What Is SEM?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to the general process of improving a website’s visibility and ranking on the search engines. Most of the time, it is referred to as simply “search marketing”.  SEM combines organic marketing with paid advertising to achieve optimum result.

SEM combines these two marketing strategies:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This is a web marketing strategy that generally tailors a website in such a way that it gains higher ranking on the Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs. This is a free strategy that you can do yourself or hire some SEO experts to do for you. SEO involves free and organic techniques both on-page and off-page. On page SEO includes strategies like optimizing website content, Meta information, and web design. Off page SEO includes strategies like link building and guest blog posting. SEO, when properly done, can help a website reach the top of search result and gain higher amount of traffic.

• Paid Search Advertising – There are many different forms of paid search advertising. The most popular is Pay Per Click (PPC). With this kind of paid search advertising, you pay for every click generated by your ads. Google AdWords is the most popular PPC advertising program. Paid search advertising makes a website visible on a prominent part of the search result faster than SEO.

Both SEO and paid search advertising are effective SEM strategies. They both help increase a website’s online visibility. Combining these two SEM strategies will help ensure better ranking for your website.

How Important Is SEM?

How important is it to engage in Search Engine Marketing? Is it worth your time and effort? A website needs traffic to survive online. Traffic is where you get your sales from. It is where you get your readers. Without traffic, a website is dead. It will be lost in the vast cyberspace. Whether your website is for business or personal expression, it certainly needs traffic.

The search engines are the top sources of traffic. When online users are searching for something, the first site that they go to is a search engine. This is a fact and if your website is nowhere to be found in the top search results, how can your potential market reach you?

The more people reach your website, the more chances for your website to have a higher conversion rate. When a site visitor finds something relevant in your website, they will stay and be converted. By conversion, it means that they either purchase something or sign up for a service.

SEM And Your Website

It cannot be denied that SEM is important; however, it is equally important that your website is optimized. It should have good quality content. It should have exactly what your target market is looking for. No matter how many site visitors a website receives, if there is nothing relevant in the website, visitors may leave your website quickly, losing any chance of potential conversion or sale. While you market your website on the search engines, make sure that you do on page SEO as well.

Effectively integrate Search Engine Marketing into your marketing campaign.