What Is SEM? A Guide to Paid Search Engine Marketing

What Is SEM?

Search engine marketing, also known as SEM, is a form of internet marketing that entails the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages. SEM activity includes the paid placement of advertisements on Web pages, blogs, and social media sites. PPC (paid per click) advertising pays when users click on an ad unit, which is relatively popular among advertisers/mark today because it's highly targeted based on the user's search query. Paid advertisements have the advantage of showing the above organic results. Promotions may be in banners, text, rich media formats including animation and video footage, or pop-ups. SEM takes a lot of time to monitor; hence, an advertising agency usually works for clients who wish to drive traffic to their website.

How does it work?

Search engine marketing uses an outside advertising firm (known as "search engine marketing agency") that engages primarily with three types of search engines: paid search, search engine optimization (SEO), and paid inclusion programs. As opposed to SEOs who work mainly on strategies that help increase organic rankings over time, SEMs are more focused on paid listings and improving visibility in the short term. SEM is an umbrella term that includes search engine marketing (to drive traffic to a website via paid search) and search engine optimization (increasing organic ranking or reach through changes to content, HTML, etc.). Unfortunately, the SEM industry has ongoing controversy between advertisers, SEO consultants/agencies, and web admins. Because of many unscrupulous practices, including cybersquatting (the unauthorized registration and use of Internet domain names), cloaking (inappropriate redirecting of page content), poor-quality link building schemes employing methods such as buying links, exchanging links, violating Google's terms of service regarding spamdexing, click fraud, etc.

A Guide to Paid Search Engine Marketing

Emerging employment trends, such as working from home and telecommuting, have led to new marketing methods to reach potential customers. As a result, Internet marketing is a rapidly growing field that demands constant change. One of the most popular types of Internet marketing is search engine advertising: paid search engine marketing (Paid Search). Paid search exists in both Google and Bing's paid ad platforms. Businesses use these ads to direct users to their company website, where they may engage in e-commerce or download information about their products or services. With billions of Web searches done daily on significant search engines, it becomes increasingly difficult for businesses to stand out in the crowd without employing some paid strategy due to increasing competition in online marketing. Paid search campaigns are the most efficient way to get relevant traffic to your website.

Paid search

Paid search, also known as sponsored search, is where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Google provides two types of paid advertisements; text and image (display) ads. There are five main elements for creating successful PPC campaigns: keywords, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), and quality score.

The first step in a Paid search campaign

The first step to creating a paid search campaign is choosing relevant keywords and having the highest likelihood of being inputted by users. The more specific the keyword, the more targeted your advertisement will be. To determine which keywords have the highest chance of being clicked on, you must use a tool such as Google's Keyword Tool or Wordtracker. You may also use a keyword suggestion tool such as Google Trends, which can help you identify current trends across your industry and how they relate to potential keywords. For example, if "Paid Search" has recently started trending in your industry, then it might be beneficial for you to include this term in your Paid Search campaigns. It is important not to get hung up on the number of keywords you find. Instead, research the keywords and identify which keywords will deliver your business's most conversions and traffic.

Click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate (CTR) define as the ratio of clicks on a specific ad and the total number of impressions (exposure to an ad). For example, if 100 people see your ad but only ten click it, your CTR would be 10%. A high CTR usually indicates that an advertisement is relevant to its audience, so more users are likely to click on it. For example, the average CTR for AdWords on Google search is 2%, while the average CTR for display ads averages around 0.1%. On the other hand, if you have a low CTR or no one is clicking on your ads, this might indicate that your ads are not relevant to its content.

The second step in a Paid search campaign

The second step in creating a paid search campaign is establishing a conversion goal for your ad campaign. Conversions can be defined as the desired action you would like users to take on your website once they click on your advertisement, such as downloading a white paper or purchasing online. Having clear conversion goals allows you to focus and measure the success of your Paid Search Campaigns. Ultimately, you want to do with these conversions to drive traffic back to your site so that visitors may engage in e-commerce or download information about your products/services. The conversions should correspond with each company's business objectives to implement an appropriate call-to-action (CTA).

When reaching your desired conversion goal, you should remember that not all conversions are created equal. For example, suppose you drive quality traffic to your site by aiming for multi-page website conversions. In that case, it may be more beneficial to focus on increasing the conversion rate of these types of conversions rather than simply driving a high quantity of clicks. Conversion rates can be measured by tracking unique conversions or total conversions. Unique conversion is defined as one user converting once, while complete conversion is defined as a single person or multiple people converting. It's important to note that unique and total conversions measure different metrics since excellent conversions indicate how many users have transformed. In contrast, accurate conversions rate show how effective each click was in generating a certain amount of revenue.