What’s not to love about search engine marketing?

As a direct response marketer, I spend a lot of time worrying about my target audience – trying to find the right list or the right media for my outreach campaigns. It’s an uphill battle because no matter how well I do my job, I know that my audience will be largely indifferent to my message.

Compare that with search engine marketing (aka “search”) where everyone you reach is actually looking for you – or companies like yours.

Think about it: one audience group is indifferent to you, the other is searching for you.

For that reason alone, search is a good idea. It may not be the focus of your marketing program, but it should be in the mix.

But what do we mean by search?

“Search” is a broad term covering a variety of search marketing activities, Too often, people using the term are not referring to the broad definition, but just one of those activities.

This has become a major point of confusion in my view.

There are in fact three different types of search marketing, and while they all have a search component, each comes with a different set of goals, strategies, tasks and expectations.

Let’s take a closer look at these three types of search – organic search, paid search and local search.

Organic Search

This is the centerpiece of search marketing.

When people refer to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), this is what they are talking about.

Organic search, also known as natural search or free search, is the best known form of search but the one in which you have the least control.

Organic search results are those listings that appear in the wide left column of a search page – the results that most people recognize as being the most trusted results.

The reason is simple. The listings that appear within this section are there on merit. Google (or your favorite search engine) has made the determination that those listings do the best job of answering the question being asked in the search inquiry.

When you get to the top of an organic search listing, you’ve reached the Holy Grail.

How do you get to the top of your category?

Countless articles have been written on the best ways to achieve high rankings. Most of them are correct to some extent.

You may be familiar the usual SEO suggestions – compelling content, keyword selection, web page optimization, inbound links and social sharing. Yes, they are all important in varying degrees.

But at the core of all this is the content – and by that, I don’t mean slick, professionally created, highly entertaining and engaging content that could go viral. That would be great, but no, the goal for content is much simpler than that.

My approach when creating content is to provide answers to the questions your target audience is asking. Remember, when your prospects are…

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