SES: Search Engines Practice What They Preach: SEM/SEO

SAN JOSE, CA - Search engines also do search engine marketing, panelists said Aug. 9 at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo.

Listen to Melanie Mitchell, director of search engine optimization and SEM at AOL, a Time Warner online property that is transitioning from a subscription Internet service provider model to an advertising supported portal.

"This is the new AOL," she said. "We have changed."

Ms. Mitchell talked about the fact that AOL has taken a "bottoms-up approach" that basically focuses on optimizing, measuring and tracking, publishing, reporting, revising and then repeating.

"I am 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.