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SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)

What Is Search engine marketing (SEM)?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

While the industry term once referred to both organic search activities such as search engine optimization (SEO) and paid, it now refers almost exclusively to paid search advertising.

Search engine marketing is also alternately referred to as paid search or pay per click (PPC).

Why Is SEM Important?

With an increasing number of consumers researching and shopping for products online, search engine marketing has become a crucial online marketing strategy for increasing a company’s reach.

In fact, the majority of new visitors to a website find it by performing a query on a search engine.

In search engine marketing, advertisers only pay for impressions that result in visitors, making it an efficient way for a company to spend its marketing dollars. As an added bonus, each visitor incrementally improves the website’s rankings in organic search results.

Since consumers enter search queries with the intent of finding information of a commercial nature, they are in an excellent state of mind to make a purchase, compared to other sites such as social media where users are not explicitly searching for something.

Search marketing reaches consumers at exactly the right time: when they are open to new information. Unlike the majority of digital advertising, PPC advertising is non-intrusive and does not interrupt their tasks.

Results are immediate with SEM. It is arguably the fastest way to drive traffic to a website.

Search-Engine-Marketing-1

How SEM Works

Search engines use complicated algorithms to ensure the most relevant results are returned for each search, including location and other available information.

In paid search advertising, sponsored ads appear at the top of and on the side of search engine results pages to gain more visibility and prominence than the organic results.

Let’s say that you are a customer looking for a product or service online. You go to a search engine and type in your search terms (also known as keywords).

In your search results page, you will come across various company ads whose keywords match the keywords in your search.

These ads appear in prominent locations on the page – along with the other search listings that match your keywords. The paid listings are highly relevant to your specific search, making it likely that you will click on them.

Now let’s take a look at how SEM campaigns work from the marketer’s perspective.

SEM networks are self-serve operations. Once a marketer selects a network, he or she can get a campaign up within a short period of time.

When setting up a campaign within an SEM network, the marketer is prompted to:

  • Conduct keyword research and select a set of keywords related to their website or product;
  • Select a geographic location for the ad to be displayed within;
  • Create a text-based ad to display in the search results;
  • Bid on a price they are willing to pay for each click on their ad.

Text-only ads are easy to produce. Marketers enter a headline, text for the body of the ad, a call-to-action and a URL for the hyperlink.

Search engine marketing is considered by many to be the most efficient way to spend marketing dollars.

Examples Of Search Ad Networks

The two primary search networks that SEM professionals target are Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) and the Bing Ads.

Google AdWords is actually two networks: Google Search Network and Google Display Network. The first network consists exclusively of search-related websites owned by Google, while the second includes properties such as YouTube, Blogger and Gmail. The Bing Ads allows customers to buy ads on both the Yahoo’s network of websites and Bing’s network.

While Google Ads is a much larger network (around 2x the size), the pricing is often lower on Bing Ads. Marketers may be able to get a better rank for a competitive keyword phrase for less than they get on Google. And some report that the clickthrough rates are higher as well.

How to choose a good company?

Since you are already making an investment in search engine marketing to bring traffic to your website, it is a worthwhile effort to optimize that traffic for conversions and increase the efficiency of your spending.

A/B testing your landing pages is an easy way to maximize your spend, either by optimizing for average order value or revenue per page.

Optimizing your landing page can increase your Quality Score with search engine marketing networks, thus reducing your average CPC.

Optimizely – and other platforms like it – can help you easily structure and implement your A/B tests, offering real-time results to give you confidence in your business decisions. Optimizely has integrations with popular ad networks such as Google Adwords and Facebook that make setting up ad-related experiments quick and easy.

What Value Does SEM Add to Your Business?

Generates Highly Qualified Traffic

Generating traffic organically can be a very long and tedious process where the results are only seen in the long term. Search engine marketing allows you to accelerate this process and get users to your website from the beginning. In addition, you can be assured that these users are interested in what you offer, since they themselves have searched for it.  

Generates Visibility

Appearing in the top results of Google and other search engines associates your brand with a specific need even if the user does not click the first time they see it.

Generates Conversions

The ultimate goal of Google Ads and other search engine marketing tools is to improve business results. To do this, you will need to create optimized landing pages that put users on the path to conversion.

Gets the Most Out of Your Budget

One of the great advantages of search engine marketing is that it is a suitable solution for companies of all sizes, since the minimum investment is very affordable. On the other hand, if your brand is growing, you can increase the investment and the complexity of your campaigns to keep your momentum. Also, since you only pay if you get results (in the form of clicks), you can be sure that your budget is used effectively.

Gets Measurable Results

Search engine marketing solutions such as Google Ads provide numerous metrics on campaigns and let you to know what is happening at all times. This way, it is very easy to correct the course if needed and get better results.

