Welcome to the wonderful world of search marketing; but what is it and how can it help your business drive traffic to your website?

Search marketing is used to direct traffic to websites through search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO).

SEM, which has been known by other names in the past such as pay-per-click (PPC) is a form of paid advertising where ads can be purchased.

Purchasing ads usually take place on these common search engine platforms such as: Google, Verizon Media Ads (Previously known as Yahoo Ads), or Bing.

SEO is the practice of organically driving traffic to a website through a multitude of strategies and techniques.

The best way to describe search marketing is:

• SEO is like building a hot roaring fire (traffic) over a period of time by slowly adding logs (or content in this context);
• SEM instead adds fuel like gasoline (paid advertising) in order to attract traffic faster.

Both done effectively can produce amazing results.

SEO can take some time to get the desired traffic results whereas SEM can gain traffic to a site faster, but at a cost for paid advertising.

Depending on your goals, one or the other, maybe even both can be aligned in order to help you be successful and manage the advertising budget effectively.

We recommend reading up more on SEO and SEM.

Knowledge is key to understand this digital advertising landscape.

Understanding this world builds trust between you and the search engine professional you choose to hire.