Search Engine Marketing – Revolutionizing the Way We Market Products and Services

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has come a long way. In 1997 when online marketing initially started and marketers and companies started to enter this field–marketing agencies offered SEM services with much simpler processes and had very slight competition. Just add title, meta keyword & description and ensure that website targeted key phrases are covered in the copy and it usually helped.Though these are still fundamentals of SEM, promoting one’s site via the Google’s of the world is a more complex process these days. With the boost in pages on websites and documents in the search index as well as the number of SEO professionals marketing for peak positions, SEM has become too competitive now.Smart keyword search has become critical to the success of search engine marketing campaign. Website usability is even more significant than ever before because website owners want to see results from their search engine marketing efforts. High-quality link building methods can create or destroy SEM efforts. Put in to this mix Pay-Per-Click and it is very easy to witness that promoting sites via the search-engines has grown into a much more complicated way than it was in year 1997.With the exceptional triumph of search engines especially Google, the online search industry has got the attention of marketing agencies and businesses worldwide for promotion of their products and services. A relatively new finding released by research company Forrester shows that 50% of businesses plan to reduce expenditure in traditional marketing mediums like Television, magazines, direct marketing, and newspapers to increase their online marketing spending in 2005. This report also states that US online marketing spending will get to $14 billion plus in 2005, a 23 % boost over year 2004.This finding is not astonishing to those who have been occupied in this industry from the beginning. They have seen significant expansion with more interest in SEM each & every year. Lot of companies entered into search engine marketing industry to earn fortune for their shareholders. Some businesses were well-known website designing or advertising firms that started search engine marketing division. Some started brand new SEM companies. Where there were initially only few search engine marketing companies, now there are above thousands of companies working to promote products and services via search engine.With so many agencies offering Search Engine Marketing services – it is very difficult to choose the right one. Below listed are some of the factors that you should look for when selecting SEM agency for your company.Remember picking the right agency is the difference between making money and losing money.1.) Time in the business- How long has the agency been in this field of search engine marketing? If they have been in the industry for a while, you can be sure that they can do the job for you. It gives assurance that they have been around a number of years is a very long tenure in online advertising industry. Agencies can not stay in this business long enough if they are not doing it right.2.) SEM Services it Offers- Do they provide only search engine optimization services or they offer pay per click as well? Do they design the websites and develop them, having knowledge of the detailed workings of html? There are many agencies who do not know much about html and designing and yet they are editing client’s sites.3.) Successful Clients – Checkout their exiting client. Are they big names or the organizations you have never heard of? Does the SEM agency have any success story or testimonials from their existing clients? These things help you make informed decision regarding selection of SEM agency.Search engine marketing has significantly evolved since its inception. If you do your search engine marketing yourself – you need to stay updated and adjust yourself along with the changes that are taking place almost daily. Even if you are outsourcing your search engine marketing, you need to be sure that your agency adopts the changes quickly and update your marketing campaign.