What are the elements of SEM?

SEM focuses on three areas: indexability, relevance and authoritativeness.

Indexability

This is a fake word that refers to how open the design of a website is to search engine spiders. Because spiders are not receptive to such tools as Flash, JavaScript and dynamic page generation, your Web developer needs to manage the use of these technologies carefully. If your homepage is entirely Flash-based and without links, a spider probably can't enter your website through it. It would need to do so through another page. If your company loves drop-down JavaScript navigation, is there also a text-based version? The goal is to eliminate as many as possible of the elements built into your website that may block search engine spiders.

Does that mean your website is doomed to a plain, vanilla HTML life existence? Not at all. Your Web designer and SEM specialist needs to prioritize pages and provide technology alternatives. For example, one recommendation your SEM person may make is to use external JavaScript and CSS and to simplify the HTML on your pages. How strict your search engine optimization redesign should be depends on your company's industry and how your potential customers shop.

There are many other design nuggets available that you can use to help feed a spider relevant information about your website. For example, even something as simple as including HTML ALT tags for your graphics is extremely valuable. It won't solve every problem with non-text material, but all of your graphics should use HTML ALT tags. The tags are crucial for usability reasons, and they are also an excellent way to place long keyword phrases into a page. Nice juicy captions are cool, too. It could be argued that every feature you add to enhance Web usability also assists you in your SEM goals.

Relevance
It's important to ensure that you target the most appropriate keywords for your company. To get a clear list of relevant keywords, you need to brainstorm, talk to your customer support people, look at sales data and analyze your competition. Both Yahoo and Google offer keyword selection tools online.

Once you have a list of appropriate keywords, you should assign an important keyword phrase and two or three lesser keywords to each webpage, and create content that markets to those searchers specifically. A keyword-optimized page is called a landing page for the searchers using that keyword. The website design should funnel searchers to the most appropriate page. If a Contact Us page is drawing searchers looking for your flagship product, then—you guessed it—something is wrong with the content on your flagship product page. Does it have technology that blocks search engines, or is it optimized for a different word entirely?

Optimization requires a bit of planning, but with the proper keywords, you can target those searchers who want desperately to buy baskets that were woven underwater, and thus leave the jokers behind.

Search engine algorithms know how to spot keyword spam and are usually not fooled by it. The current consensus among SEM professionals is that using a keyword phrase more than nine or 10 times on a 500-word page is unwise. To be effective, the content of a page needs to use these keywords in the metadata and in the actual copy: in the text, links and navigation. The more valuable keyword-robust content you have, the more relevant information the search engine has to evaluate, which translates into higher rankings. Most importantly, these are the pages on which searchers will be landing, so the webpage must be marketable or you've lost a sale.

Authoritativeness
Just as branding and community involvement benefit a company in the brick-and-mortar world, popularity and industry visibility are rewarded by search engines. If your company is positioned as a trusted and knowledgeable specialist in your field, it will have a broader Internet presence and be evaluated as more relevant and popular, which will boost rankings. Develop your company's presence through publications, peers, associations, clients, newsgroups, blogs, trade organizations and social networks such as digg.com. (For example, you could offer unique content to attract visitors or for use on their websites.) The key to success is to get as many links to your website as possible.

A good link popularity and reciprocity initiative is an art form. Succeeding in this area requires valuable social skills, so it shouldn't be taken lightly, especially with the growing emphasis search engines place on authoritativeness.

What is organic or natural search versus paid search?

"Organic" or "natural search" results are the ranked list that appears in the main body of a search engine's results page.

Once your company has a search engine-optimized website design and keyword-robust content, the SEM specialist submits your website to the search engines and to free directories such as the Open Directory Project. Unfortunately, submitting your site does not guarantee a visit from Web spiders. Chances are, your website will be crawled by a spider that arrived through a link.

Another way to attract visitors is to pay for it. There are two kinds of paid search.

The first is paid inclusion, which is the submission of your site to directories that charge for prime locations or in some cases for any placement at all. If you pay, you're guaranteed a position in the directory. For example, at this writing Yahoo charges $299 per year, and the company says your site will appear in the directory within seven days.

The second is pay-per-click (PPC), or sponsored listings, which are those found in the right column of a search results page. PPC includes ads that appear on other sites; you may have seen the "Ads by Google" boxes, for example. Companies bid for ownership of a keyword phrase (say our old standby "underwater basketweaving"), and the ads appear ranked by highest bid and other factors, such as click-through rate. When a searcher clicks through an ad, the company pays the cost of the click. Prices for keywords vary widely by industry.

Despite its tiny size, the ad's content is extremely important, and it must contain high-level marketing copy. In addition, don't discount the flexibility of these little ads. Lead-generating sites can market white papers or website content to draw visitors, for example.

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