Search Engine Marketing

Definition of Search Engine Marketing

SEM is a form of digital marketing strategy aimed at placing your business or customer to the top of the first page, if not the #1 place, of search engine results. The goal is to increase the amount of traffic to your website, which you can subsequently convert.

What Is Search Engine Marketing and How Does It Work?

All of the tools, approaches, and strategies that help optimise the visibility of websites and web pages in search engines like Google and other comparable sites are referred to as search engine marketing.

There are two basic methods for appearing at the top of a search result.

Google’s algorithm selects organic or natural results, which are normally displayed in the centre of the page. This algorithm evaluates the website’s relevancy (the quality of the material and how well it answers to a specific search) as well as its authority (how well it responds to a specific search) (links from other pages).
Paid results are likewise shown at the top of the page, but in a right-hand column. In contrast to organic results, the advertiser must pay a fee for each click on their ad. It is vital to use platforms such as Google Ads to purchase advertising space on search engines.
In theory, both types of results are covered by search engine marketing. In practise, however, strategies targeted at boosting organic positioning are classified as SEO, while techniques aimed at appearing among the sponsored results are classified as SEM. To prevent misunderstanding, we’ll refer to the latter as SEM or search engine marketing.

As a result, search engine marketing is a collection of tools, approaches, and strategies targeted at improving search engine advertising, achieving top rankings, lowering cost per click, and increasing conversions from these ads. Google Ads is the most well-known and extensively utilised SEM platform, although there are other options, such as Bing Ads.

Concepts in Search Engine Marketing

• Keywords are the terms that users type into search engines to prompt the display of a specific ad or search result. It doesn’t have to be a single word. In reality, using groupings of words or phrases like “purchase Nike sneakers” or “what is the greatest accounting software” is quite frequent.
• Concordance: When creating a Google Ads campaign, you’ll need to specify the degree of similarity between the keywords you’ve chosen and the terms individuals use when inputting a search query into a search engine. “Concordance” is the term for this. If you choose a broad match, for example, the ad will appear when a person searches for synonyms or terms that are similar to the keyword. If you choose precise match, the ad will only appear when a user types in a certain keyword into the search engine.
• Text ad: This is the most common sort of ad that appears in search engines, while there are now other options available, such as shopping advertisements. A title, a visible URL that can be changed, and a short description are commonly included in text ads.
• Ad group: In Google Ads, an ad group is a collection of ads with the same keywords. You’ll be able to see which ones are the most effective this way.
• In Google Ads, a campaign acts as a “umbrella” under which other ad groups with similar objectives are arranged. If you sell school supplies online, for example, one campaign would focus on textbooks, while another might focus on backpacks, and a third might focus on drawing materials.
• After clicking on an advertisement, the user will be sent to a landing page. This page must be optimised for conversions and push users to do specific actions in order to obtain effective search engine marketing results (like completing a form to download an ebook). To guarantee a positive user experience, the keywords, the displayed ad, and the landing page should all be aligned.
• These are the sites where your advertising display on the search network. The most usual location is at the top and right of the results page, although they can also be displayed on other websites like YouTube.
• The number of times an advertisement was shown is referred to as impressions.
• CTR: is the percentage of clicks on total impressions. Clicks: are the number of times an ad has been clicked on.
• The average cost per click is referred to as CPC.
• Google assigns a quality score to ads and keywords, which has an impact on your cost per click. This score is calculated by the ad’s relevance, the percentage of clicks received, and the landing page’s experience. The goal of this method is for higher-quality ads to appear higher in the search results and to have a lower cost per click.