{"id":12136,"date":"2022-02-14T12:58:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T11:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/careerfoundry.inbearbeitung.de\/en\/?p=12136"},"modified":"2022-02-14T13:24:58","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T12:24:58","slug":"what-is-sem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/careerfoundry.inbearbeitung.de\/en\/blog\/digital-marketing\/what-is-sem\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? A Complete Introductory Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ubiquity of search engines makes them the prime spot for advertisers and digital marketers to grab our increasingly divided attention. The key to achieving this is a variety of digital marketing strategies, including what\u2019s known as SEM, or search engine marketing. SEM is so fundamental to modern digital marketing techniques that it\u2019s one of the first skills any novice marketer will learn.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what exactly is <\/i><\/strong>search engine marketing, and what does it involve?<\/strong> Do you really need it? And, if so, how might you go about applying it? In this guide, we offer comprehensive answers to these questions and more. We\u2019ll cover:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What is search engine marketing (SEM)?<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  2. How does SEM work?<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Why is SEM important?<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  4. What are the best SEM tools?<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  5. How to build an effective SEM strategy<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Key takeaways<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Ready to perfect your SEM strategy? Let\u2019s dive in.<\/span><\/p>\n

    1. What is search engine marketing (SEM)?<\/span><\/h2>\n

    Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of using paid advertising to ensure your company\u2019s website appears at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) if a user searches for a specific keyword or keywords.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    According to <\/span>a recent study by Sistrix<\/span><\/a>, the average clickthrough rate for the first position on Google is 28.5%. This rapidly diminishes as you move down the listings. One of search engine marketing’s primary goals, then, is to rank top of the search listings. By doing this, SEM aims to increase a website\u2019s visibility, improve brand awareness, heighten the chances that a user will click on their website, get ahead of competitors\u2014or a combination of the three.<\/span><\/p>\n

    By and large, when we hear the term <\/span>search engine marketing<\/b> it refers to paid strategies for boosting a website\u2019s rankings. This usually refers to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. More broadly, the term can also incorporate non-paid techniques. This includes optimizing a website\u2019s content to organically boost its ranking for particular keywords, also known as <\/span>search engine optimization (SEO)<\/b>. For the sake of this post, we’ll focus on paid techniques. But we\u2019ll briefly cover SEO first, so you know what to look for.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What\u2019s the difference between SEM and SEO?<\/span><\/h3>\n

    While <\/span>search engine marketing<\/b> can describe any technique that raises a website\u2019s rankings (including paid and organic search) it increasingly refers to paid growth strategies alone. SEO, meanwhile, refers to non-paid (or organic) traffic growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Often, marketers consider SEO a digital marketing strategy in its own right because it is very labor-intensive. SEO includes continuously optimizing or updating a website\u2019s readable content (such as written copy and image tags) as well as a web page\u2019s hidden elements (like metatags, HTML, and CSS). It can often include encouraging other well-ranked pages to link back to your site, helping further boost its ranking, which is known as link building. All these activities organically generate website traffic. However, they are also very time-consuming and take a long settling-in period to produce results. Brands often outsource SEO to dedicated companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We won\u2019t go into further detail here, but you can <\/span>learn more about the difference between SEM and SEO in this post.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

    2. How does search engine marketing (SEM) work?<\/span><\/h2>\n

    SEM focuses on using paid advertising to secure a link to a brand\u2019s website at the top of a search engine results page (SERP). For the layperson, this refers to the clickable links that appear above organic search results, the ones designated as \u2018ads\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But how does paid search engine marketing work? Before we get into the details of the paid search process, SEM requires some foundational groundwork. This includes:<\/span><\/p>\n

    Keyword research<\/span><\/h3>\n

    Keywords are essential for SEO, because search engines use them to crawl and index your web page. They\u2019re also critical for paid search and SEM because marketers pay search engines a small amount every time a user clicks on an ad that appears in response to a certain keyword query.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    SEM requires researching the keywords a target audience uses to find your products and services. You should note the popular ones to help determine how much you are willing to bid for each keyword. Confused? We\u2019ll cover more on this later.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Copywriting<\/span><\/h3>\n

    The next step is creating alluring ad copy that catches the eye of potential customers searching using your chosen keywords. This is challenging, though\u2014not only are you limited by character counts and other rules, you also need to ensure you\u2019re presenting a clear, concise message and call to action that will attract the appropriate visitors to click on your website.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Landing pages<\/span><\/h3>\n

    Finally, you\u2019ll need landing pages that provide users with the information they\u2019re expecting when they click on your ad. While this crosses over with an organic SEO growth strategy, it\u2019s also vital that your paid ads lead customers to the information they\u2019re expecting. If not, you\u2019ll experience a higher bounce rate, wasting your paid search budget.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Once you\u2019ve got your keywords, draft ad copy, and landing pages prepared, you\u2019re ready to start your paid search campaign.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    The most common form of paid search engine marketing is what\u2019s known as PPC, or pay-per-click advertising. The PPC model does exactly what it says on the tin: rather than paying for the ad space itself, advertisers only pay when a customer clicks on their ad. PPC is very popular because it\u2019s relatively cost-effective and allows for highly-targeted search engine marketing.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But how does it work? Google is the most popular search engine and has its own PPC tool, Google Ads. And most search engines\/PPC platforms use a similar approach to this.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The paid search process, step-by-step<\/span><\/h3>\n

    1. Set your location<\/span><\/h4>\n

    The first step in any PPC campaign is to adjust your location settings. You can choose whether your ads are visible locally, globally, or in a preferred city or zip code. For instance, if you’re publicizing your cheese business, you might want to promote it to searchers in the local region or a location nearby where you know that blue cheese is popular.<\/span><\/p>\n

    2. Select keywords<\/span><\/h4>\n

    Paid search campaigns involve trading off between keywords that people are searching for with ones that aren\u2019t so popular that you\u2019re inundated with irrelevant traffic. Therefore, you need to balance popularity with search volume and the estimated cost of each term per click.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    For instance, the keyword \u2018cheese\u2019 might have a high search volume and a low bid cost. However, it\u2019s not very specific, meaning you’ll likely get a lot of irrelevant traffic. Meanwhile, \u2018award winning blue cheese\u2019 may cost more per click and have a lower search volume. But by being more specific\u2014when accompanied with the right ad\u2014it has the potential to drive higher, more targeted traffic to your website.<\/span><\/p>\n

    3. Select match type<\/span><\/h4>\n

    In paid search, \u2018match types\u2019 describe how closely a searcher\u2019s query needs to match your chosen keywords for your ad to appear. There are three main match types to choose between:<\/span><\/p>\n