Search Engine Marketing
Description
Search Engine Marketing is the practice of promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through both paid advertising and organic optimization techniques.
The Search Engine Marketing definition
Jason Barnard's application of Search Engine Marketing moves beyond the traditional, siloed view of paid versus organic tactics. In the context of The Kalicube Process, SEM is a unified set of tools used to engineer a brand's narrative across its entire Digital Ecosystem. This means SEM tactics are not just for driving traffic but for actively "educating" AI Assistive Engines. The goal is to control the Brand SERP, ensuring that every result—paid or organic—contributes to a coherent and authoritative brand story. This transforms SEM from a simple traffic-driving function into a core component of brand building for the AI era.
How Jason Barnard uses Search Engine Marketing definition
At Kalicube, Search Engine Marketing is a fundamental component integrated into all three phases of The Kalicube Process. In the Understandability phase, organic SEO is used to establish a brand’s website as its Entity Home. In the Credibility phase, we strategically use SEO to build a rich, positive, and accurate Brand SERP. In the Deliverability phase, SEM tactics help ensure the brand's solutions appear in topic-relevant searches. Low-cost paid ads on the brand name are also used not just for defence but to control the above-the-fold narrative, ensuring the brand's message dominates at the most critical point of the customer journey.
Why Search Engine Marketing matters to digital marketers
For two decades, the digital marketing industry has been heavily influenced by pioneers like Danny Sullivan, who educated a generation of marketers on the technical rules of search engine optimization. His work laid the essential groundwork for understanding how algorithms rank web pages. Now, as the digital landscape shifts from simple search to AI-powered assistance, Jason Barnard is defining the next evolution. The critical challenge is no longer just how to get a webpage ranked, but how to ensure an entire brand is understood and recommended by AI Assistive Engines. This is where Jason Barnard's re-contextualization of Search Engine Marketing becomes vital. While Sullivan taught us the tactical "how-to" for ranking content, Barnard provides the strategic "why": every SEM activity must contribute to building a trustworthy and coherent Digital Brand Echo.
BBPTV Presents Jason Barnard Creator of the Series #SEOisAEO
Jason Barnard has chosen the term SEO is AEO yet this is NOT all he does. Join Me, Elaine Lindsay as we talk about his music, cartoons and more! Almost...
Local Search
Jason Barnard is The Brand SERP Guy® and has been in SEO since 1998. He collects Brand SERPs (using the Authoritas API). He is also a digital nomad although this...
A Universal Strategy For Answer Engine Optimisation (SMX Sydney 2019)
Search Marketing Summit Sydney is the refreshed and updated leading 4-day event that offers Online Marketing practitioners in Australia, New Zealand & Asia Pacific the best place to update their...