What Is SEM?
SEM stands for search engine marketing. While any marketing activity on search engines or platforms could be considered search engine marketing, the term particularly refers to paid advertising. When consumers search for information or products on a search engine like Google, the top results are ads or sponsored results. Brands and companies pay to place this advertising alongside search results. Search engines surface relevant ads when someone is looking for a specific item or has entered a broad search on a related topic.
You may already be familiar with paid search engine results page (SERP) ads but there are other forms of search marketing, including:
- Display ads: These appear on webpages within an advertising network, such as the Google Display Network. Advertisers reach consumers with display ads frequently seen beside website content. The ad can be directly related to the content on the page or showcase products or services relevant to the consumer’s search history.
- Shopping ads: Shopping ads are a variation of search ads that show product details, such as shipping information and pricing. These will usually appear at the top of SERPs for product-related searches.
- Video ads: Search engines and platforms like YouTube place sponsored results above other video content, similar to paid SERP ads. Consumers also see these ads before, during or after watching videos.
How Does SEM Work?
Search engine marketing works by surfacing ads related to someone’s search. Advertisers create ads and bid on the search terms they want their message to appear for. When someone searches for one of those keywords, it triggers an ad auction. Search engine technology decides which advertisers prevail on every search by weighing the campaign’s keyword bid as well as product relevancy and ad quality. If an ad is shown and a user clicks the sponsored content, the advertiser is charged based on the keyword bid amount.
Why Is SEM Important?
Search engine marketing is a great option for small businesses to meet a target audience or consumer who is actively looking for information online. A paid search campaign can be easier to implement and produce results more quickly than creating search engine optimization (SEO) content on your website. SEO requires a long-term content strategy to rank high in search results while paid search ads pay off faster.
Search engine marketing also often costs less than other forms of advertising, allowing small businesses to jump-start campaigns with lower upfront expenses. Businesses can start by bidding on a few keywords to drive traffic to their website or products from search engines. Or an e-commerce business may use search marketing on platforms like Amazon to elevate its products in search results, bringing in new customers.
Who Can Use SEM?
Anyone with a product to promote can use SEM by setting up an advertising account with search engines, such as Google Ads or Amazon Ads. Small businesses can create ad campaigns using the same tools as a large marketing team or agency.
SEM vs. SEO
Both SEO and SEM focus on where your product or service appears in search results but each takes a different approach to reach potential customers. SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, refers to optimizing a website to draw clicks and consumer interest. This is called organic traffic as SEO strategy doesn’t involve paid advertisement. Essentially, the goal of SEO is to move a website up in search engine results page rank. Businesses achieve this through a combination of keyword-focused site content, keeping a visitor on their website for longer and other tactics.
SEM stands for search engine marketing and typically refers to the use of paid advertising on search engine results pages. This approach helps a business stand out and potentially gain traffic even if their website doesn’t rank high in organic search results.
Both SEO and SEM are digital marketing strategies that fall under the online marketing umbrella. Both rely on conducting proper keyword research as the quality of leads and traffic volume depend on how well marketing content matches the user’s intent or search query.
Pros and Cons of SEM
Before spending money on search engine marketing, it’s important to consider your overall marketing strategy and business goals. To help you analyze your approach, we’ve compiled some of the most important pros and cons of SEM:
Pros
- Reach likely customers: Because results are connected to a user’s search intent, advertising puts your product or service in front of potential customers who are already interested in what you offer. Paid search marketing can hone in on users who are most likely to purchase from you, making it an effective way to reach your target market.
- See results faster: While it can take months or years to build a successful SEO content strategy, paid search ads are a quick way to get your business or products in a top position among search results. Even if you rank well for your top keywords in organic results, advertising can ensure your message shows up as rankings fluctuate.
- Target beyond keywords: Most platforms allow advertisers to specify a target audience and use filters to influence who sees an ad depending on the user’s location, their device and more.
Cons
- Costs: There may be competition for the most valuable keywords, which raises the overall cost of bidding and advertising. Most paid search advertising uses a pricing model called PPC or pay-per-click. This means the advertiser pays when someone clicks on their ad — regardless of whether they buy your product or service.
- Requires monitoring: You shouldn’t set and forget SEM campaigns. You’ll need to monitor key metrics like click-through rates (CTR) or conversion rates (CVR) to keep an eye on your ad performance. In some cases, you’ll need to frequently research new keywords to identify potential opportunities for fresh campaigns. It’s also important to set a monthly ad spend budget and monitor ongoing PPC costs.
Basics of Search Engine Marketing
To help you better understand how SEM works, let’s walk through the process of creating a campaign and the major components of a paid search ad, using Google Ads as an example.
Parts of an SEM Ad
Most paid search ads are designed to lead users to your homepage or a specific landing page on your website. Below we show you examples of text-based search ads and provide an explainer on the three basic components of an ad.
Headline: The text at the top of your search ad is typically limited to 30 characters.
Description: Advertisers can write up to 90 characters below the headline.
Display URL: This shows users the URL linked in your ad.
