The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from The Advertising Research Foundation

Search Engine Marketing Techniques

Search engine marketers use several established strategies to reach their brand marketing goals. Search marketers divide their techniques into paid search advertising and organic search engine optimization, or SEO (SEMPO 2005).

Paid advertising comprises three types, paid search ads, contextually targeted search ads, and paid inclusion.

1. Paid search ads. The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) defines these ads as “Text ads targeted to keyword search results on search engines, through programs such as Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search’s Precision Match, also sometimes referred to as paid placement, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and cost-per-click (CPC) advertising.” Paid search ad advertisers bid on keywords whose prices, in part, govern the appearance of the ad on a search results page and its position. When consumers type in “Caribbean beach vacation,” ads keyed to those words typically appear on the right side of a search results page or across the top, above other listings.

2. Contextually targeted search ads. These ads, SEMPO writes, are “targeted to the subject of writings on web pages, such as news articles and blogs, using programs such as Google’s AdSense and Yahoo! Search’s Content Match programs.” You’ve seen them on pages you read. Quite often, web publishers group the ads under headings, such as “Ads by Google.” Additionally, search engines may assemble specific sites, usually vertical, specialty, or niche sites ...