The field of SEO attempts to influence site placement in search results. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the broader general field of increasing traffic through SEO technical refinements, as well as paid advertising. In fact, SEM encapsulates search engine advertising — both buying and selling. You can purchase advertisements to promote your business or allow your site to host ads supplied by a third party.

Writing an Effective Ad
Entire books have been written on creating good advertising copy, and many of them are excellent tools if you are going to be constructing ads. If you purchase some books on advertising copy, you should take a look at Words that Sell by Richard Bayan (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples and Fred E. Hahn (Prentice-Hall, 1998). These books provide substantial help in creating an effective ad.

Nonetheless, here are a few guidelines that should help you craft better advertising copy:

❑       Test, test, test! — Successful copy is often like lightning striking. You can write the most wonderful copy that doesn’t work, and yet the ad you tossed off in 10 minutes generates most of your hits. The only way to figure out what works and what doesn’t is not to ask the experts but to test it in the real world.

❑       Use short action words — Motivate users to click with such phrases as, “NOW! Sale ends today. Download free software now. Buy today and save 50%.”

❑       Sell the benefits, not the features — Whatever you are promoting with the ad, you should focus on the benefits to the user. One salesman famously (and accurately) stated that you should sell the sizzle, not the steak.

❑       Make sure the ad uses hot-button words — Use words that induce emotion and enthusiasm, such as “New,” “Sale,” “Free,” and others.

❑       Be succinct — Remove all words that don’t highlight the point of the site.

❑       Target your audience — Don’t try to get everyone interested in your ad, just the target audience that you want.

❑       Create landing pages for each ad — For proper testing, you must be able to track the traffic generated by an ad. Use Joomla uncategorized content (so alternates of the same page don’t show up in the section and category lists) to create a unique landing page for each ad placed.

Pay-per-Click and Impression Advertising
The most common form of ad marketing is the pay-per-click program. The advertisements are displayed on a site, but no revenue is generated until the visitor clicks on the ad link. Most search engines offer pay-per-click programs. Check the search engine for details.

No longer nearly as popular as during the dot-com boom, with impression advertising, the site hosting the ad earns revenue by the number of times an advertisement is displayed, regardless of whether the user clicks on the banner.

Impression advertising still has its place, particularly when an organization is trying to promote brand awareness. For example, many motion pictures use impression advertising as part of their marketing arsenal, since they want to raise awareness of an upcoming release — not just drive traffic to the movie’s Web site.

Google Adsense
One method of generating income from your site is through the Google Adsense program (available at www.google.com/adsense). With this program, Google advertisements appear on your Web site. If a visitor clicks on one of the ads, you are paid for the click-through.

You can simply place the ads on your Web site and earn money for the clicks. However, the method of targeting ads benefits greatly from the SEO techniques that you have implemented. The Google Adsense application uses automated examination of your site to determine ad placement in much the same way that the SEO routines make your site more desirable to searchers. Therefore, ensure that you have all the SEO techniques implemented before you begin your Adsense subscription.