What Is Search engine marketing (SEM)?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

While the industry term once referred to both organic search activities such as search engine optimization (SEO) and paid, it now refers almost exclusively to paid search advertising.

Search engine marketing is also alternately referred to as paid search or pay per click (PPC).

Search-Engine-Marketing-1

Why Is SEM Important?

With an increasing number of consumers researching and shopping for products online, search engine marketing has become a crucial online marketing strategy for increasing a company’s reach.

In fact, the majority of new visitors to a website find it by performing a query on a search engine.

In search engine marketing, advertisers only pay for impressions that result in visitors, making it an efficient way for a company to spend its marketing dollars. As an added bonus, each visitor incrementally improves the website’s rankings in organic search results.

Since consumers enter search queries with the intent of finding information of a commercial nature, they are in an excellent state of mind to make a purchase, compared to other sites such as social media where users are not explicitly searching for something.

Search marketing reaches consumers at exactly the right time: when they are open to new information. Unlike the majority of digital advertising, PPC advertising is non-intrusive and does not interrupt their tasks.

Results are immediate with SEM. It is arguably the fastest way to drive traffic to a website.

How SEM Works

Search engines use complicated algorithms to ensure the most relevant results are returned for each search, including location and other available information.

In paid search advertising, sponsored ads appear at the top of and on the side of search engine results pages to gain more visibility and prominence than the organic results.

Let’s say that you are a customer looking for a product or service online. You go to a search engine and type in your search terms (also known as keywords).

In your search results page, you will come across various company ads whose keywords match the keywords in your search.

These ads appear in prominent locations on the page – along with the other search listings that match your keywords. The paid listings are highly relevant to your specific search, making it likely that you will click on them.

Now let’s take a look at how SEM campaigns work from the marketer’s perspective.

SEM networks are self-serve operations. Once a marketer selects a network, he or she can get a campaign up within a short period of time.

When setting up a campaign within an SEM network, the marketer is prompted to:

  • Conduct keyword research and select a set of keywords related to their website or product;
  • Select a geographic location for the ad to be displayed within;
  • Create a text-based ad to display in the search results;
  • Bid on a price they are willing to pay for each click on their ad.

Text-only ads are easy to produce. Marketers enter a headline, text for the body of the ad, a call-to-action and a URL for the hyperlink.

Search engine marketing is considered by many to be the most efficient way to spend marketing dollars.

Examples Of Search Ad Networks

The two primary search networks that SEM professionals target are Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) and the Bing Ads.

Google AdWords is actually two networks: Google Search Network and Google Display Network. The first network consists exclusively of search-related websites owned by Google, while the second includes properties such as YouTube, Blogger and Gmail. The Bing Ads allows customers to buy ads on both the Yahoo’s network of websites and Bing’s network.

While Google Ads is a much larger network (around 2x the size), the pricing is often lower on Bing Ads. Marketers may be able to get a better rank for a competitive keyword phrase for less than they get on Google. And some report that the clickthrough rates are higher as well.

How to choose a good company?

Since you are already making an investment in search engine marketing to bring traffic to your website, it is a worthwhile effort to optimize that traffic for conversions and increase the efficiency of your spending.

A/B testing your landing pages is an easy way to maximize your spend, either by optimizing for average order value or revenue per page.

Optimizing your landing page can increase your Quality Score with search engine marketing networks, thus reducing your average CPC.

Optimizely – and other platforms like it – can help you easily structure and implement your A/B tests, offering real-time results to give you confidence in your business decisions. Optimizely has integrations with popular ad networks such as Google Adwords and Facebook that make setting up ad-related experiments quick and easy.

What Value Does SEM Add to Your Business?

Generates Highly Qualified Traffic

Generating traffic organically can be a very long and tedious process where the results are only seen in the long term. Search engine marketing allows you to accelerate this process and get users to your website from the beginning. In addition, you can be assured that these users are interested in what you offer, since they themselves have searched for it.  

Generates Visibility

Appearing in the top results of Google and other search engines associates your brand with a specific need even if the user does not click the first time they see it.

Generates Conversions

The ultimate goal of Google Ads and other search engine marketing tools is to improve business results. To do this, you will need to create optimized landing pages that put users on the path to conversion.

Gets the Most Out of Your Budget

One of the great advantages of search engine marketing is that it is a suitable solution for companies of all sizes, since the minimum investment is very affordable. On the other hand, if your brand is growing, you can increase the investment and the complexity of your campaigns to keep your momentum. Also, since you only pay if you get results (in the form of clicks), you can be sure that your budget is used effectively.

Gets Measurable Results

Search engine marketing solutions such as Google Ads provide numerous metrics on campaigns and let you to know what is happening at all times. This way, it is very easy to correct the course if needed and get better results.

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