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.