Guest Teacher on Thursday, December 7

We had the same teacher that had previously been our substitute come in to teach us about an interesting topic: Search Engine Marketing. It was a great powerpoint lecture, as we learned a lot about a topic that would help in making and posting our website to the Internet. It is a good quality to have a website really searchable, by including keywords that are relevant to our target users/readers. Following, is some content we learned in the lecture.

Some reasons that Internet users worldwide use search engines are for:

• research
• entertainment
• business
• news
• banking
• dictionary
• comparison shopping
• shopping / purchases

Personally, I use the Internet for every single one of these things! I do more research and go online for entertainment and business news, more so than I shop online. This is probably because I am more used to shopping in physical stores, where I am able to touch and feel products and try on clothes/jewelry. It would be great if the Internet can offer digital dressing rooms that feature models that look EXACTLY like us! The ones offered now are just created based on the average person; however, EVERY body is different; from shapes, to sizes. I find that when I try clothes on virtual models currently offered on websites, I know that is not how the clothes would look on me; from my previous experience of trying on those same clothes in real life. However, with better technology, hopefully one day this can happen. Okay, back to the subject of the class lecture...

Here is a list of site strategies for success (which are very important!) :

1. Establish site objectives
2. Figure out strategic goals
3. Identify an audience and market
4. Know the competition and what they're doing
5. Offer a lot of relevant/useful information
6. Include a lot of creative content. Content should also be up to par with other websites:
1. type, tone, style, architecture, navigation, graphic design, and usability should be crafted so as the website is easy to look at and use.
   
2. Visibility - search engine optimization
   
3. Marketing - site promomotion, branding, testimonials
4. Site maintenance
5. Guarantees
6. Links
7. Privacy statement

I will definitely use the above strategy list in creating my website for class. I have already started it, and though it is not a shopping site, it would be nice to get people to come and visit my website. I learned that in addition to a great looking, informative and usable website, it also has to be VISIBLE to search engines. This is known as search engine optimization. Also, for companies, marketing is very important to promote their website and business.


We also learned of the different players in the search engine industry, and how companies are charged by search engines for ads and how many times they get clicks, or many times a user visits the ad. Google and Yahoo! differ in their paying tactics; however, Yahoo! is beginning to follow in the footsteps of how other bigger companies, such as Google, do things. Terminology such as pay-per-call and pay-per-click, and paid inclusion tell us the way advertisements are paid for by companies. I never knew internet marketing was so closely marketed, in terms of each CLICK costing a few cents. I assume this can add up to a LOT of revenue for search engines.

In addition to learning about the search engine industry and SEM technology, we also learned about portals. Portals are sites that serve as a gateway to additional information. The types of portals are horizontal and vertical. Some examples of portals are ZDnet for tech news (now CNET Newtorks) and business.com for B2B business searches. Others are shopzilla.com, and shopping.com which feature shopping services for comparitive shopping. That is one thing I took away from this class that I'm really glad I found out about- comparative sites! I usually just go to sites for stores I am already familiar with, and review their prices. However, with a site that offers this all at one place, it makes things MUCH easier!

Above is a screen shot of Shopzilla.com, a portal that shows offers from various e-commerce sites to help users in comparitive shopping. The Internet is widely used for comparative shopping, and this shopping tactic has grown in use recently over the years. At the website, you can read reviews, get prices and compare products online. Since it compares most of the best-rated shopping outlets online, you can get your product at the best price.

Some useful information we learned on the topic at hand:

• SEM is based on paid placement.
• Companies bid for key words that are relevant to their site and target market.
• The charges are pay-per-click, with a 50-cent per-click average.
• Yahoo! uses paid inclusion and charges companies to be included in more relevant search results.
• Google AdWords uses a pay-per-click service. Most of their revenue comes from AdWords. Advertisers specify relevant keywords, and when a user searches for that keyword, ads for relevant words are shown as "sponsored links" on the right side of the screen.
  
• Yahoo copies Google, and this is known in the industry as PANAMA.
• In choosing KEYWORDS, we want to discover and use keywords relating to what our business sells, or what our site is about. A good way to do this is to perform searches ourselves using those keywords, and see what sites Google returns. It is good to keep in mind phrases, competition, and conversion and ROI; and grab as many different ways people would look for you in a search engine.
  
• Paid placement accounts for 83% of advertising spendatures online, which means that companies spend 83% of their money on sponsored ads.
  

What's next in SEM?
For the future, search engine marketing is expected to have more contextual search, more local search, more behavioral and personal searches, and more social search. Eventually, search will be used through every technological device offered; however, this is all the future.