Search Engine Marketing

My sales increased 34.5% in just 3 months. I would highly recommend The Direct Marketing Lab to everyone.

-Jane Pennells, Poeme

Search engine marketing allows you to target people who are further along in the buying process than those reached with traditional advertising. Search Engine users have already past the 1st stage (Need Identification) of the buying process and are either in the 2nd (Developing Consideration Set) or 3rd (Information search and evaluation of alternatives) stage. This is the time when customers are the most responsive to advertising.

Paid Vs. Organic Results

Search engine marketing can be broken down into 2 main categories: paid results, often referred to as pay-per-click, and organic results. Both can bring a large volume of qualified traffic to your site and each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Paid (yellow) Vs. Organic Results (blue)

Organic Results

Organic results (above, highlighted in blue) are the results returned by the search engine based on how relevant the page is compared to the term searched for.

How each search engine determines this relevancy is a closely guarded secret (it's up there with the formula for Coke-a-Cola and Skyline Chili) and it constantly changes so as to foil those who would unfairly game the system.

Learn more about improving your organic search results

Paid Results

These results (also called Pay-Per-Click) are based largely on the amount of money you bid for the term searched for (Paper Clips in the example above). You only pay if your ad is clicked on and the searcher visits your site.

Learn more about Pay-Per-Click search engine marketing