Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Interview Questions And Answers

Search engine marketing is an umbrella term referring to all activities utilized to generate visibility in search engine results in order to increase revenue. Common strategies and tactics include search engine optimization (SEO), search engine and directory submission, link development, pay-per-click (PPC) management, shopping feeds, affiliate marketing and online public relations (promotion via blogs, ezines, threaded forums, newsgroups, discussion lists and chat).

Research indicates that a high percentage of the developed world is online, so the odds your potential customers, partners, employees and shareholders are also online is very high. Not only is search engine marketing one of the fastest growing and popular new marketing channels available, it’s also the most cost-effective (as compared with both online and offline channels like email, direct mail and broadcast). Search engine marketing both an excellent avenue for brand-building and cost-effective at generating leads and online sales. If your company doesn’t currently have a search engine marketing strategy, you’re behind the curve.
Do a search for your own company, competitors and industry terms and see for yourself.

Unless your company is headquartered in a cave and your customers are other cavemen, it’s very likely that your company will benefit from some aspect of search engine marketing, whether it be search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Regardless of whether you are interested in generating awareness, new recruits, strategic partners, investors, leads or sales, search engine marketing offers an opportunity to improve your bottom line. A quick assessment by professionals (like Anvil) will help clarify the need and fit.

The easiest way to get started with search engine marketing efforts is to contact Anvil. If you prefer the do-it-yourself approach, or would like more information before moving forward, we recommend downloading our free search engine optimization (SEO) white paper and read our SEM blog, which contains a variety of links to search engine marketing industry news and resources.

Search engine marketing efforts are highly measurable. If your objective is to generate awareness, you can track “impressions” and “clicks” on organic and paid search engine listings. If your objective is to measure brand preference or performance of text ad creative, you can measure “click through” and “conversion” rates. If your objective is to generate qualified leads, you can track online registrations (for newsletters, events or white papers), downloads (trials or demos) or email inquiries. If your objective is sales, you can track ecommerce sales or offline sales via printable coupons or phone call tracking.

Generally speaking, most companies prefer to outsource their search engine marketing efforts to SEM professionals to ensure their programs are properly managed and remain cutting-edge. Larger companies tend to have an in-house resource like a Webmaster or Internet Marketing Manager who is responsible for implementing search engine marketing programs, but often times, this person outsources the day-to-day SEM activities to a trusted vendor to free up their time educate and manage internal resources, develop long-term strategies and to create optimized content. Factors influencing the decision process include objectives, timeline, available marketing budget and internal resources.

There are a few key criteria utilized to evaluate search engine marketing vendors. The following are just a few of the most important: length of time in business, collective industry experience, number of employees, number of clients, size of clients, client and employee turnover, depth and breadth of service offering, pricing, proprietary services, industry credibility, client testimonials, success stories, strategic partners, philosophy and process. Look at their client’s visibility versus their own, as “search engine marketing” is a highly competitive term, and those that perform well probably have a little too much time and not enough client work to keep them busy. Be sure to ask for references if they don’t have testimonials and success stories.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is designing, writing, and coding (in HTML) your entire web site so that there is a good chance that your web pages will appear at the top of search engine queries for your selected keywords and key phrases.

There are 3 essential components of a search engine campaign:

1.

Text component. A web site must contain the words that your target audience is typing into search queries.
2.

Link component. Placing keywords on a web page is useless if the search engines do not have a means to index that text. Therefore, your site design must be "spider friendly."
3. Popularity component. All of the major search engines measure popularity. Therefore, before beginning a search engine campaign, we often have a corresponding directory submission and link development campaign as well to assist with popularity.

A successful, long-term SEO campaign is not possible unless all 3 of these components are addressed.

After all of these elements are in place on a web site, we submit to the major search engines in a non-spam manner.

Search Engine Visibility is a must have book for people to read before they begin designing or redesigning a web site.

Search engine marketers and web site designers can learn how to design and promote web sites in a non-spam manner, i.e. in a way that the search engines and directories approve.

Advertising agencies, who often outsource search engine marketing, need to have a basic understanding of how search engine marketing works, and what they should and should not promise their clients. All too often, ad agencies confuse search engine optimization with search engine advertising. This book will help them with any confusion they may have.

It will also help firms that hire advertising agencies who provide SEO services. Being well educated about the entire search engine marketing process will help you make a better

Marketers and marketing agencies, in particular, will benefit most from Search Engine Visibility since the responsibility of online marketing falls squarely on their shoulders. The submission section will be particularly valuable to them.

No other book explains how to create a search-engine friendly web sites. Shari is famous for understanding how to incorporate search engine optimization in a site from the very beginning.

