The aim of this thesis is to investigate what search engine marketing (SEM) is, what kind of measures it includes and how these measures are used in practise to improve the search engine visibility of a web store. Apteekki Ltd. commissioned this thesis. The theory part of the thesis covers detailed descriptions of search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) accompanied by practical measures recommended by SEO experts. An inventory is made of the SEO measures already in place at Apteekki Ltd.’s web store and the gaps discovered in these measures are fixed. After a three-month period it is measured whether these fixes have had a positive impact on the position of Apteekki Ltd.’s web store in the Google search results.

The baseline of Apteekki Ltd.’s web store search engine visibility was assessed in November 2013 before the gaps in the SEO measures were fixed by testing how the web store ranked in the Google search results with 40 key search terms. These results were also compared to the results of four main competitor web stores. In the follow-up study in March 2014 the test with 40 key search terms was repeated to see whether there has been a change in the position of Apteekki Ltd.’s web store in Google search results.

The most obvious gaps in the search engine optimization included problems in the HTML code, lack of internal page links, shortage of external inbound links and a need for improving the keyword optimization of individual webpages. The enhancement of the SEO measures led to a clearly better position in the search result for 25 % of the tested search terms. The follow-up study confirms the basic fact about SEO put forward in the theory part: it is easier to improve the search result positions for the search terms that are less competitive. It takes more time and effort trying to improve the search result positions for search terms that are more competitive.

Finally this thesis provides recommendations for further measures to improve the search engine optimization of the Apteekki Ltd.’s web store and organising regular assessments of Apteekki Ltd.’s position in the Google search results and impact of the search engine optimization measures in place.