What Is the Role of SEM in Digital Marketing?

SEM in Digital Marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a method of promotion and advertising to help companies’ content rank higher among search engine traffic. Like search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing helps companies improve the way content is ranked by search engines.

SEM helps companies bring their products and services to the attention of audiences through paid search engine advertising. SEM is an online marketing strategy in which organizations buy targeted ad space at the top of search engine result pages (SERP). This approach is different from SEO, which focuses on optimizing content for search engine algorithms so the content ranks high on the SERP.

Google, Bing and Yahoo are the most popular search engines. Each uses an auction process to determine where SEM ads rank on their SERP.

Why Is SEM Important?

SEM marking strategies are important for the following reasons:

• Digital marketing. Online purchases are one of the most popular ways customers shop. SEM campaigns attempt to expand the reach of digital marketing by identifying and using keywords that will attract the people most likely to be interested in the marketer’s product or service. Essentially, SEM campaigns target the most profitable keywords.
• High conversion rates. One of the biggest advantages of SEM marketing efforts is that they position an organization’s product right in front of customers when they are ready to make a purchase. For example, by purchasing an ad for a product keyword — “food processor,” for example — customers looking to buy a food processor online will see a company’s product ad first. With SEM, there is a good chance that the visitors clicking on an ad want to make a purchase, increasing an organization’s customer conversion rates and optimizing customers’ purchase intent.
• Speed. An SEM strategy often drives increased traffic more quickly than SEO, which can require long periods of time to analyze keywords and shape content to SEO research. SEM puts products and services right in front of customers immediately by placing them at the very top of SERPs.
• PPC model. The PPC model, which is similar to the cost per engagement model, is a cost-effective strategy that enables organizations to only pay when their ad is clicked. Organizations can also control exactly how much they spend by setting a maximum cost per click (CPC) and daily budget.
• Increased organic rankings and trust signals. Increased traffic to a page through paid ads ultimately increases overall traffic to a page and enhances trust signals ranked by Google. If a product performs well enough through an SEM campaign, it can rank high on a SERP organically, making SEM no longer necessary.
• Segmentation. Besides keywords, SEM campaigns can control what geographic location, language and online behavior to target, ensuring they only reach the users that might be interested in their product or services.
• Deep insight. Tools like Google Analytics give organizations highly detailed reports on the state and evolution of their SEM campaigns in real time. This gives useful insights into how SEM campaign ads are performing, which helps organizations analyze how they could improve their campaign.