Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Optimization is a digital marketing strategy that websites use to gain a higher ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Discovering the Importance of Search Engine Marketing

Now, search engines like Google have introduced another method, Search Engine Marketing or SEM. Now what exactly is SEM and how does it affect traditional SEO methods?

Google Adwords, Bing Adwords and Yahoo Search Ads – these are examples of search engine marketing. In a nutshell, it refers to the paid marketing services that search engines provide to business owners. With these services, your business will be prioritized on relevant search results and will show up on top of the others along with other businesses that availed the service too.

The Difference Between SEM and normal PPC

Normal Pay Per Click providers will put your banner ads on sites that are relevant to your business so that viewers on those sites will also redirect to your page. In its most basic form, the advertisers (you) will pay the publishers (website owner) everytime a viewer clicks on the Ads. That is how they get their revenue and how you get your traffic.

For SEM, instead of a solitary website, your Ads will be shown on the SERPs for relevant search content. That means, when a Google user tries to search for something that’s relevant to your business niche, its more likely that your Banner Ad will show up as well.

Does SEO affect SEM?

Google Adwords recently released a video about their Adwords PPC Auctions feature. Through this system, it will be determined whose ads will be show on the search results.

SEO plays greatly in that, even if a business owner pays bigger than his competitor, that won’t give him/her immunity from being dropped off in the Adwords section of the SERP. It is true that in price alone, the highest bidder will get the topmost spot. However, if that isn’t paired up with quality content, great landing pages, and ad formats, even the highest bidder will get left behind by the others. All those factors will then be computed together and the result is the Ad Rank for that business.

Excluding the bid, the other components of the Adwords Auction are also components of SEO. That’s because Google will not care if the business owner has the highest bid or not. If the ads won’t lead back to a site with a navigable homepage and great content or if you didn’t apply a good Ad Format, it won’t be promoted to the others.

SEM Marketing Methods

Search Marketing Strategy

Before anything else, the firm will determine the necessary actions to be done first by asking you about the goals and objectives of your company. Then they will create the necessary SEM strategy, which could include SEO, PPC or both.

SEO

Mentioned above, SEO is a requirement for your SEM strategies. This will be one of the main factors in putting your business on top of what Google calls as the “Ad Rankings”. An SEM marketing company should also be knowledgeable in SEO and knows how to deliver it to your website as well.

Pay Per Click Management

Paid advertisements on search engines is easily one of the best marketing methods out there. And with proper management over your PPC marketing strategies, you can determine which keywords will work best for your business and use that to maximize PPC’s marketing potential.

READ ALSO: Search Engine Optimization for Local Business: A Guide

Content Strategy & Marketing

Banner ads on Google and other search engines will only drive traffic into your site. A good content marketing strategy will turn those traffic into leads and finally, into sales. The marketing company that you will be hiring should have content marketing experts as well – unless they are a company that only does things halfway.

Social Media Strategy

Creating content onsite is just one way of engaging your viewers. Another way is sharing your content throughout various social networking sites and interacting with your audience on those platforms. The marketing firm can help you with your social media campaigns without having to manage your accounts directly. This way, you can optimize your social marketing strategies to the fullest while retaining full control of your accounts and social profiles.

Data Analysis, Analytics and Reporting

To be able to create an effective marketing plan, you need to determine the statistics of your websites. These firms should be able to audit your website and provide a detailed data on the flow of traffic into your site. That will tell you which places to focus your marketing focus on.

Google and Their Users

Google will always want their users to be able to get the information they want the moment they use their service. That’s why it continues to implement new guidelines and algorithm updates – to make sure every website owner out there will be urged to make their sites even better if they want their target audience to notice them.

READ ALSO: Search Engine Optimization for Local Business: A Guide