Search Engine Marketing Fundamentals

This assignment delves into the fundamentals of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). It explores key concepts like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and the importance of Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). The text examines best practices for SEM campaigns, including keyword research, landing page optimization, and performance measurement. It also touches upon international considerations in SEM and highlights successful digital marketing campaigns from various companies.

DIGITAL MARKETING

Table of Contents
Introduction.........................................................................................................................................2
Background of Search Engine Marketing.........................................................................................3
Controlling Argument.........................................................................................................................3
Issues....................................................................................................................................................4
Major Ideas of the Thesis....................................................................................................................4
Minor Ideas of the Thesis....................................................................................................................4
Survey of Current Practice with Industrial Examples.....................................................................5
Experience of the Simbound Game....................................................................................................6
Conclusion............................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations to implement SEM...............................................................................................8
Thesis Statement..................................................................................................................................8
Interesting Facts about Search Engines.............................................................................................9
References............................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
Marketing is the most significant thing in the promotion of any products, applications
or any services. Digital Marketing is the process of making promotions and advertisements
about a particular service or a product through the means of the digital channels known as
Search engines like internet explorer and google, websites that the company has on their own,
social media like facebook, twitter etc, email and by using the mobile applications. There are
many types of digital marketing. In this thesis, the topic called Search Engine Marketing is
chosen for making this thesis. Search Engine Marketing is a type of online marketing which
makes the involvement of using the result pages of the search engine for promoting the
websites that rely on business. This type of marketing is sued for increasing the website
visibility by using two strategies known as Search Engine Optimization and paid advertising
which increases the traffic of the website. Search Engine Marketing is referred to as all the
activities of the marketing which uses the technology of search engine for the purpose of
marketing.
Background of Search Engine Marketing
The background behind the term Search Engine Marketing is very simple and easy for
the people to understand. When any of the customers or any persons who do business search
for the web by using any text boxes or by making a click on the hierarchy of the directory,
then it is said to be that they are in hunt mode (D.K, 2013). The state of psychology of this
marketing makes sense to the search engine that the person is looking for an information.
This sense is given to the search engines by using the signals. Most of the marketers have a
feel that the search engines delivers the Search results of the person in the form of text. The
actual truth behind the search results is that it may be in any form like images, audio, video or
in any various file formats. In other countries like US, not only google, yahoo are called as
search engines, eBay and amazon are also search engines (Sempo.org, 2017). All the search
engines makes use of the algorithms to produce the search results to the searcher. The
marketing organizations have a hope that there are some tactics that will make improvements
in the relevancy of sites in the search engines which are based on crawler. Search engine also
helps the marketers to have access to the analytical data and the keywords that is closer to the
search. The firms of the digital marketing technology now have expert teams in managing the
Search Engine Marketing. This type of marketing is been in practice for over 2 decades. The
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businesses of PPC (Price per Click) have tools for enhancing and grooming the strategies of
this kind of marketing (Smstudy.com, 2017).
Controlling Argument
The thesis will make an argument that the Search Engine Marketing is considered to be
the most effective type of digital marketing technique. The Search Engine Marketing is the
traditional type of marketing which is in practice for over 2 decades. The main things that is
involved in the Search Engine Marketing are paid Advertising and the optimization of Search
Engine. This thesis is to prove that the two strategies called Paid advertising and the search
engine optimization has the major participation in the technique of Search Engine Marketing.
The purpose of this thesis is to make discussions on the survey of the current practice of
marketing in the industries and the experience about the serious simulation game called
Simbound game. The various experiences of the Simbound game like managing the website,
Search Engine marketing and Email Marketing are discussed in this thesis. The effective
implementation steps of the search engine marketing which is the element of the digital
marketing is also discussed in this thesis.
Issues
The issues that are involved in the Search Engine Marketing and the activities of
marketing in various search engine of the internet are now significant part of the strategies of
marketing around the world. The issues that are included in the search engine marketing are
discussed in this section. The most common issue that is to be discussed in the Search engine
marketing is the managing the layouts and design of the website (Berman and Katona, 2013).
Some companies or organizations may love their own websites and its design. They will not
get convinced in making changes in their websites. So people may get bored by seeing this
old design of the websites regularly. If the company decides to make changes in their
website, then it is very important to plan the Search Engine Optimization in an effective way
and the company have to make sure that whether the new design of their website will make
effect on the visibility of the site. After making changes in the design of the website then it is
very important to make modifications in the content management systems. The modifications
in the content management system means the changes in the templates of the format of the
web pages, navigations of the web pages and the URL structure of the web pages
(Semguide.com, 2017). If the content is very important in the website, then the link is the
second significant element of the site. The links that are directed from the particular website
is much more important. This is an issue which is going to be discussed (Online Marketing
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Blog - TopRank®, 2017). The duplicate content is another issue in the management of
websites. Providing duplicate content by using different URL makes confusions in the search
engines. So the management of website is discussed here by using a simulation game called
Simbound (Edelman and Lai, 2016).
