithm, such as META tags, unique but relevant content, link popularity etc.

The other aspect is more traditional marketing wherein an arrangement is made between advertisers and search engines – these can be from pay-per-impression or pay-per-click (AdWords, Overture, AdCenter, etc). Given that online commerce has huge stakes on the internet, SEM remains a big part of the marketing strategy of all companies, and can make a huge difference to the bottom line.