There are a lot of TLAs (three-letter acronyms) in this post (heh), sorry. Actually, technically they’re initialisms…but I digress.
So, I’ve come across people using the term Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, so to refer to pay-per-click (PPC) search engine advertising like Google AdWords. Now in my opinion, “marketing” really encompasses the whole search marketing strategy, which also includes SEO or Search Engine Optimization – of the organic kind. To me it makes sense to break SEM into the categories organic and paid. Or, non-paid and paid. SEO and PPC.
Any way you put it, both require market research and strategy, usually pretty much the same research about keywords, customers, and competitors will apply to both paid and organic strategies, and if you’ve identified search as a valuable channel, then you’ll probably pursue both strategies. It’s the implementation of all this that really differs. Maybe it’s more the marketing is not advertising thing, or just me being picky. What do you think?
I agree that SEM is a good umbrella term, and lately I’ve started calling the whole thing Search Marketing (SA – sans acronym).
However I was reading SEO an hour a day, 2nd edition (2008), the other day and they made the point that some are using the term SEO to encompass organic and paid. In the same week I met with a client who was referring to all of it as SEO as well, so there’s definitely some confusion in this.
Bottom line seems to be that if you’re going to spend money on organic or paid, then you’re probably going to want to spend money on both organic and paid, and call it whatever you like because you’ll likely spend it with a single provider (so as to avoid overlap of keyword research etc amongst 2 different firms).
Look forward to chatting about this and other ideas, hopefully can grab a coffee in the next week or so. cheers
Thanks Tom, search marketing may be even better! You’re right, the idea is to try and encompass the whole landscape. Plus PPC can be great for getting early feedback on keyword choices. Either way, search is always a consideration nowadays, we just build in the basics like building a house to code. Talk soon!
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