Major Ideas of the Thesis
The ideas that are considered as major in this thesis are listed below
 The element of digital marketing called Search Engine Marketing is discussed in this
thesis.
 To make a survey on the current marketing practice that is performed in the
industries.
 To explain about the experience of the Simbound game which gives a clear view on
the search engine marketing.
Minor Ideas of the Thesis
The minor ideas of this thesis is listed as follows.
 The usage of search engine marketing by the marketing organizations and marketers
are summarised in this thesis.
 The components of search engine marketing called Search Engine optimization and
the paid advertising are to be discussed in detail.
 The recommendations are made to implement the search engine marketing which is
an element of the digital marketing in an effective way.
By these discussions and explanations, the final concluding statement that will be
attained is the Search Engine Marketing is the best and commonly used practice in all the
industries by making their own advertisements, adgroups and campaigns (WordStream,
2017). So it is proved that the idea of search engine marketing is an effective element of the
digital marketing technology. The final conclusion that can be made out of this digital
marketing technology is that if the search engine marketing is implemented in effective way
in the industries then it makes a greater profit for the organization (Lukito, Lukito and Arifin,
2015). The content and link plays the major role in the search engine marketing.
Survey of Current Practice with Industrial Examples
A survey has performed on the current practice of the digital marketing that is carried
out in the industries (Faisal, 2016). The survey of the current practice of digital marketing
shows that the content marketing is the element which is adopted by most of the industries in
the market (Smart Insights, 2017).
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Content Marketing
Content marketing is the top most digital marketing strategy that is currently in practice
in almost industries (Smart Insights, 2017). The content does not mean the written letters, it
means the images and videos that are posted on the website gets more popular. Marketing
through pictures and videos has become the most widely used type in digital marketing
(Järvinen and Taiminen, 2016).
Industry Examples
IBM is a famous IT based company which believes that the content marketing is best
for promoting the engagement in higher level and it also helps for the customers to remember
a brand using the content (Järvinen and Taiminen, 2016). By performing a powerful content
strategy, IBM Company produces a content which is highly qualified. To perform content
marketing, IBM creates numerous blogs like Social Business blog, smarter planet blog and
impact blog. Their content includes various types of resources like white papers, reports of
the consultants and executive briefs (Single Grain, 2017).
Cisco Solutions Inc, a famous company in the field of networking uses the technique of
digital marketing called content marketing and also uses social media marketing (ClickZ,
2017). For launching a Aggregated service router which is one of the top five launches of the
history of the company, cisco used the social media marketing strategy. They also satisfied
their customers who are in the online usage like 3D game, facebook page called Cisco
Support Group and a video conferencing facility and also an online forum (McKinsey &
Company, 2017). So they make the promotions of their products through the means of social
media marketing (Single Grain, 2017).
Experience of the Simbound Game
Simbound is the new serious game for practicing the Digital marketing with hands on
experience (Alhadeff, 2017). Learners of the digital marketing can experience a real digital
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marketing with hands on experience in a risk free environment. The founder of this game is
Louis Havriliuc (Havriliuc, 2017). The complex model and real data can be used in this game
to practice the experience of digital marketing and the marketing of search engine can be
learnt through this serious game. This is a Serious Game that can be used for tackling the
subjects of digital marketing like Search Engine marketing, Email marketing and website
management (Game.simbound.com, 2017). I had a nice experience in this game. Simbound is
a unified simulated game which gives us experience on e-marketing and it gives this
experience with no risk for the beginners of the marketing. This is a nice platform which
includes a game component that can be designed for e-marketing and other areas of digital
marketing. This game has the features which is quite similar to the commercial solutions.
Simbound is considered as the first and foremost product of the business simulation that talks
about the subject of digital marketing in a functional way. This is a serious game which
enables the skills of digital marketing like decision making, budget administration, targeting
the audience and cost/benefit analysis. The transition from play to practicing the e-marketing
in a professional setting becomes easier in this game compared with other business
simulation games (Berman and Katona, 2013). This game is considered to be customizable as
it permits to upload various scenarios of content. This kind of experience makes the learners
to not only learn about the marketing strategies but also about the business and management
strategies. The first module called search engine marketing gives the experience regarding the
budget setting, keyword research and tracking the performance metrics with the aim of
improving those metrics (Roggio, 2017). The objective of this Simbound game is for creating
a framework of simulation which will make more dimensions on digital marketing like Social
Media Marketing and marketing through e-mail. This game also has some modules like
management of websites, tools for analysis and other comparative results. So this Simbound
game had shown the way to learn about the strategies of digital marketing. The scores
obtained in the first module of this game called the Website Management reveals that the
content and description about the product or service plays an important role in the digital
marketing. The game also proves that the current practice in industries called content
marketing is significant for the purpose of marketing. Thus the Simbound game provides an
excellent platform for the marketing beginners.
