We often find our clients need to explain what it is to people within their organisation so we’ve put together a powerpoint presentation to make it easier.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of internet marketing that promotes websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results and other pages through the use of search engine optimisation, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

Setting aside some budget to ensure your site is going to get seen in search engines like Google and others is vital to the website’s success and hence achieving your business goals. As millions of people search the web their search terms could relate to products and services or your business name. The aim is to get a listing for your business at the top or at least on the first page of Google. This is achieved by optimising page titles, tags and keywords throughout your website, and optimising the visibility of your website on other websites, blogs and social media channels.

Social media is a term that has soared in popularity since the introduction of applications like Twitter and Facebook. Initially popular with individuals as a way of keeping in touch, social media has now become a vital channel for companies wanting to increase their digital presence by creating brand awareness and driving traffic to their websites and mobile applications. These days putting a social media strategy together is essential. Here’s a great slideshow about social media from presentation advisors…

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimising web usage. It is not just a tool for measuring website traffic, but can be used as a tool for business research and market research. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print advertising campaigns. For example, they help to estimate how the traffic to the website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides data on the number of visitors, page views, etc to gauge the traffic and popularity trends which helps doing the market research.

There are two categories of web analytics; off-site and on-site web analytics. Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and analysis regardless of whether you own or maintain a website. It includes the measurement of a website’s potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole.

On-site web analytics measure a visitor’s journey once on your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. On-site web analytics measures the performance of your website in a commercial context. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and used to improve a web site or marketing campaign’s audience response.

Mobile is becoming an increasingly important platform for business. With the smart phone boom it is possible to view your website on a phone, however the experience may not be the same for the user. For this reason a lot of businesses create a website or an application specifically for a mobile platform. Popular platforms are the iphone, android, Nokia and Blackberry. It’s all about creating a positive user brand experience from the outset.