Article Written by Ben Parr and was originally posted on American Express OPEN Forum, where he regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

For millions of websites, publishers, and online businesses, search is still the king. While social media may have the media's attention and Twitter and Facebook are garnering a lot of the hype, search still trumps them when it comes to driving traffic and being discovered by potential new customers.

Because of the importance of search traffic to online business, there is an entire industry dedicated to improving websites' visibility in search engine results: Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

SEM is a complex topic that focuses on search engine optimization (SEO), but also includes the use of paid advertising and contextual advertisements in order to bring a website's articles or product pages to the top of search engine result pages (SERPs).

While I could write dozens of articles on the art of search engine marketing and SEO, I'm going to focus on some of the key issues and best practices for optimizing your site for search.

Defining SEM

Before we dig into search engine marketing, it's important to note that not everybody agrees on the definition. This has caused confusion among search professionals for years.

Essentially, there are two ways of defining SEM: either it is an "umbrella" term that encompasses SEO, paid search, contextual advertisements, and paid inclusions, or it only covers paid advertising, inclusions, and search and is separate from SEO.

Organizations such as Forrester Research and the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization believe that SEM is an umbrella term that encompasses both SEO and paid search. For the purposes of this article, I'm using that definition.

Making Your Website SEM-Optimized

Defining SEM is fine, but what matters is this: what simple things can you do to make your website search-optimized?

With help from Chicago-based SEO consultant Carolyn Shelby, currently the Web Experience Manager at theUnited Way of Metropolitan Chicago , I've come up with a short list of tasks that can quickly boost your website for SEM.

1. Familiarize yourself with SEO: The most important component of search engine marketing is making your site easily discoverable in search results, and that requires a basic understanding of SEO. You don't have to buy a book or take a class on the subject, though: SEOmoz has a fantastic beginner's guide to SEO that will get you up-to-speed.

2. Grade your website: Hubspot offers a tool called Website Grader, which will provide you with a quick assessment of where your website is optimized for SEM and where it is not.

3. Make the quick fixes: While you could spend months optimizing your website for SEM, make sure to get the little things out of the way first. Focus on what Website Grader says you're lacking (e.g. meta tags, keywords in your title tags, etc.) and then go from there.

4. Use SEM-optimized CMS software and plugins: Unless you're a large company with the money and need to customize every aspect of your website, you're likely using a content management system (CMS) such asWordPress, Drupal, or WebGem. The good thing about using one of these tools is that they come optimized for search engines.

Do your research: choose software with good SEM features and a plug-in system so you can enhance it. For example, WordPress has the All in One SEO Pack, a great plug-in for optimizing your website. If you run an ecommerce website, Wikipedia has a good comparison of SEO features for different shopping cart software.

5. Test your PPC and landing page strategies: Another major component of search engine marketing is PPC, or Pay Per Click advertising. By putting your ads in search engines, you can drive traffic to your website. Even if you have good SEO and organic search, paid placement still helps. However, that's only half of the story: you need to convert those visitors into customers or regular users.

It's a smart idea to test which keywords and advertisements drive the most traffic (keep track of the stats), and it's just as important to track what happens once those visitors arrive. Google offers tools such as Google Analytics to help you track those visitors and see whether they are staying on your site or bouncing away.

6. Inbound links are still king: This quote from my discussion with Carolyn Shelby really stood out to me:

"I would love to say that the most important thing to get a site to rank well is having superior content, or standards compliant HTML, or even a magic percentage of certain keywords, but I can't. Unfortunately, you can overcome a lot of really basic flaws with any website if you have enough inbound links (with the right anchor text) pointing at the site."

The truth of the matter is that inbound links are still the top way to boost your rankings in search results, so partnering with other websites, asking for links, and creating great content that others want to link to should be your top priority.

This Is Just the Beginning

These tips will only help you get started. Search engine marketing is a constant process that requires trial-and-error and self-education. People stay on websites because of great content or great products, but if they can't find them, it's essentially useless.

I think Carolyn Shelby sums it up perfectly:

"The most important thing for people to know/remember is that a well optimized site provides a solid foundation for all the other promotion/advertising/marketing efforts you put into building your brand and building your traffic."

There has been quite a bit of buzz surrounding the concept of trust these days. More specifically, how TrustRank is likely to have a strong correlation with search engine rankings. This is not a surprise to most SEO's, as trust-building activities such as link development have long been commonplace for just that reason.

What seems to get lost in translation however is that the practice of search engine optimization is different from building a trusted website.

Take for example a brick and mortar store. You sell a great product, maybe even have a decent location, and all the words on your signs have been carefully selected and strategically placed. The problem? The store is made of cardboard. It sounds too far fetched right? Wrong, this happens (online) all the time.

Not only will potential customers not trust your cardboard store, but Google won't either. The foundation is flimsy and there are no obvious ways to determine whether or not your products are credible or of quality. What I'm trying to say is that SEO is well worth the effort, but it can only go so far without a solid foundation that proves authority and credibility.

While optimization is a science to be executed by professionals appropriately leveraging content and ensuring technical elements are not a hindrance to search engines' ability to rank content, building trust is time consuming and labor intensive. Anyone involved in the process of optimization for a site will need to make the distinction between SEO and trust building activities.

A Few Trust-Building Tips

1. Manage Expectations: make it known that the easy website optimization tasks usually have the least amount of impact. While these may provide some "quick wins" that will garner internal support, it's not enough for long term success. Champion the foundational needs such as site architecture, content and link acquisition for true progress.

2. Link Development: Google's entire premise is built around the idea that inbound links are an indicator of quality, relevance and authority. Ignoring the painstaking task of acquiring links from topically relevant and authoritative sites is nearly a guaranteed fail if rankings are what you're after.
Authoritative Content: now I don't mean slap some keyword-loaded articles on your site and call it a day. Meaningful content that is truly useful to your target audience is what will help to separate the good from the best. Comprehensive guides, how-to's, comparison charts, whatever will add value to the customer experience. This is one reason why sites like Mashable, CNET and the NY Times do so well organically - they have clearly proven them as the authority in their respective fields.

3. Prove It: show your visitors how awesome you are. And if you aren't awesome, SEO isn't your main problem. Post testimonials, credible 3rd party reviews, blog buzz, and any other accolades that support your claim of awesomeness.

2010 is the year of trust. It's time to roll up your sleeves and get cracking because the competition is only getting stiffer. Remember that building trust requires a different set of skills and tactics that will make optimization efforts and organic visibility a cinch. It might be harder, but like all things in life the payoff will be much greater.

Written by Denny Jaconi, Senior Editor for WebGem