Marketing
Social Marketing is a relatively new form of online advertising and with Facebook now receiving more impressions per month than Google it may well be time for your company to make the leap into this new market. The social advertising model is fairly complex but shares many similarities with traditional online advertising models. Facebook Ads uses both Cost Per Click and CPM models where you advertise your products or services for either a set cost per click or pay a certain amount per 1000 advert page impressions.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of Internet marketing designed to increase the visibility of a website in search engine result pages (SERPs). Various techniques are used including search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC) advertising, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion on a directory website.
As a designer and developer of high-quality websites, I strive to make my work accessible and semantically correct and see myself as a White Hat SEO expert. The reason I adopt a White Hat approach to SEO is because I care about the quality of traffic arriving at my clients websites. I have first-hand experience of high traffic SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns that actually result in very little impact on the clients revenue. Sure, it is always a good thing to have more traffic to your site, but if that traffic doesn't convert into real revenue then it is a waste of time, money and effort.
Pay per click advertising is a vital component of search engine marketing used on websites and search engine result pages (SERPs) in which advertisers pay a small fee when their advert is clicked. When using an advertising platform such as Google Adwords, advertisers usally bid on certain keyword phrases relevant to their target audience. The cost per click (CPC) amount affects the ranking of an advert, however, rankings are also affected by the quality of the advertisement copy/text. This is why planning your advertising campaign using a PPC model is critically important. Many advertisers have large budgets and PPC is used to not only increase revenues and website visitors, but also for brand awareness. For smaller advertisers, PPC is valuable tool to gain immediate traction for new products and services.
Contextual advertising involves delivering adverts and content based on the keywords featured on a web page or software application. A contextual advertising system will scan the web page and then provide recommended advertisements that suit the scanned content. For example, if the user is viewing a website related to beauty products, an advert will be displayed for beauty-related companies, such as fashion and cosmetics. Contextual advertising is used by leading search engines and features on search engine result pages (SERPs). A search engine marketing campaign is not complete without contextual advertising.
Paid inclusion is usually required to get your website listed within a web directory such as DMOZ (ODP - Open Directory Project), these services are similar to traditional printed directories such as The Yellow Pages Directory. Fee structures are also similar where you may gain a priority listing for spending more. Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for the inclusion of your website within a certain category, a pay per click fee may also apply.
