Most people are familiar with the concept of advertising. Companies that are designing products or offering services bring it to the customer’s attention via advertisements. Traditionally, the top channels for advertisements were televisions, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Today, however, channels like social media, search engines, emails, websites, and mobile applications have become more popular for marketing purposes. This kind of marketing where we use digital channels for the promotion of products and services is called digital marketing.
As the digital landscape becomes more competitive for businesses, it’s almost impossible to attract the target audience without concentrated efforts towards digital marketing. Irrespective of how small or large a business is, they must at some point invest in digital marketing strategy if they want to survive in this highly competitive space. When you start exploring what digital marketing is all about, you will come across its many facets – Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Content Marketing, email marketing, and so on.
This article particularly focuses on Search Engine Marketing. Let us know what is SEM all about and why its knowledge is important for your digital marketing career.
What Is SEM/ Search Engine Marketing
As the phrase suggests, search engine marketing refers to all the advertising efforts that improve the visibility of a website through search engines. When we say this, you may immediately relate two facets of digital marketing that are linked to search engines – SEO and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing. Though it may seem fair, experts are now of the opinion that SEO is a stand-alone practice and Search Engine Marketing majorly focuses on PPC or paid search.
Now that you have understood the basic concept of “what is SEM” term, let’s understand it in detail.
SEM, simply put, is an online marketing strategy that uses paid ads on the search engine results page, usually that of Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Businesses that use SEM optimize their websites as per search engine best practices and advertise them next so that they appear on the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). When it comes to creating paid ads, PPC is, by far, the most popular and effective strategy. PPC ads can take on various formats like text-based small advertisements on SERPs or a visual element that shows a product (along with its price as in Amazon products).
The advertisers opting for PPC are usually required to bid on some specific keywords that are related to their product or service and likely to be entered by users when searching for that product. Every time that paid ad is clicked, the company needs to pay the search engine, hence the name Pay-Per-Click. PPC gives the advertiser an outlet for their advertisements to be displayed alongside the bid results for the search queries.
What makes PPC attractive and an unbeatable online marketing tool is the instant visibility on search engine results that can grab the attention of the target audience. In contrast to PPC, the organic aspect of SEM, i.e., SEO takes more time to get people’s attention.
SEO, as mentioned earlier, comes under the umbrella of SEM. Search Engine Optimization is the organic way of driving traffic to a website, meaning one doesn’t pay the search engines for a higher ranking in SERPs. It refers to the efforts taken to make a site more search engine friendly and include the right keywords in the landing page so that it can rank higher.
Since we have completely understood the concept of “What Is SEM” let us understand how does it work.
How Does an SEM Strategy Pay Off?
Search engines like Google use certain complex algorithms to bring the most relevant results to the users for all of their search queries. Over the years, these algorithms have become sophisticated in differentiating relevant results from spam ones. In fact, Google now uses advanced machine learning algorithms to improvise its search results. So, it is important to have a sound knowledge of search engine algorithms when starting with any SEM strategy.
What Needs to be Focused in SEM?
Advertisers should next be careful while selecting the keywords for their PPC ads. Keyword research should be conducted and the most appropriate keywords must be given for bidding. The geographic location should be selected properly so that the ad appears when the search is conducted in the desired area. An SEM strategy should be devised with a specific goal in mind and the paid search ads should be optimized. This requires a clear understanding of how paid ads platforms work.
Attention should also be paid to how any SEM campaign is performing. There are various SEM tools that can help you track the crucial performance metrics and check if the strategy is actually paying off or needs any improvement.
Now that we have understood what is SEM and why is it important, let us go ahead and understand what are the important tools of SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Tools of SEM
Some of the popular tools used in SEM are:
- SEMRush,
- Google Ads,
- WordStream,
- SuperMetrics,
- Unbounce,
- Bing Ads Editor,
- Google Keyword Planner,
- Optmyzr and
- SpyFu
One can manage a number of performance variables like budget, keyword, and copy. With taht we have come to the end of the article “What Is SEM”.
Bottom Line
In this article “what Is SEM/ Search Engine Marketing” we learned that the use of search engines for marketing has proven to be one of the most effective ways to boost a brand’s online exposure. Running an SEM-focused marketing campaign goes beyond just giving money to Google Ads. It is important to take some formal SEM training so as to build a strong foundation in this subject and learn how to market research, choose the right keywords for your product, and write an engaging message.
Hope you liked the article on “What Is SEM”, in case of any doubts please leave a comment below. Our experts will get back to you at the earliest.
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