Everything You Need to Know About Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The Internet is a wonderful thing isn’t it? More for the businesses who know how to use it to their benefit. The old traditional marketing that students still study in school is long dead. This article is a course in one of the new ways of marketing called Search Engine Marketing or SEM, SEM tools and everything to do with it.

 What is SEM?

 The first answer you get when you ask for information is ‘just Google it’. Search engines, especially Google, are so intricately woven into our lives that it’s impossible for us to imagine how we ever looked up information before. The same is a boon for digital marketing professionals. Search engine marketing is a method used to improve visibility to promote websites in a search engine result page (SERP). Some techniques include search engine optimization (SEO), paid placements (paid inclusions, contextual advertising etc.). Google’s search engine marketing is one of the marketing world’s leaders having a market share of 89.3%. It also happens to be its biggest source of profit. In 2012, US companies spent $32 billion on online and mobile marketing. Almost half of that was on paid search or SEM.

When a customer searches something in a search engine, he/she is telling you what they want. To deliver ads that address those needs is the job of an SEM campaign and comes under PPC or Pay per click SEM.

 Some tools and tips:

 Content Optimization: Before skipping to this, make sure you have identified the keywords relevant to your purpose. After that, you need to optimize your content for those keywords. This isn’t about randomly filling your content with keywords but about strategically placing them in the article title and Meta tags, both of which can be used to meet your conversion goals.

 User experience: This simply means whether you are addressing what the customer wants. Your website should be easy to locate and navigate. If this is not the case, your search rankings may fall. Google Ads is a tool commonly used for both, content optimization and targeting specific relevant audiences. 

 Regularly Updated Blog: A blog is one of the many tools of marketing online. Google Ads and Google Search, both use a Freshness algorithm that gives websites that update their content regularly higher SERPs. A blog is one of the easiest way to do this. All you need is a topic that is relevant and some typing. Much easier than making and editing a video. Updating your content regularly eventually results in better rankings and more leads.

 Press Release Distribution: Press releases are a way to build links and is a pervasively used in SEM campaigns. This helps build brand awareness. For a press release to be effective it has to have two things: a newsworthy story which people would be willing to read or listen to and having the story be relevant to the broader current affairs which are trending.

 Tips for PPC Search Engine Marketing:

 PPC or pay-per-click is an online advertising model where an advertiser pays a publisher, usually a PPC management company, when the ad is clicked. This is a widely used technique in SEM and though initially, you may have to budget your expenditure on it, once you’ve found your niche, there’s no going back. Some tips to do this effectively are:

?   The website itself must answer all the questions. It should be impactful, easy to navigate, well-designed and easy on the eye.

?   There must be thorough keyword research done to ensure that only the best keywords are used.

?   People searching for the keyword should find it on your website, else it’s a waste of effort and time.

?   Keyword selection should be strategic. The ones with moderate to high searched but low competition should be selected to get higher rankings.

?   A clear PPC budget with specific goals should be drawn up and communicated.