What is SEM - Search Engine Marketing? How does it work?

What is SEM - Search Engine Marketing? How Does it work?

Ever wondered how some websites are always shown at the top whenever you search for something. It is due to some tried and tested SEM practices.

SEM is a marketing strategy to generate more traffic for your website. By placing the advertisements on your website, you can get more traffic for your website. 72.2% of eCommerce channel ad spending falls in this category, and Amazon's ad business is the leader in this sector.

Hence in this internet-savvy world, Search Engine Marketing is a great way to boost your business and reach new heights.

What is SEM?

If you are keen to make your business thrive, SEM can help you pave the way towards success. SEM is a business strategy of marketing your business, using paid advertisements to generate more profit. The advertisers bid on the keywords that search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing may enter to search for some product or information. Advertisement

It gives the advertiser a chance to display their ads to generate curiosity and click on them. Hence it is also called pay per click ads. Ads on the search engine are generally in the form of text ads.

SEM also helps you enhance your business's visibility by using multiple ways and giving exposure to your brand or product. A specific audience is taken into consideration while devising a marketing plan. There are several ways to promote your product.

 Other techniques used under SEM, including

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay Per Click

If you do not use paid ads, then ranking organically on a search engine for a query is also considered part of marketing. It is called search engine optimization. SEM is the most powerful and quickest way to reach a wider audience.

Some of the widely known search engine networks are Google Ads and Bing Ads. Simultaneously, Google Ads consists of two networks, i.e., Google Search Network and Google Display network. The first one includes those websites which are search-oriented. The ownership of these websites is vested with Google. The second includes media properties such as YouTube, Gmail, etc.

While the Google network has twice the reach compared to Bing Ads, you may go for Bing if you are looking for a cost-effective option.

Also Read : 7 Best sources of Traffic for Affiliate marketing

What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

In general terms, search engine marketing is a paid marketing system where Google gets the earnings for promoting your business or brand and showing it in search results. SEM helps the user increase traffic on their website by advertising their services or products on different social media platforms.  SEM increases the visitors to your website by buying advertisements.

While SEO is different from SEM. It is a way to secure your search results without paying any money. It is done primarily by giving relevant content for the keyword to the users. So, we can say it is a way of generating free and organic traffic for your website.

Both the techniques are equally relevant to market your business or product online.

Why is SEM important?

Billions of users browse the internet every day. Consumers like to search for a product online as they can compare the rates and services. Hence online marketing techniques are essential to leave no stone unturned to market your product.

In SEM, the advertisers get an incentive every time a user clicks on the ads or visits their website. It improves the website's ranking organically with the help of search results.

Earlier, a Facebook page was necessary to promote your product through digital marketing, but nowadays, multiple social media channels help increase your reach to your potential customers.

Regularly posting content and engaging your followers is the key to building a substantial audience. Additionally, SEM campaigns must be updated from time to time for effective marketing.

How does SEM work?

Here is a step by step guide to help you understand how search engine marketing works.

Step 1 - Finding your target audience

Identifying your target audience is the first step towards paid search engine marketing. It will help you in selling the relevant products to the customers and meeting their requirements.

Evaluation of your competitors based on important ROI metrics is essential.

Step 2  Keyword Research

Search engines use complex algorithms to refine the search for the relevant content.

Hence before initiating a search engine marketing campaign, keyword research is significant. The next step is identifying those keywords that are relevant to the potential customers of your business.

Step 3 - Optimizing your website content.

While optimizing your website's content for SERPS, it is vital to make your content SEO friendly. The content should be precise and clear to understand. It is also essential to make it interesting to get more traffic on your website.  You should also add good quality links to draw potential customers and to build the trust of users.

Step 4 - Ad Auction

The SEO Ad Auction is another aspect of SEM. Every user cannot see every ad in the world. It is because each keyword might not have sufficient commercial intent to display it for every user. Hence google uses two factors to analyze which ones would be a part of the ad auction process, i.e., maximum bid and quality score of your ads.

The overall quality of your advertisement and your maximum bid decide the placement of your ads. The result, which is calculated through this method, determines your Ad rank and hence clicks and revenue.

Other factors such as click-through rate, quality score, and negative word usage determine your ad's placing.

Benefits of Search Engine Marketing

SEM is considered to be among the most cost-efficient methods for reaching the target audience when buying something. Also, the research has shown that people usually conduct 90% of the online searches about purchasing the products.

If your SEM is done properly, it will present ads in front of the target audience with relevant content. This all is for free until and unless they click on the advertisement. The ad is played on the sponsored section of the result page of the search engine. This ad is ranked based on the payment done by the user to display their advertisement. Here are some of the exceptional benefits of Search Engine Marketing; continue reading to know more!.

Reach Your Clients Instantly

SEM is typically used for describing Google Paid search advertisements. This technique is usually known to be a short-term strategy that brings fast visibility of the services and products. When compared to SEO, the paid search ads are known for offering quick results. That’s because they provide you access to target potential customers quite instantly.

Increase Brand Awareness

Google Search Ads allow the advertisers or businesses to expose their brand in the headlines of the ads, display URL, description or the extension links. Therefore, you should know that these paid search advertisements help in contributing to high brand awareness, especially when they appear at the top of the Google search engine results.

Create Geo-Targeted Search Ads

Search Engine Marketing techniques provide you with the option to target people based on their location. Apart from this, it allows you to create advertisements in multiple languages and decide where you wish them to appear. Advertisers are free to specify the country, city, and even any specific area of the world. It works best for the eCommerce store or service lenders.

Implement And Manage Ads Easily And Quickly

The paid search ads are easy to create and managed. The Google Ads tool assists you in setting up the schedule for every campaign. You can run and stop your ads anytime according to your convenience. It is quite easy to set the budget and specify the performance speed of the campaigns. This will help you in optimising the ads and bringing in more traffic to the businesses.

Increase Traffic Through Ad Visibility

The optimised search engine advertisements can drive the relevant traffic to your business website as they appear on the top of SERP above the organic results. Hence, with the help of the right advertising budget and optimised bidding and appealing ad message, you can easily increase the ad quality. Also, it will increase the number of relevant website visits.

Target Audiences Through Keyword Match Types

Google has its won keyword planner tools that help in determining the most popular keywords that are used the people for searching. Hence, you can use these keywords in your campaigns and ensure that your ads are reaching the right audience.

Google Ads also provide you with multiple keywords types that match the exact keyword. These keywords match can be a broad match, exact match and many more. Hence, based on the keywords used in your campaign, it will be displayed to a specific target audience,

Pay Only Per Action

Once you are done creating the paid search ads, they will appear on the search engine ranking for free. You only need to pay when someone takes any action on them, such as clicking on them and visiting your website.

It provides you free exposure as well as brand awareness on the search engines, and you will be charged only when the user clicks on the advertisement to visit your landing page. It is a useful method to save your money over the campaigns created by the users.

Also Read : 5 Things To Know Before Digitally Transforming Your Business In 2021

Wrapping up

 Keeping tabs on the progress of your SEM campaign is also an essential aspect of SEM. You must keep track of your position on the SERPs and eliminate and update your strategies to get better search results.

While traditional marketing can broadcast your message worldwide, SEM helps you reach customers interested in it. Hence we can say that SEM is the most efficient way to spend your money.