Conclusion
Digital Marketing is considered to be a common and modern practice of marketing
which is carried out in all industries nowadays. Considering the different elements of digital
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marketing, Search Engine Marketing is chosen for making this thesis. The survey has made
on the current technique of digital marketing that is performed in today’s corporate and
industrial world. After analysing the various industrial examples and top most techniques of
digital marketing, it is concluded and recommended that the Search Engine Marketing is one
of the traditional practice which is been in practice for more than 2 decades. Search Engine
Marketing helps to make a connection between the business and consumers during the point
of time when the consumer gets interested to buy any product or service. The other types of
marketing like email marketing only provides the emails to the customers which are stored in
their database. So it may or may not reach them during their interest. Search Engine
Marketing is a powerful technique which catches and retains the customer at the time of
purchase. The first and foremost issue to be cleared is making redesigns of the website.
Layout of the page, content, links, navigations and the usage of keywords has to be
prioritized. The second thing which is important is the identification of the top most sources
of the inbound traffic of the links to the pages. Creating a content, making promotions and
social participation are efficient to build an important inbound link on the web. A
professional Search Engine optimization methodology which works with the content
managers of the website can be helpful to manage the issues of the duplicate content. The
Experience of the Simbound game has been explained and the particular level of that game
called search engine marketing has been experienced and discussed in this thesis.
Recommendations to implement SEM
The industries and other B2B companies should not fall simply into the strategy called
Search Engine Marketing.
 First they should find their real competitors, determine the position of the company in
the market. Then the components like rankings, website traffic increase, ROI metrics
and sales lead volume has be identified (Svmsolutions.com, 2017).
 The second important thing to implement the SEM is to find the keyword phrases of
the company. It is required to make a survey among the sales people and the people
who involved in the customer service to determine the keywords that they consider as
significant (Svmsolutions.com, 2017).
 After finding the keywords, it is required to use those keywords to make a content.
The content made by the website owners should be optimized. Then the structure of
the website is to be considered. The title of the page, heading tags, description about
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the products, names of the files, meta tags and the alt tags are to be designed with
extra care.
 The website owners has to make sure that their websites has been indexed by the top
most search engines called Google and Bing (The Balance, 2017).
 Like content, links are significant for the Search Engine Marketing. When the
inbound links that are present in the website are highly qualified, then the website
becomes more popular. Efforts has to be made to build the links for the website.
 The next recommendation that helps in implementing the SEM effectively is
managing a campaign that is based on ROI-driven paid search. The bidding method is
to be considered to yield better results (Marketing MO, 2017).
 The final and ultimate recommendation is to measure the success of the activities of
marketing that is carried out by the marketers (Marketing MO, 2017).
Thesis Statement
The usage of Search Engine Marketing in the field of Digital Marketing brings more
benefits like catching the customers at the time when they are interested to buy a product or
service. The main idea of this thesis is to implement the Search Engine Marketing in an
efficient and effective way.
Sub Points of the Thesis
 Search Engine Marketing is a cost effective way to implement and the target audience
can be reached quickly by this type of marketing. It covers their customers by
spending a less amount.
 This type of marketing gives benefits to the marketers in the way that they can get a
chance to track their audience. The marketing company makes use of some analytical
tools to find whether their decisions are successful or unsuccessful. If they find that
their audience does not like their decision, then they try to make changes in their
decisions to satisfy their customers (Green, 2003).
 Search Engine marketing can be adopted by the companies to cover their customers
for buying the products immediately. They cover their customers by posting their
advertisements and promotions on the famous search engines like google. If they see
these ads on the first page of the google, they trust the brand blindly because they
have a large hope on google (Green, 2003).
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Interesting Facts about Search Engines
The top most five search results of the google search engine reaches 75% of the clicks
by their users, which means that this makes a lot of money. The tow types of most important
activities that is performed on internet are searching in the search engines and the usage of
emails. Google is the top most search engine which reaches approximately 4,464,000,000
searches for one single day. The Search Engine Marketing paves the best way for marketing
their products or services. The number of users of search engine by using both mobile phones
and desktop gets increased for every year. The titles that are given for the web pages are most
important element on the page. The second most important thing in a web page is a SEO
element which is being presented on-page. So this thesis concludes that if the marketers or
marketing organizations chooses the Search Engine Marketing for the purpose of marketing,
then it becomes a great profit for their company and easy for them to reach their customers
on-time of their interest (Steemit.com, 2017).
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