Search Engine Marketing

This study is dedicated to the search engine marketing (SEM). It aims for developing a business model of SEM firms and to provide explicit research of trustworthy practices of virtual marketing companies. Optimization is a general term that represents a variety of techniques and methods of the web pages promotion. The research addresses optimization as a business activity, and it explains its role in the on-line marketing. Additionally, it highlights issues of unethical techniques utilization by marketers which created relatively negative attitude to them on the Internet environment. SEM is the largest part of on-line marketing, and it is a prerogative of search engines portals. However, skilled users (marketers) are able to implement long-term marketing programs by utilizing optimization techniques to increase web site visibility to search engines and, therefore, to attract user s attention to the customer pages. SEM firms are related to small knowledge-intensive businesses. On the basis of data analysis accomplished in this work their business model was constructed. This book can be used as a guide for SEM start-ups and as a template for analysis of Internet companies.