subject: Search Engine Marketing - Online Marketing [print this page] What is search engine marketing? What is search engine marketing?
It is a global term that refers to all the different ways you can market a site on the zillion or so search engines out there. In truth, it is a catch all term for most people who know they should probably have a website, but not much more than that. It is like walking up to a real estate agent and saying you need a house.
Search engine marketing is a very general term that more or less encompasses most types of online marketing. It is by far the most effective way to generate traffic to your site. Traffic simply refers to the number of people coming to your site.
Pay-per-click marketing is the simplest form of search engine marketing. It is also the most expensive and the least credible. With "PPC" marketing, you are simply paying for the placement of a small ad on the search engine in question.
Search engine optimization is the next method in the search engine marketing arena. With "SEO", the goal is to get your site ranked in the top 10 in the search results for specific keywords. All the clicks you then receive are free, which makes your return on investment very high.
Article marketing is the third and newest element of search engine marketing. With this approach, you write articles for your site and submit them to clearing house sites known as directories.
List of Best Search Engines
Any list of the best of something is going to controversial. When it comes to a list of the best search engines, the top three are indisputable.
Google - It is the best or close to the best in most areas. Google has deemphasized back links, but still controls massive traffic. It is by far the best advertising platform for businesses and the most used platform by people looking for things. Google also supplies search and advertising results to AOL among other search engines.
Yahoo - It is one of the original search engines that has managed to stay in the game. In truth, Yahoo has never had much to shout about as a search engine.
MSN - It is the little search engine that could. While it may seem odd to suggest a search engine offered by Microsoft is an underdog, this is definitely the case on the web. To put it bluntly, Microsoft missed the mark when it first launched MSN.com.
Looking at this list of best search engines on the web, you are probably wondering why others aren"t included. Simply put, most of them are just fronts for results provided by Google, Yahoo or MSN.