With billions of daily users (and searches), it’s crucial that your business is visible on search engines like Google. But ranking in the top search results can be challenging, especially for start-up businesses and websites.
This is where Search Engine Marketing (SEM) comes into play.
SEM can give your website instant visibility, attract prospects, and increase sales. This guide provides you with essential knowledge and actionable insights to succeed with SEM campaigns and achieve your marketing goals.
What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
Search engine marketing is a digital marketing strategy that aims to improve a website’s visibility in search engines through paid advertising. The goal is to appear in the paid results when people search for terms related to your business, uk email list product or service. You can learn more about paid advertising here .
Let’s say you sell sporting goods online and want to boost sales of tennis shoes. Here are the two main ways you can reach potential customers in search engines:
- Run ads to promote your product page in paid search results (SEM).
- Optimize your product page to rank high in organic search results (SEO).
And this is what it looks like:
The results in the green box are paid ads, deliver what’s missing elsewhere a/b testing can help while those below show the organic results. SEM allows you to promote your brand in the paid results section.
SEM vs. SEO
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) both aim to increase the visibility of a website in search engines.
While the goal of SEM is clear, anhui mobile phone number list experts disagree on its scope. Some believe SEM includes both paid and organic search results, while others refer it strictly to paid search results.
For example, Ishaan Shakunt , founder of Spear Growth , a performance marketing and SEO agency, believes that SEM includes both organic and paid strategies.
“SEO is not the name of the channel; the channel is organic search,” says Ishaan. “SEO is the activity we do to improve organic search. Similarly, PPC is not the channel; paid search is the channel. PPC is just a way to bid on many advertising channels, even outside of paid search.”
“So search engine marketing should be a combination of paid and organic search. Both teams involved should work closely together because it’s the same search engine. It’s just two different ways to be visible in it.”
For Kamel Ben Yacoub , founder and CEO of PPC agency Getuplead , SEM mainly refers to paid search.
“In my opinion, SEM clearly refers to paid search, while organic search has its own term: SEO,” says Kamel. “When I started in digital marketing 12 years ago, there was no confusion!”