The main aim of search engine marketing is to increase your website's visibility in search engines and get you ranking on the major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Search Engine Marketing comprises of search engine optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC).

Let's look at the differences between the two.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the process of modifying a website to increase its ranking in search engine results. The aim of SEO is to make it come up higher in the organic search results of search engines. There are a few things involved with SEO, including make general site improvements to make the website more appealing to search engine crawlers or 'spiders'. Eg website structure and accessibility for humans and spiders to easily navigate around the website, ensuring the content is unique and relevant to the page, keyword use, off-site link building to quality websites and increasing inbound links to your website, off-site social sharing, blog posting, forum activity and so on.

Pay-Per-Click marketing (PPC)
PPC refers to the process of getting additional traffic by purchasing ads on search engines, eg Google Adwords or on Yahoo!. In Google, these ads appear on the right hand side of the search engine results or at the top.

PPC works by selecting relevant keywords for your various ads. When someone searches for one of your keywords, your ad will be displayed in Google. If someone clicks on your ad, they will be directed to your website. You would pay for each time a person clicks on your ad. The cost will vary depending on the keyword chosen. The advantage of PPC is that once your campaign is set up, it will display immediately on search engines for that particular keyword. Furthermore, you can tailor which link the visitor will land on depending on the ad.

The beauty of PPC is that it can be tailored to target a specific country, city or selected locations. Eg if your target market come predominantly from Melbourne and Sydney, you can target your ads to appear to people searching for your keyword from Melbourne and Sydney.

Another advantage of PPC is you can set a daily budget for your keywords.

Advantages of SEO

• High ranking websites are regarded as being more credible by search engine users
• You can be assured of traffic to your website if you are ranked on search engines as people will see your website
• Once your website is optimised and ranked on search engines, it can remain for months after it is achieved - it is a long term strategy

Advantages of PPC

• Once a PPC campaign is launched, it can be seem immediately on search engines and start generating traffic
• Results are measurable - you can see daily clicks, cost etc in your account
• It's great for improving visibility for keywords you are not ranking for yet with SEO
• It can work for short term campaigns. Eg promotions and links can be directed to a specific landing page. Once the campaign ends, PPC ads can be stopped.

So which strategy should you choose for your website? In our opinion, it can be worthwhile to include both SEO and PPC. For example, you can fill the gaps where you are not naturally ranking for yet. You can target specific keywords you are not ranking for yet with PPC ads, and once you rank for those keywords, PPC campaigns can be stopped. PPC can also be used to test new keywords and if you find people are clicking on your ads, you can look at optimising your website for these new keywords.