Online marketing traditionally encompasses 2-3 major niche areas of expertise :

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - which encompasses the more finite skillset of
  
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and
  
• Paid ad (Pay Per Click) campaign management (PPC)
  
  All the above are complemented by the generic marketing technique of
  
• Conversion - ie. turning a site visitor into a purchaser of your products and services
  

At Unearthed® we refer to Online Marketing as any combination of the above activities which is aimed at driving qualified leads to a particular web entity or site. We see SEM as the focus on real people and how to aid in obtaining conversions to sales, while SEO is the more technical effort aimed on securing qualified visitors from search engines and other strong online referral sources.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM might involve a range of complementary strategies aiming to support your site 'optimisation' efforts.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is more directly targetted at changes needed to (and around) your website to increase it's online visibility, and other online activities directly related to your website and pages.

Most SEO involves 2 core components :

• On site optimisation - refers to the structure, layout, indexability and content on your site, and the continual process of tweaking and managing a site based on measurements and traffic statistics gathered. Typical activities might include creation of site maps, content restructure, meta title adjustments, fine tuning of page layout, addressing accessibility issues etc.
  
  
• Off site optimisation - increasing the profile and visibility of a site by securing exposure of a site in other authoritative and relevant areas of the web. This might include local business listings and promotion, article submission, backlink generation etc.
  

Other 'SEM'

While SEM incorporates many tasks for an SEO team, following are some examples of other online marketing activity which does not fall strictly into the realm of SEO :

• Traditional ad campaigns supporting the web presence (ie. ensuring a seamless experience when dealing with your brand in any form of media)
• Viral video production - eg. YouTube clips supporting a product launch
• Calls To Action - developing online tools for a site which help convert site visits into sales
  

At the very least, online marketing providers will view their role as generating qualified traffic to a site.  Merely signing up to a free stream of masses of poorly qualified traffic (a tactic used in the past by unscrupulous providers) is a waste of everyone's effort, because the quality of traffic is paramount.  The people who visit your site should be in a position to purchase your products or services, or something very similar, now or in the near future. `

Pay Per Click Advertising

Google AdWords

Google's PPC service 'AdWords' is increasingly relied on by the tourism and travel industry to promote qualified leads to campaigns. Paid Ads are particularly effective for short-term special initiatives (such as promotion of a price leader special offer) because you are in a position to control exactly what information is published, and limit it's exposure within certain markets and within a budget range.

Unearthed® Online Marketing Approach

At Unearthed® we see our role as integrating with your business and marketing aims to not only generate qualified traffic, but to assist you to convert this traffic into revenue. We believe in the incremental value generated from long-term, reasonably priced organic online marketing campaigns, and our stable of long-term highly successful clients are testimony to the results able to be achieved.  Our dedicated team has over a decade of experience in online travel marketing and you can rely on the advice and lessons learned from our numerous hugely successful online campaigns.