Search engine marketing, or SEM, represents a specific branch or form of online marketing which is also called Internet marketing. In its process search engine marketing includes all measures for the attraction of visitors for a website within web search engines like Google. In other words search engine marketing is aimed at promoting websites by increasing their visibility and dominance in so-called search engine result pages (SERPs). This process can be realized by means of search engine optimization, paid inclusion, paid placement, and contextual advertising. Strictly speaking we are talking about the main areas of operations of internet service agencies, an Internetagentur as they are called in German.
What exactly is the reason for search engine marketing to be so important within search engines? Fact is that the general number of websites on the Web drastically increased in the mid-to-late 90s. It was the time when a variety of different search engines started appearing within the whole Web. Their job was to help people find information very quickly and without any problems. In order to finance their several services, search engines had the idea to develop so-called business models such as pay per click programs in 1996. Not only Yahoo, but also Google started to offer a wide range of advertisements on search engine result pages in 2000. This idea was realized by means of the very popular Google AdWords program. Google AdWords operates in terms of pay per click which means that advertisers pay their host only when their respective ad gets clicked by a visitor, customer, potential buyer or sales lead. Nowadays there exist lots of SEM agencies, a so-called SEM Agentur in German, which handle and prepare profound Google AdWords campaigns.
Whereas pay per click in terms of for instance Google AdWords does always require money and paid means in general, search engine optimization undertake specific operations in order to get better rankings for a special website within the search engine result pages. This means that search engine optimizers focus on trying to achieve top rankings without using paid means.
So if you have a website which is created with Joomla!, for instance a website about poems, it turns out to be important to get top rankings for a variety of relevant poetry keywords. If somebody is searching after ‘poems’, ‘wedding poems’, ‘birthday poems’ or ‘love poems’ your website should appear, if procurable, on the first search engine result page. The best case however would be if your website were on the first or second position because these are those positions that are most clicked by visitors. If your website does not appear on the first search engine result page, visitors will have great difficulties in finding your poetry portal.
All in all you get offered two possibilities for your website to get top rankings and very good positions within search engine result pages. On the one hand you can use Google AdWords (you will have to pay for every click on your poetry ad), on the other hand you can do search engine optimization which represents a long process in order to get top rankings but does not require paid means for every click.