
Did you know that, for 85% of retail businesses, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the most successful strategy for acquiring new customers?
Or that 63% of users will likely click on a paid search ad on Google?
Search engine marketing is a very powerful tool for nurturing leads online, generating higher conversion rates, and improving your business’s overall digital efficiency.
In this article, we will explain what search engine marketing is, what types and platforms exist, what benefits SEM brings for your business, and what best practices to follow when coming up with your own SEM campaign.
Search Engine Marketing is the systematic use of search engine advertising platforms to increase brand visibility and attract qualified traffic to the website.
Your business’s SEM strategy has to consider all the search engines that your prospects and target audience use. It also needs to take into account platforms and websites that rank high in search results for your target keywords.
It also encompasses owned media platforms such as social media, review sites, Google My Business pages, and others that appear in search results and affect your authority.
Some of the most common search engines and their respective ad platforms include:
The search engine marketing objective is to reach the highest ranking position on a specific search engine.
SEM is quite often – and quite erroneously – mistook for search engine optimization. They are both related to search engines and target audiences who search online using keywords. However, SEM has quite a different approach in that it focuses on delivering ads to prospective customers.
SEM is a business model for monetization of search engines: a great part of Google’s $162 billion in 2019 revenue came from SEM.
There are several main types of Search Engine Marketing:
All of these platforms are covered by digital agency services provided by the best online marketing companies out there.
Your SEM strategy should consider how to maximize your business’s reputation on all of these platforms for the purpose of boosting visibility and increasing clicks to your website.
Being present on the first page of search results for your target keywords is of critical importance to your sales and online marketing efforts.
For businesses in general, being present online is fundamental to revenue, brand image, and online business reputation. And this is what SEM can deliver.
SEM is very useful when aligning your business with search intent, which users are signaling with their search queries. Knowing their search intent regarding your business puts you in the driving seat to serve them content and messaging that they will respond to.
Other benefits of SEM include:
To reap the greatest possible benefits for your business online, you need to rank high for your keywords but also convey authority and trustworthiness with your target audience for the keywords they are using.
The first thing to do when coming up with an SEM strategy is to track which keywords you want to rank for. When creating your SEM strategy, keep these tips in mind:
Search engine marketing is a highly effective strategy for boosting your business’s online success. Its basis is careful targeting of your target audience with relevant ads, resulting in greater revenue and brand visibility.
Author Bio
Tomas is a digital marketing specialist and a freelance blogger. He is focused on new web tech trends and digital voice distribution across different channels.
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