Search engine marketing (also known as SEM) is the active use of search engine listings (or search results) to drive users to websites. In the most simplistic terms, it is the effort to get your website highly listed in the search results of major search engines so that more people will visit your site.

The main benefit of SEM is the ease of audience/customer targeting through keywords and the accuracy of measuring your return on investment.

Search is also very powerful in its reach. In fact, search engine usage ranks only second to email as the most popular online activity. On average, more than 84% of Internet users search for what they want 33 times per month. (Pew Internet & American Life Project)

The important thing to know when attempting to market through search engines is to recognize the existence of two types of search results: Paid listings (also known as sponsored links, P4P, pay-per-click listings) and non-paid listings (also known as index, organic, or natural listings).

As we all know, keywords are typed into search boxes and through search engines, we receive results or listings relevant to that keyword search. However, marketing through these two types of search results (paid or non-paid) is very different.