Organic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an online marketing technique targeted at obtaining top placement in natural (unpaid) search engine listings by means of keyword research, content development and other on-page and off-page activities. Organic SEM is an alternative to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising that targets sponsored (paid-for) search results.
Although organic Search Engine Marketing requires more time and effort than a PPC campaign, in the long-term perspective it is much more beneficial for a number of reasons. Natural listings boast stronger traffic generating potential while search engines users have more trust in unpaid search results rather than PPC ads. 70% of search engine users visit organic sites on a daily basis, while 29% have no trust in paid-for listings and are even annoyed by them.
While search engines are interested in providing most relevant search results, organic listings (also referred to as ethical or natural listings) are deemed more important. You can’t purchase top placement in these listings. The only way to appear at the top page of natural search results is to optimize your website for search engines. This process is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and it involves a number of activities. SEO starts with keywords research to identify search terms that are likely to be used by the potential customers when looking for products and services that you offer. Once the keywords are chosen, the website’s content is tailored around them. Link popularity is a critical part of organic Search Engine Marketing in general and SEO in particular. Without high-quality incoming links your site will not be considered an authority by the search engines and therefore you won’t be able to achieve high rankings for your targeted keywords.
Basically there are two ways to optimize a website for search engines. One is to try and do everything yourself. This is sure to save you money, but unless you have enough time to dedicate to organic Search Engine Marketing, you are not very likely to go up the search engine rankings. SEO may take quite a long time before you get the results and can evaluate your success; therefore patience and enthusiasm are critical for effective SEM. Another option is to hire professional Search Engine Marketing services. This way of online marketing is much more efficient and is sure to nicely return every dollar invested.
However, you need to be careful when choosing a Search Engine Marketing company. There are a number of ways to make sure that your company practices ethical SEO and follows the rules set by search engines. Some SEM practitioners do what is called Black Hat SEO. They try to fool search engines by stuffing your web pages with lots of keywords, gain links from link farms and employ a number of other tricks. Search engines severely punish websites that are ‘optimized’ this way. Therefore check the references of your SEM company, talk to their previous clients and make sure that they are interested in promoting your site, not just pumping money out of you. If you make the right choice your investment in organic Search Engine Marketing is sure to pay off in a most beneficial manner.