Search engines today are transportation hubs for the information on the World Wide Web. Together with e-mail communication, web searches are by far the most frequently used applications of the internet. Those trying to locate information, products, or service providers online generally tend to uses search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Conversely, web content that does not appear in the results lists of these search engines essentially remains invisible to internet users. For this reason, it is especially crucial for online stores and retailers to secure a prominent position in these search result lists to generate as many internet visitors as possible. By using various methods of search engine marketing (SEM), websites are able to increase their visibility.
SEM entails placing paid ads in search engines (SEA = search engine advertising) as well as implementing measures to increase a website’s ranking in the organic search results by optimizing content (SEO = search engine optimization).