Search Engine Marketing

Gay, Charlesworth & Esen

Chapter 6

SEM’s Importance

• Search engines and directory listings are the most popular methods for information retrieval for internet surfers

Rayport & Jaworski 2002

• 80-85% of web users use search engines a tool of first resort

Haig

2001

The Low Cost of ‘Search’

Three basic marketing and SEM links

• Simple submission ‘free to subscribe with the site indexed under certain keywords

• The paid advertisement indexed by keywords resulting in top/higher rankings

• Banner ad displays tied to keywords

Early Search Engine Problems

• Poor quality and out-dated machine generated results

• Listings were poorly or randomly ordered

• Deeply flawed business model with poor revenue generation potential e.g. ‘Free-to-subscribe’

Two types of Search Engines

1. Crawler Based Search Engines such as Google that relies entirely on technology to build its database

2. Human Powered Directories such as Yahoo in its original form where humans analysed and indexed web site submissions

How crawler-based search engines operate

Web LinkageKleinberg’s Hubs and Authorities

Search Engine Optimisation

• Meta tags - title tags, alt tags, h1 to h6

• Keywords - keyword relevancy,

keyword density and keyword stuffing

• Search engine algorithm

Search Engine Sharp Practice

• Doorway pages

• Spamming

• Cloaked HTML

• Problem Pages

• Hidden Text

• Page jacking

• Bait and Switch