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Can you believe this is my 1000th post on Steemit. I must have written a lot of posts and comments in 2 months.

I am a Digital Marketing Consultant and I was handling SEO for a client. This prompted me to bring the topic here.

SEARCH MARKETING

Search marketing is the process that businesses make their websites discoverable on search engines and it can be through paid means or through marketing channels that are unpaid. Search marketing is divided into Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. SEM deals with all the marketing efforts that are paid for SEO is the processes that businesses get visibility from free and organic methods. For example, a person can get visibility by writing a blog post that can be searched on Bing, Google or Yahoo. The main search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing and they are the places where people go to search for information when they log into the internet. SEM has a lot to do with putting ad space and getting traffic by boosting or promoting posts. Examples of SEM activities are CPM (Cost per Impressions), CPC (cost per click) PPC (Pay per click), paid efforts and advertising. The best platform that businesses use for SEM is Google AdWords and Bing Ads. Because Google is the most popular search engine, it is the most used by marketers. Yahoo also has its ads called the Yahoo ads. Each of the platforms has their best practices and guidelines.

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SEM and SEO are very important because today, so many businesses are online. Hotels have grown in size and number. Every hotel wants to have clients and it has its services that set it apart from the other hotels. If a traveler is going to a place like Thailand, They will want to look for hotels that are the best for their preferences. They do a rough search on Google and the information that comes up is what they read. Every hotel in Thailand wants to be discoverable. This explains where search marketing comes in. The idea is to be on search engine sites so that people can get new and repeat clients. The likelihood of visitors landing on a website depends on how high it is in the search results and how many people are talking about it. The goal is to get more people searching and discovering the hotel through the search engines.

Different websites have reported more traffic to their websites because of SEM and SEO efforts. Some hotels just alter their keywords, tags, and content and this coupled with some paid efforts will get them to the first page of google search results. Search marketing is important because every day billions of people are logged in the internet searching for things and some of these people can be the leads that business needs to thrive and achieve its goals. Therefore a business must provide information if not solutions for these people.

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There are other terms that are associated with SEO and SEM and an example is PPC which is Paid Search Marketing. This gives the marketer control on what they want to show the world about them. Google directs people to the marketer’s website when they search for something. However, Google takes some money for this service and that I why it is called Cost Per Click (CPC). A marketer must first open a Google AdWords account if they want to advertise through Google.

Local search is very important because small businesses target clients who are around them. By making itself discoverable, a business can tap into that market. Before any business becomes big, it must first start in the region around it. Hotels should target people who are more likely to walk into the hotel. Technology has made things better and the internet has enabled people to search for things online. Every business should appeal to its local market and it should make sure it is on Google map and it has a website.

Keywords

Another main thing that marketers need to focus on is keywords. For example, the keywords or a hotel in New York will be, “hotels in New York”, ‘New York Hot Spots’, ‘Dining in NYC’, “Where to eat NYC” or “New York Food”. Keywords are phrases that people are likelier to type into the search bar so that they can discover a specific business like a hotel. Every keyword has a specific cost per click that the marketer pays to the search engine and this gives the marketer the freedom to bid high for the words or phrases that they think will be searched. These are the words that mean much to them. Keywords can be put into an ad group. This is a group of keywords. When a person clicks on these words they go to a certain page on the website called the “Landing Page”.

Summary

Google sells its space and that is why when people are on different websites they may have different ads pop up. Google ads also showcase a hotel to people. Google ads have been able to target different people depending on their searches and preferences. Google knows how to target people depending on their habits and it means that people are more likely to click things that interest them. Every advertiser is ranked and Google gives every company a score depending on how well they performed. The best way that a marketer can ensure that they are targeting the right people is to test, to research and to make sure that all their content is very well done. They need to find out what works and what the people that they are targeting like then they need to give them solutions that they would easily tap into. They also need to understand what the recent trends are and what is working. They need to research what could work for their specific business and what they need to do.