Many Las Vegas business owners are just finding out about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and how it can benefit their Las Vegas website and while it is a relatively new way of marketing, the principles have been around for a long time.

What is search engine marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Optimization is the biggest buzzword right now especially when you talk of promoting yourc company’s website. But did you know that Search Engine Marketing is another important spoke in the business marketing wheel? The first thing you should know is that Search Engine Marketing, SEM is quite different from Search Engine Optimization or SEO. With this being said, you will find a lot of business people treating SEM the same as SEO.

The first thing that differs between SEO and SEM is the perception of Search Engine Marketing. Search Engine Optimization works on the key words and key phrases and content of your website’s pages and how the pages need to be designed keeping Search Engines in mind and how they will rank on a search. Search Engine Marketing on the other hand deals exclusively with how you promote your website with search engines. It could be said that a Search Engine Optimization effort could be a subset of a Search Engine Marketing campaign.

Search Engine Marketing Techniques

Basically, any technique by which the visibility of a website improves with search engines is covered under the umbrella of Search Engine Marketing. Thus, from an aggregate perspective, you could look at techniques like Blogging, Search Engine Submissions, Social Networking, Viral Marketing and other techniques. You could also look at methods like Contextual Advertising and Paid Inclusion being subsets of Search Engine Marketing.

Contextual Advertising

Not many are aware of the complete workings of contextual advertising. Here’s an example to illustrate the concept. Assume you have visited a website A, which is in the Sports niche. When you visit the website, you could see some ads popping up from the site that deals with sports accessories or memorabilia dealers. Basically, you see an ad which is relevant to the context and the content of that particular website. This is how contextual advertising works.

Now, how does the business owner benefit from these ads appearing on their website? Simple, the ad appearing on the webpage would have a revenue basis tied onto it depending on certain actions being performed by the users. For example, a webmaster could get paid if 100 users click on the ad, and so on.

Paid Inclusion and Pay-Per-Click Placement

There are some search engines on the internet that are very popular (google, aol, msn, yahoo), so popular that business owners and webmasters are inclined to invest some money to get into the directory of these resources just so that they have the opportunity to get ranked on the first page as a “sponsored listing” so they can get the traffic and recognition of coming up on the first page of a google search, let’s say. This is where Paid Inclusion or Pay-Per-Click placement comes into play.

A web master or web developer can set up a paid inclusion or pay-per-click campaign to help promote your website (or if you are so technically inclined, you could do it yourself as well). You choose the key words you’d like to rank for, set a budget and run your campaign. The main objective of this is to have some traffic through search engines.

With the above knowledge, you should be in a position to understand that Search Engine Marketing is separate from Search Engine Optimization. One of the best examples of SEM at work would be to see the working of Google AdWords, which best symbolizes Contextual Advertising.

At the end of the day, both the techniques increase the visibility and page rankings of your company’s website within the search engines.

Online marketing methods are low cost, allowing businesses to draw in customers with something as easy as a Twitter update. Online marketing gives businesses more control over the sales funnel. With traditional marketing, businesses have to generate their own lists of customers and then market directly to them. With online marketing, customers discover online businesses simply through a search engine or through a friend on Facebook, providing the business with free marketing. However, some work is required to maximize online traffic.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Customers mostly click on the first couple of links generated by the search engine organic results, which are search results generated based on the webpage’s relevance to the keywords. After looking at the first couple of links, customers usually type in new keywords. The key to getting an explosion of traffic is to maximize your website’s organic search engine rankings by including keywords in text of your website that customers are the most likely to search for, a practice known as SEO. However, do not include too many keywords. Otherwise, search engines like Google will give you a less favorable PageRank or even remove you from their search engine results. The keyword density should be at 3-7%.

Adwords Campaigns (SEM)

When you are using organic rankings, you are competing with other websites to get the ideal keyword density. However, if you are willing to pay for an Adwords campaign, you can create an advertisement that will appear at the top of the search engine results regardless of how your website is set up. While Adwords campaigns cost money, they are effective when the profit generated from product sales justifies the advertising costs. When setting up your Adwords campaign, you must include keywords that will help Google effectively place your advertisements where your most likely customers will see them. Choose keywords that are specific enough to get your advertisements placed in the most appropriate locations.

