Search engine marketing (SEM) consists of two components, i.e. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search. The first refers to all web marketing efforts that one may execute within their website to promote visibility, branding, traffic, etc. in the search engine domain. The latter refers to all paid / sponsored efforts to be more visible in the sponsored links of a specifically selected list of keyword(s) once the keyword(s) is searched.
In this study, Kristin Hanish of Kiki's Ad Shop (KAS) created a relative trend ranking system (See Table 1) where the select stores are analyzed on how well they performed in the search engine domain with respect to their competitors’ trend.
The 16 stores selected were: Ashley Furniture Homestore, Comfort Seating By Flexsteel, Copenhagen, Crate and Barrel, Drexel Heritage, Ethan Allen, IKEA, Ladlows, La-Z-Boy, Macy's Home, MOR, Pier 1, Robb & Stucky, Roche Bobois, Rooms Store, Thomasville.
This study only focused on who most benefited from the current opportunities against the competition. The SEM ranking represents only a trend in the time and geographical domain and not an absolute list. That is, the validity of the below ranking could only be valid for a certain period of time and place; or until one of the companies changes their SEM methodology.
Table 1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Relative Rankings With Respect To (w.r.t.) Competitors
| SEM Ranking |
Company |
| 1 |
Thomasville |
| 2 |
Ashley |
| 3 |
Crate and Barrel |
| 3 |
IKEA |
| 4 |
La-Z-Boy |
| 5 |
MOR |
| 6 |
Copenhagen |
| 6 |
Ethan Allen |
| 7 |
Comfort Seating By Flexsteel |
| 7 |
Drexel Heritage |
| 7 |
Ladlows |
| 7 |
Macy's Home |
| 7 |
Pier 1 |
| 7 |
Robb & Stucky |
| 7 |
Roche Bobois |
| 7 |
Rooms Store |
Kiki's Ad Shop (KAS) utilized a certain list of performance indexes explained in Table 2.
Google.com, MSN.com (Bing.com), and Yahoo.com are selected to represent the search engine domain due to the size and popularity of their operation. This study discounts any other sale event, actual sales, or other metric, which is a function of many variables. Most of the indexes are related to measuring how much visibility a brand or a company could get in the search engine domain. However, some of the indexes such as the number of competitors present in the natural search results, the number of competitors present in the paid search results, etc. are related with what the competitors are doing within the competition. Moreover, the conclusions derived from such details and actual advertising advice are not included in this report to keep it concise.
Table 2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Performance Indexes
| Search Engine |
Method |
Sub-Method |
Keywords |
Variable |
| Google, Yahoo, Bing |
SEM |
SEO |
search furniture + deals, discount |
first showing |
|
|
Paid Search |
search furniture + deals, discount |
first showing |