Search Engine Visibility ties web site design, site usability, and search engine marketing with long term business goals. The book focuses on quality, qualified web site traffic, not a large volume of hits that do not benefit a firm's bottom line.

Also, Search Engine Visibility is the best practices book on search engine marketing.

Glad you asked. I like speaking engagements, especially since I used to teach at two major universities. Some of the topics I cover are:

► Understanding search engine marketing
► Search-engine friendly web site design
► Successful site architecture
► Optimizing Flash and non-HTML content
► Search engine visibility and usability
► Web copywriting for search engine visibility

Some of these topics are available as 1-hour seminars, tutorials, and training.

Search Engine Visibility can be purchased directly from my publisher, New Riders. You can also go to other well-known book stores such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders.

No amount of web design will overcome the lack of traffic for a website, or lack of content on pages. With web analytics, we can determine how many visitors you've had and what they looked at, and for how long. What you find is, the real challenge is getting relevant visitor traffic to begin with. And then even within the web site, the next challenge is to appear credible

It used to be. Back in the earlier days of search, AltaVista used meta-tags to index a site with keywords in the meta-tags section of a page. Then you would submit it and have a reasonable chance of being listed. However, it was soon evident that this could be abused (with meta-tag stuffing, spamming etc) and also not very useful as users would get to a legitimate site and not find the pages they were looking for. Google and other search engines followed with algorithmic criteria that made the search experience much more relevant.

Email marketing is used much differently than search marketing. Email can be used for demand creation, and as a friendly notification of the products and services you provide. Search marketing is more efficient for acquiring visitors, and is based on the premise that the visitor is looking for what you offer.

PPC is much like advertising, and are those links that come up when you enter a keyword in a search field. Also known as sponsored links or recommended links, the advertiser pays a fee to the search engine every time it is clicked on. PFI is more like paying for a web site to immediately be considered for indexing. Using PPC and PFI can significantly increase the number of visitor you get. You can help you with both.

Also known as an organic search, these are the search results that most people think of when they use a search engine. Unlike a sponsored link or a paid for placement, natural search results get presented as a direct result of the search engine's indexing and search algorithms. Usually you do not pay for a natural search listing.

When using professional consultants, the justification is abundantly clear - without properly executed online marketing, your web site will only be a marketing expense rather than a marketing weapon. With professional online marketing services, we have seen return on investment payback in as little as 3-6 months.

For return on investment, search engine optimization and marketing is unsurpassed - it will deliver much larger numbers of new, qualified and targeted traffic to your website over the long term than any other marketing strategy. You can expect traffic to grow anywhere from 50% to 1000% after an implementation. One thing is for sure - without it done right, expect little traffic except from spiders attempting to index your pages!

It depends on your current status with the search engines and email lists. If your site is fundamentally search friendly, you could see results within a matter of weeks. And if your email marketing lists are current and in place, we can set you up in a few days. You can speed this up with a number of strategies.

(1) Google has found a link to your page from another page and has predicted the contents of your page based on the text in the link and the context in which the link appeared. You may see your pages in the SERPs with no text description or title.

(2) Google's spider Googlebot has visited the page. You can track this by looking for the presence of Googlebot in your web logs. Just because the Googlebot has visited your page, don't expect to see your page in the SERPs.

(3) Google has indexed the contents of your page and has pulled data about the page into its database. Google is aware of the page and may show the page in search results when you search for all pages from your site using the "site:www.yoursite.com" search querry. In this case, you should expect to see your new title in the SERPs and a snippet pulled from the actual text or meta description tag of your page.

(4) Google is showing the page in the SERPs for general searches - i.e. Google has fully evaluated the page and it's relationship to all other pages on the Web.

(5) Google has assigned a PageRank value to your page.

It can take several months for Google to fully index your new site. In the process, Google will find pages that are new and will discover pages that were part of the old version of your site that are no longer there. As Google maps out your site, you will see the PageRank of individual pages changing over time. It depends on the extent to which your footprint has changed. If the change is dramatic, you can expect to see dramatic changes in your rankings until the new footprint is fully appreciated. Install the Google Toolbar and look at the PageRank of your individual pages. Your new pages are likely to have no or zero PageRank. Over time, as Google comes to more fully understand your site, PageRank will start to appear on all pages.

Search engine optimization is the practice of guiding the development or redevelopment of a website so that it will naturally attract visitors by winning top ranking on the major search engines for selected search terms and phrases.

In the search engine world, spam is defined as the manipulation of a web page to give it an artificial boost in the search engine rankings. Generally, spam is what the search engines say it is. I.e., it is defined by the search engines themselves. Each of the major search engines provide specific guidelines describing what webmasters should and should not do to their web pages in order to achieve a better search engine ranking, though that has not always been the case.