Social Marketing

Customers sometimes develop ad blindness, failing to see advertisements. However, when customers interact more with your business, they are more likely to take your advice. Social media are programs found on websites such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com. Through social media, you can ask your customers what they want, helping you create the products most likely to appeal to them. Your business can provide status updates through Facebook and Twitter about new product developments, instantaneously, with immediate customer feedback.

Google offers numerous free marketing, networking and tracking tools to help your business or company in Las Vegas:

• Overview of Google Tools – (Wikipedia.com)
• Google Services Overview – (Webopedia.com)
• Google Services – (google.com)

Out of all of google’s tools, I feel the most valuable are google Analytics, which is a robust website tracking and reporting application.  It’s free!  Sign up and install the code on your website pages and google will track keywords, search engine referals, countries, length of visit and even right down to the purchase and ROI.

Google also offers AdWords, which is a pay-per-click program.  You set your own budget, choose your keywords and your website can come up at the top of googles search engine results.

When optimizing your website for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes, it is imperative that you perform the proper keyword and key phrase research for your Las Vegas website in order to insure maximum and targeted organic search engine ranking and results.

Keyword research consists of running words and phrases that you feel someone would type into a google search in order to find a website like yours. For example, if you are a Las Vegas bankruptcy attorney, you might choose phrases such as “Las Vegas bankruptcy attorney” “Las Vegas bankruptcy law firm” “Las Vegas chapter 7″ “Las Vegas Chapter 11″ “Las Vegas Chapter 13″ or “Las Vegas debt relief” etc. By choosing an initial list of keywords and key phrases, you can use this list to research the ACTUAL words that search engine users are using to locate those appropriate services.

In order to perform the necessary keyword and key phrase research, consider using these free online keyword research tools:

• Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker
• Free Search Term Suggestion Tool by KeywordDiscovery.com
• Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
• Keyword Research and Tracking, Keyword Tool, Keyword Software

If you are a business owner in Las Vegas, you know the value and importance of generating leads for your business or company. Leads translate to client and clients equal revenue.

How should you go about finding leads for your Las Vegas business? This can be complicated as there are many ways to accomplish this goal.  You need to make sure you have a target market in mind before you strategize over a lead generation program.

Here are some ideas for lead generation:

• Start with friends and family. They know you and trust you already and they can be some of your best spokespeople, so make sure you remind them of what your company offers and tell them to mention it to their business contacts and friends.
• Run marketing campaigns to your existing clients and encourage referrals. They are also excellent for referrals and they already trust you and do business with you.
• Make sure your website is search engine optimization friendly. Gain traffic on your website by having a professional company optimize your website with specific keywords.
• Consider a paid inclusion program. Sign up for a google AdWords campaign, set a budget, and send traffic to your website.  Traffic turns into leads.
• Email Marketing. Consider building a monthly email marketing newsletter to send to your existing clients.
• Blogs. Writing and maintaining a blog can get you visibility and website traffic and can convert visitors to leads
• Business Networking groups in Las Vegas. Meeting other people and referring business to each other is another key way to generate leads for your business or company.

Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing is critical for your Las Vegas business or company.  Many companies here in Las Vegas overlook the huge opportunity of finding leads and clients for their businesses through utilizing Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.

Search Engine Optimization is basically the process a professional SEO company goes through when researching the key words and key phrases that can be integrated into your web site so that you receive maximum traffic, thereby increasing your website’s visibility online. For more information on Search Engine Optimization, read my article “What is Search Engine Optimization?”

Search Engine Marketing incorporates the concept of Search Engine Optimization as a means to market your website, but ultimately can include much much more. Search Engine Marketing is specifically marketing your website online. For example, you can start a google AdWords campaign, where you can choose the words you want to bid on in a search engine query and set your own monthly budget for the same. You can purchase banner ads on key targeted websites where the banner ad will link back to your website when clicked.

When shopping you should really search for a professional company that has experience in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, and hopefully a local Las Vegas marketing company as well!