Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM). SMM is a marketing approach that uses social media to influence consumers to believe that a company's products and/or services are valuable. Some of the latest theoretical developments include search engine marketing management (SEMM). SEMM is related to activities such as SEO, but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management rather than related traffic building (as is the case with mainstream SEO). SEMM also incorporates organic SEO (trying to achieve top rankings without using paid means) and pay-per-click SEO. For example, some attention is placed on web page layout design and how content and information are displayed to website visitors. SEO and SEM are two pillars of marketing efforts that go hand in hand and produce much better results than focusing on just one pillar.
Ethical issues
Paid search advertising is not without controversy, and the question of how search engines display ads on search results pages has been the subject of a series of studies and reports by Consumer Reports WebWatch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter in 2002 emphasizing the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group associated with Ralph Nader.
Another ethical controversy related to search marketing is the issue of trademark infringement. The debate over whether third parties have the right to bid on a competitor's brand name has been going on for years. In 2009, Google changed its policy, which previously singapore lead prohibited these tactics, and now allows third parties to bid on brand names as long as their landing pages actually provide information about the trademarked name. Despite the policy change, this remains a hotly debated point.