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What is Search Engine Marketing & How it Works?
Many of you may not be familiar with the term ‘SEM’. There is nothing to be wondered about as digital marketing is such a process where you find abundant terms that sound similar. To clear up your confusion and discover the best practices of Search Engine Marketing, this post is worth reading.
Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is an effective way to grow a business and reach new customers. As it’s tricky to have organic traffic over a long period, sometimes you cannot beat your competitors on search engine result pages without spending money on advertisement. That is why Search Engine Marketing is significantly important for a business to stay ahead of competitors.
Suppose you have an e-commerce site to sell women’s outfits online. Now you have thousands of competitors even in your own city. Though you are satisfied with your service and quality, it’s much more difficult to take the top position on search engine result pages and stay in the same position consistently using Search Engine Optimization techniques. Rather, it is time-consuming as well.
Google is considered the most powerful search engine, with 3.8 million searches per minute across the sphere. Businesses need to follow over 200 ranking parameters as Google algorithms to rank top positions on SERPs. Besides, it is tough to appear at the top of SERPs when your competitors are paying for this. Hence, investing in search engine marketing is a wise decision to grow a business fast.
What is SEM?
SEM, or search engine marketing, is a paid advertising strategy to increase search visibility. When someone types with a certain keyword, SEM allows your product or service to appear in the top position on SERPs and you have to pay for that.
Paid search ads are found on about any search result page. These paid placements are usually placed at the top and bottom of the page and you find the term ‘Ad’ to make everyone understand that it is a paid promotion.
Difference between SEO and SEM
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a part of search marketing to gain organic site visibility in SERPs. Brands don’t pay but use an array of tactics to show their content at the top of SERPs with SEO. Many marketers debate whether search engine marketing is better than search engine optimization or reverse. The fact is, both strategies are effective to expand a business. It depends on the business needs to determine if it requires search engine marketing or search engine optimization. But effective SEM cannot exist without SEO or organic search results.
SEM vs SEO – Differences
1. SEM is represented with “Ad” designation, SEO does not
Search results appear differently on SERPs for both SEO and SEM strategies. While SEM is identified with the term ‘Ad’ before the keywords, SEO results are organic and are not marked with ‘Ad’.
2. SEM search results allow ad extensions, SEO results have featured snippets
While comparing these two strategies, you’ll also find differences in the look of search results. SEM search results may contain ad extensions such as additional links, phone numbers, and call-outs, but SEO results may come with featured snippets in search.
3. You pay every time a consumer clicks on your SEM result; you pay nothing when a consumer clicks on the organic search result
Search Engine Marketing is a paid strategy. You are charged every time someone clicks on the result. So, you have a budget for showing your ad continually. In SEO, you are never charged when someone clicks on your page.
4. SEM is for the target audience, SEO is for everyone
With search engine marketing, you can plan to connect with your target audience based on age, location, habits, and more. With search engine optimization, you cannot choose specifically who will see your search results.
5. SEM brings instant results, SEO takes time
Through paid ads, you are more visible to your audience than ever. It is flexible to turn on or turn off the ad as per your requirement. SEO needs time to show its results. It can take months or years to rank high in search engines.
6. SEM is better for testing than SEO
In Search Engine Marketing, you can modify your ad copy, target a new audience group, and change the landing page content to experiment with new rules. It allows your brand to experience differences immediately. It takes much time to change and monitor differences in SEO results.
Search Engine Marketing Examples
When you search with the key phrase “hire content writer” you will find several search results. Results that are marked with ‘Ad’ differ from organic search results. These are paid ads through Search Engine Marketing strategies, while organic search results do not have any mark showing ‘Ad’ before the keyword.
You can find many paid advertisements though. When you implement SEM strategies, search engines allow your brand to be shown at the top positions. You can find many paid promotions on SERPs. Different search engines have different tools to determine the rank and position of paid ads.
Google is the most popular search engine for paid ads. When you pay Google for showing your ad on the search engine result page, you can reach millions of target audiences with your product or service within an hour. Google algorithms determine the rank and position of these ads. As this is a vast topic, you will have a detailed discussion later in our blog.
Benefits of Search Engine Marketing
Do you want growth in your business? Then Search Engine Marketing or SEM is extremely essential. For the increasing competition in every sector, online promotion becomes crucial for businesses. Search Engine Marketing is a vital digital marketing strategy to increase your business’s reach. Every company tries to attract an audience to its product or service. SEM provides an excellent way to magnetize people toward a brand.
Companies like Flipkart and Amazon run ad campaigns to reach out to users. These ads tell the users that the service or product is available on their website that they look for. If the employer does not make an ad campaign, the users may direct to another website for the same product or service.
Whether you are a start-up or an established business, you can reap the following benefits of Search Engine Marketing:
1. It is flexible
Search Engine Marketing is a highly flexible online marketing procedure. Businesses can use it as a temporary, seasonal, or long-term marketing strategy. You can change it with current trends or adapt it for getting benefits for a long time.
2. Reach your clients instantly
Every brand needs to be visible to get leads. However, getting a high rank organically on SERPs is a tedious and time-consuming task. SEM provides fast visibility compared to SEO. Your business can rank high immediately on SERPs with quality keywords and landing page content.
3. It targets the audience at the right time
Research shows that 90% of consumers make inquiries online to know exactly what they are looking for. This means your content and ads are in front of an extremely engaged target audience who are looking for offers like yours. So, with search engine ad campaigns, chances are higher to convert the audience into your potential customers.
4. Detailed targeting is possible
With Search Engine Marketing, you have more detailed targeting. You can attract your target audience according to their interests, behaviors, genders, locations, and others. With detailed targeting, the chances are high to increase sales incredibly.
5. Bring highly qualified constant traffic to your page
The organic search result is not constant whereas search engine marketing can provide you with top rank constantly. Changed Google algorithms can affect your organic search result. Ranking fluctuation is a common feature in search engine optimization. With search engine marketing, you will experience highly qualified traffic constantly as long as you continue your ad campaigns.
6. Implement and manage ads easily and quickly
Creating and managing an SEM campaign is easy and fast. It is flexible and configurable to set up campaigns in a few hours. Google ads allow you to set up an agenda for each of your campaigns.
There is no time limit to show your ad, but it is your decision how long you want to run it and when to stop your campaign. With search engine marketing, you can raise a specific budget and performance speed for your campaigns. So, you have optimal benefits in a short period with paid ads.
7. Test and Measure Your Performance
To test the performance of your ads and to measure the outcome of your campaign, SEM offers incredible opportunities. With Google Ads, you can access in-depth data on the top-performing ads in terms of ideas, clicks, Click-Through-Rate (CTR), keywords, etc. Depending on your advertising goal, you can assess your performance and discover what you eventually need for optimal performance in the future.
8. Increase brand awareness
Search Engine Marketing is a leading tool not only to generate qualified traffic but to increase brand awareness. When your product gets a higher rank in search engines, consumers will prefer your offerings and even recommend your brand to others. Over time, the search terms will become familiar to you and you will become a trusted service provider.
Internet marketing has gone through a remarkable transformation in the last few years. As shifting from traditional marketing to digital promotion has become indispensable, the second variety has made its own way to develop more challenging strategies toward success. Apart from businesses, even consumer behavior has changed a lot regarding purchasing decisions.
Therefore, it becomes essential for brands to stand out from competitors and reach out to the intended audience with Search Engine Marketing tactics. If you want to grow your business with highly professional Search Engine Marketing services, contact MAXIMA GROWTH today, Book Your Free Digital Marketing Consultation Now!
