Search Engine Marketing SEM FAQ - Questions And Answers

Learn More About Search Engine Marketing, Frequently Asked Questions

How do you define search engine marketing ?

Known as SEM within our industry, search engine marketing is a method of promoting an Internet domain, or a particular service or product, through online advertising campaigns. Most popular SEM options include query engines, portals, directories as well as sites developed to write about topics of popular interest for purposes of displaying online advertisements.

Why don't you offer search engine marketing (SEM) as a separate service ?

Ataraxis considers it to be a conflict of interest when offered alongside a design and development service. My reasoning for this is that SEM imposes an additional long term recurring cost on a small business online advertising budget. I believe it is counter productive to having an online presence in the first place. Internet marketing (which is not the same as SEM) leverages full potential of business promotional strategies through high placing in search engine results via non-paid methods. An experienced designer, developer, or IT project management consultant should be striving to help you take advantage of this through effective design and development techniques and strategies. Essentially if I include search engine marketing in my services offered then I am not confident in placing your online business high in search results. You should also be aware that there are many search engine advertising affiliate programs out there that your potential choice of designer or developer may be an affiliate of. It then becomes in their best interest to sell this additional online service so they can reap the benefits of referral fees. Online advertising is the engine that drives the Internet but sometimes it is abused.

Other designers help with SEM campaigns, why won't you ?

I have addressed this question in the paragraph immediately above this one. But I will say more here to expand on what I said. My philosophy concerning commerce these days is that it is becoming ugly. A great deal of high costs associated with products or services these days is due to an excessive amount of multi level marketing. If I subject you to this common practice then I am contributing to spiraling costs of running a business. This contributes to lifting everyday products and services out of reach of people who need them most. It is for reasons such as these that I choose not to offer it as a stand–alone service.

Isn't search engine marketing and Internet marketing the same thing ?

There is a difference between them. SEM is a method of promoting a site through paid advertisement campaigns. Internet promotion is a method of leveraging search results pages to take advantage of non-paid advertising through high placement in query engine results. SEM is not all bad. They provide us with a very valuable service; an ability to quickly find useful relevant information for a product or service. A search engine company has bills and salaries to pay just like you and I, somebody has to support them, online advertising revenue is their primary source of income. However, this method of online business promotional strategies should only become necessary when competing on a national or international level. When such is the case then it usually falls into the realm of large multi-national corporations who can afford an associated online advertising budget required to accomplish this. For purposes of my intended potential clients, local or regional small businesses, it should not be necessary.

What does pay per click (PPC) mean ?

PPC is an acronym for Pay Per Click. In a PPC advertising model it doesn't matter if your advertisement is displayed 1000 or 10,000 times because you will only incur a charge if someone actually clicks on your ad. PPC models typically compete against a CPM model of advertisements.

What does cost per click (CPC) mean ?

CPC is an acronym for Cost Per Click. It is an online advertising model used to determine value of advertising inventory and what price the market will bear to have their advertisement displayed on any given online advertising space. A CPC model helps an advertiser to know upfront what they will have to pay each time someone clicks on their advertisement. There are both fixed scale as well as sliding scale CPC models.

What does CPM mean ?

CPM is an acronym for Cost Per Mille; with mille meaning 1000. A CPM advertisement model revolves around a predetermined cost to have your advertisement displayed to all visitors of a given page and you will incur a cost for every 1000 times that ad is shown regardless of whether someone clicks on it or not.