Search Engine Marketing is the practice of making one’s website visible in search engines such as Google or Yahoo, the two most popular search engines in Hong Kong. Two main ingredients to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) management.

Pay Per Click management involves placing paid adverts on the side of search results.

In Google, these paid adverts are located on the top and to the right hand side of natural search results. Google use the application, Google AdWords, to manage these paid search listings.

In Yahoo this is also the case and the application, Yahoo Search Marketing is used.

Paid search results have several benefits over Search Engine Optimization. 

• Paid search results are instant whereas it may take months to be listed in natural search results.
• Paid search results are ideal for websites whose products change regularly such as shopping cart sites where new products are released often and old ones taken off the site regularly. Since SEO takes months to list a product, it may very well be taken off by the time it is listed and then it may take several more months until the search engine recognises that that product is no longer visible before removing it from the natural search results (free listings).
• Paid search results can specifically target different contries, areas, districts, suburbs.
• You are able to change your message whenever you want. With SEO this is often not the case as a search engine may take either the page description or a snippet of text from the website to describe the page in question.
• You can use day parting to display your message during certain times of the day to maximise Return On Investment (ROI).

Search Engine Optimization, on the other hand, is the practice of modifying your website’s coding as well as off-site modifications (such as people linking to your website), in order to show the search engines how important your website is in regards to the search keyword phrase that a user has typed into a search engine.

Search engine listings for this aspect of Search Engine Marketing are located in the main body content of search engine results – usually the most looked at results on the pages and therefore the most relevant to be listed in.

There are many aspects (over 100) to Search Engine Optimization that must be considered when a project is undertaken to increase your website ranking in order to list your website closer to the top of search engine listing results. Some of these factors include:

• Website coding used – there are many coding methods used to build a website. Some are HTML, PHP, ASP, JSP, FLASH, etc.
• Website content – the more relevant your content is to the search term, the higher your website will be listed.
• Frequency of content changes – a website that is kept up to date will rank higher than one that is out of date.
• Number of pages on the website – the more pages you have, the more visibility you will have in search engines as more opportunities exist for your site to show up (this also relates to content)
• The speed at which your website loads – your hosting speed may have a huge affect on your visibility. Search Engines don’t have time to wait around for a website to load as they have billions of pages to index. If your website takes too long to load, the search engine may just move on to the next website and leave yours un-indexed.

As well as Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization also has it’s benefits:

• Natural search results are the most valued results. They are scanned by the human eye more often, they are hard to get and therefore valued highly, and they are generally trusted by most people to be worthy of visiting – especially when listed on the first page of search results.
• SEO can rank your website high in the natural search results and keep it there. Paid Search results are only there as long as you are paying search engines to list your adverts.
• SEO offers the highest Return On Investment.
• Brand visibility. The more listings you have on a search results page, the more visible your brand will be. Studies show that out of 1000 impressions, natural search results get 20 clicks and paid search results get 10 clicks. If you are listed in both natural and paid search results you will get 60 clicks.

Which you decide to use depends on the services that you have to offer and which service will benefit you the most.