Paid search ads are most effective when directing users to a landing page as opposed to your site’s standard homepage. This refers to the part of your site where a user will “land” when they click your ad. Many businesses design landing pages tailored for a paid search campaign to increase the likelihood a user will take a specific action once on the business’s website.
How To Create an SEM Ad
Your exact ad campaign steps will differ depending on the platform or search engine you’re using. The steps below generally describe digital marketing basics to improve your search engine ad’s performance.
1. Structure Your Campaign
Each campaign consists of ad groups or sets of ads based on a particular theme. This allows you to cluster target keywords and bid strategically on groups of related keywords. For example, if you’re a clothing retailer, you might create an ad group for users interested in buying jeans separate from ads for children’s clothing.
2. Pick a Goal
To make the most of your ad spend and measure results, set the goal of your paid search campaign based on whether you want to drive sales, leads or website traffic. If your goal is to drive sales through advertising, you can measure conversions based on a user making a purchase. If you want to drive traffic to your site, you may want to focus on page views or clicks from the ad instead.
3. Choose Keywords
You’ll need to conduct keyword research to determine which search terms will be most effective for your campaign. Tools like Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner and Semrush can help. These tools help advertisers select relevant keywords based on factors like search volume and average CPC (cost per click).
4. Write Ad Copy
This is the text users will see when your ad appears. Focus on writing an engaging headline that will stand out among other content on the SERP. Text ads have character limits, so you’ll want to keep your message concise. Be sure to include a clear call to action (CTA), such as “Shop Now” or “Get Started” to prompt the user to engage with your campaign.
5. Set a Budget
On most platforms, you’ll set a monthly limit, which is the maximum you want to spend over a 30-day period on search advertisements. This is usually linked to an average daily budget as user search habits and click-throughs fluctuate. Your budget also determines your keyword bidding performance. If your budget is too low, you may not appear often in search results, for example.
Bidding on Keywords in SEM
Although costs will fluctuate by day, you’ll never exceed your monthly limit with paid search ads. However, your budget is only one of several factors that influence whether your ad is shown in search results. Major search engine platforms, like Google, utilize automatic keyword bidding, which determines the value and cost of displaying an ad triggered by search terms.
Using Google Ads as an example, here’s how ad rank algorithms tend to work. Your ad’s rank will be determined by a few key factors, including:
- Your bid on targeted keywords
- Your ad quality and landing page quality
- The context of a search query
- Competitor bids for the same keyword
Because keyword bidding rests on a range of factors, your ad may still appear even if competitors outbid you. If the search engine determines that your ad keywords are relevant to a person’s search, your campaign may display lower on the page at a lower PPC rate. Google ad quality scores are accompanied by tips to help you improve your performance. An ad’s quality score is calculated based on the expected click-through rate (CTR), relevance and quality of the landing page or URL linked.
While most advertising platforms make it easy to sign up and start creating ads, there are plenty of additional tools that can help you research and plan your SEM campaign. If you’re planning to run a Google Ads campaign, the company’s keyword planner tool and Google Trends are great for initial search terms research. Other subscription-based tools like Semrush offer more in-depth features and automatic tracking. Using SEO software can help you identify the right keywords for your campaign.
The Bottom Line
SEM strategy can be useful for a business of any size to reach target customers. Because paid ads display on search engine results pages, there’s a higher likelihood of a consumer engaging with your brand. This is due to your message connecting to a user’s interests and search queries.
With the right approach, paid search campaigns can be huge revenue drivers either by leading to conversions or promoting general brand awareness. SEM can generate leads and increase a business’s website traffic, which aids sales. Most businesses can easily start with search engine ad platforms like Google Ads or Microsoft Ads. E-commerce companies, on the other hand, might get a higher return on investment by advertising products through platforms like Amazon.
Search engine marketing can vary in terms of cost and outcome. Advertisers should invest time and effort upfront to create compelling campaigns and conduct proper keyword research. While it may require some patience before you see peak performance, paid search ads can be a quick way of building your brand’s awareness and market position. Compared to SEO content strategy, SEM works quicker for lead generation and sales.
Frequently Asked Questions About Search Engine Marketing
Marketing budgets can vary widely, especially for paid search advertising. Cost-per-click ads fluctuate both in terms of competition and overall demand. In some industries, optimal keywords command a much higher price at auction. There’s no set range for keyword bidding although you can research past performance by search terms before you set your average daily budget. It’s entirely possible to start small and increase your ad spend over time.
Google Ads refers to Google’s paid search advertising platform. SEM stands for search engine marketing and refers to all paid search efforts, not just Google advertising.
While SEM refers to search engine marketing specifically, it’s also possible to run paid ads on social media sites. This would fall under social media marketing, sometimes abbreviated as SMM.
An A/B marketing test helps determine which campaign, message or approach is most effective by experimenting with two variables. For example, a business could run two versions of an ad with two different images while keeping all other variables the same. Based on ad performance, a marketing team can determine which image was more effective at driving clicks, which could inform future ad campaigns.
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