Search Engine Marketing’s Elusive Definition

Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 2 of January , 2008 at 4:19 pm

Search engine marketing has been defined in a number of ways. Some people include search engine optimization in their definition and some people don’t. Either way, you can’t get around search engine marketing as a viable way to market your business online. I like Jeremiah Owyang’s list of marketing methods, but the definitions and cross over definitions can be a bit murky.

For instance, he classifies SEO and SEM as a part of the branch of Search Marketing. I can buy that. But he doesn’t talk about pay per click or pay per action as a part of SEM. That was likely intentional, but in my mind, SEM is not all-inclusive. In other words, pay per click advertising is a branch of SEM, but SEM doesn’t include all forms of online advertising. I don’t think he meant to leave that impression, but when you lump SEO and SEM together under “Search Marketing,” that seems to be the indication.

Owyang places contextual advertising under a category he calls “Brand Extension.” I’ll have to agree that contextual advertising does go a long way to brand your company. It is certainly a branding tool, but it is also a form of pay per click advertising, which makes it a form of search engine marketing. At least, the way that I define the terms.

The problem with definitions is that everyone has their own, which makes it difficult to communicate about some of the concepts. That’s why, when I talk about pay per click, I like to talk about specific vehicles - Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter, Miva, etc. Google AdWords is not considered contextual advertising and the major pay per click advertising companies do not get involved in this form of advertising, but some of the pay per click companies (AdBrite, for instance) are pay per click based and offer contextual ads. That’s why the definitions can get murky. There are just so many products online and so many more becoming available.

Kent Lewis makes his 2008 predictions for search engine marketing in today’s Search Marketing Standards blog. All of his predictions in the last two years have not been accurate, but a lot of them have, especially the ones concerning Google. This year, he’s predicting Google will do to cross-platform bid management what he did to analytics in the past two years. That’s an interesting prediction. If he’s right, I’m sure it will mean a bigger boost for pay per click advertising and search engine marketing in general. I hope he’s right.

Category: Search Marketing

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg

No comments yet.