Types of Search Marketing

What is Search Marketing?

Search Marketing relates to any tactic that helps a brand get attention by appearing on search engine result pages(SERPs) . It includes efforts to get higher rankings and increase search visibility so you can drive more traffic to a website or specific webpages.

There are two major categories within search marketing:

• SEM, which uses PAID strategies to appear in search
• SEO, which uses ORGANIC strategies to appear in search

As, we have discussed the SEO in previous article (If you haven’t read go read it now).

So, now let’s discuss the SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a digital marketing strategy used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs). While the industry term once referred to both organic search activities such as Search Engine Optimization and paid, it now refers almost exclusively to paid search advertising.

Search engine marketing is also alternately referred to as paid search or pay per click (PPC).

In an increasingly competitive world, it has never been more important to advertise online. With an increase in the number of potential customers searching for products and services online, SEM has become a crucial Digital Marketing strategy for increasing your company’s reach. Everyone is trying to attract people towards their products or services. If you want to do the same, then SEM provides a very good way to attract these people towards your brand.

How SEM works?

Search engines use complicated algorithms to ensure the most relevant results are returned for each search, including location and other available information. In paid search advertising, sponsored ads appear at the top of and on the side of search engine results pages to gain more visibility and prominence than the organic results. These results are also come across with the helpful keywords that are being used by the audience to search for a particular information. Now let’s discuss how SEM campaign works and helps in marketing.

SEM networks are self-serve operations. Once a marketer selects a network, he or she can get a campaign up within a short period of time.

When setting up a campaign within an SEM network, the marketer is prompted to:

• Conduct keyword research and select a set of keywords related to their website or product;
• Select a geographic location for the ad to be displayed within;
• Create a text-based ad to display in the search results;
• Bid on a price they are willing to pay for each click on their ad.

How SEM Ad Campaigns are beneficial?

Google Ads currently offers the largest paid search network. It provides businesses with the opportunity to show their advertisements to targeted users in the search results and on other websites. The Yahoo Sponsored Search program, Bing Ads and other search engine ad programs to work similarly. Here are 7 advantages of using Search Engine Marketing:

• It’s flexible – Paid Advertising in Search Engines is a viable online marketing strategy which offers businesses a great amount of flexibility and control for their advertising campaigns. It can be used as a temporary, seasonal or long-term marketing strategy.
• It helps you stay Visible – It is said that seeing Search Ads makes people remember the brand more.These ads, in addition to increasing your traffic, clicks, and conversions, is also a very efficient way to tell consumers about your brand. When you advertise on search engines, your company name is clearly visible on the top of search results. This increases the number of people on your business website. Every time a user searches for the products or services you offer, your brand will always appear at the top than the other sites. When people keep seeing your name on the top, it increases the brand recall value.
• It targets consumers at the right time – The ads are visible to the customers when they are actively looking for the solutions you offer. They need your product or service, that is why they are searching for it online. When your business is in front of them at this time, there are high chances that they will engage with you and convert into sales.
• You Can Control Your Spending – Monthly budgets can be monitored closely and changed as per requirements. You can set how much you want to spend on these ads. You can change this ad spends any time, depending on your budget analysis.
• You Can Track Its Effectiveness – You can track how your ads perform. This enables you to judge how effective they are at attracting potential customers. For example, you can track the number of times people have taken an action after seeing your ad, such as clicking it, asking for directions or placing a phone call from it. This information is useful when you want to adjust your ad budget to improve the ad performance.
• It Helps You To Remarket Your Audience – If some of your potential customers have engaged with your brand but have not converted, they need some more incentive. This push can be provided by showing ads specifically to these people. This provides them with an opportunity to further engage with your business and make the decision to purchase your product or service. All this is possible only if you do SEM.
• It Gives Faster Results Than SEO – Every company needs to be visible to users online to get business. However, ranking high organically is a time consuming and a tedious task. Though proper optimization of the web pages and availing credibility from authorized domains through back linking can bring good results organically, it takes time. One of the most important benefits of search engine marketing is that it provides faster results as compared to SEO.

I hope this article is informative and helpful for you to understand about SEM and how it works and benefits in your business.