August 10, 2006

According to various panelists at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo (SES) held today in San Jose CA., search engines also practice search engine marketing.

Melanie Mitchell, director of search engine optimization (SEO) and SEM at America Online, says "AOL is a Time Warner online property that is transitioning from a subscription Internet service provider (ISP) model to an advertising-supported information portal.

Mitchell added “This is the new AOL. We have changed a lot.”

Ms. Mitchell talked about the fact that America Online has taken a “bottoms-up approach” that basically focuses on SEO, measuring and tracking, publishing, reporting, revising and then repeating the whole process over and over.

“I'm very glad that AOL learned that they don’t need to charge people to come to their homepage,” joked David Roth, director of SEM at Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA.

Mr. Roth said that search engines do search engine optimization and SEM for the same reasons marketers do: to increase traffic to their sites.

Business.com, a vertical search engine exclusively for businesses, also practices SEM. “We are trying to create the best possible experience for our users and at the same time optimize,” said Todd Sims, vice president of marketing at Business.com, Santa Monica, CA.

Search engines conduct SEO and SEM much like anyone else. Key word research, word tracking and keyword discovery are all part of the process.

“Even search engines need to understand search engine marketing,” said Joseph Morin, president of Boost Search Marketing, Irvine, CA.

Source: DM News