Search engine marketing is big — and getting bigger. Just check Google’s latest price-earnings report to see how popular putting sponsored ads next to search results has grown.
That success is starting to draw the attention of big-brand marketers, particularly in consumer categories where buyers like to do lots of Web research before laying out their cash. But that doesn’t mean SEM holds no further promise for companies outside the Fortune 1000 — even wayoutside. After all, pay-per-click ads were intended as a means to draw small marketers into Web advertising, ensuring that advertisers would only spend what they could afford on marketing that worked. And “organic” search optimization — designing Web content to get a high rank on Google or Yahoo! search results for your category — can work even better than paid ads in the long run.
But if you’re just now gearing up to do search marketing, or if you’re looking to optimize a program that was started long ago, be advised that the game has matured since the pioneer days of 2001. Attendees at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, CA earlier this month heard about those changes in the session “Big Ideas for Small Budgets.”
Next: New Rules of the Game
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