SEM Definition and Meaning
What is SEM?
Search engine marketing is an effective way to grow your business and gain new insights about competitive marketplaces. Millions of companies looking for new customers or seeking increased traffic are trying different ways such as online advertising, and search engine marketing has become the most preferred way of marketing products / services for businesses.
Organic SEO takes a lot of time, but SEM (search engine marketing, see abbreviationfinder for more meanings) can help you increase your ranking and climb the ladder with significantly less time.
Let us now understand SEM in more detail and how it can benefit you and your company.
What is SEM?
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. It is a practice to promote companies using paid ads that appear on search engine results. Marketers bid on Google or Bing keywords to target specific products or services and show their ads on the selected search phrases.
SEM is also referred to as “Pay per Click” and is available in various formats. Some are small, text-based ads, and the majority are product list ads that are more visual. The product-based ads allow consumers to look at prices and reviews.
The best thing about SEM is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to place their ads directly in front of potential customers who are ready to make the purchase. That is why search engine marketing is a powerful way to grow your business and make it appear for relevant phrases.
SEM platforms – Google Ads and Bing Ads
A search engine platform is a search engine where a company can place ads that appear when someone performs a search. The most widely used SEM platforms are Google and Bing where Google Ads accounts for about 90% of all searches.
- Google Ads – it is often used by SEM platforms. There are billions of Google searches performed daily. It helps you get in between the wider audience.
- Bing Ads – It is said that there are four million searchers that Google cannot reach. Bing Ads ads are also displayed on sites such as Yahoo and MSN.
Keywords & Keywords – An important aspect of SEM
Keywords serve as the primary stand for SEM as users search using keywords and phrases to find a service / product / information on the web. We can say that the keywords are the very foundation of SEM and act as an advertising strategy there.
Types of SEM Keywords
SEM Keywords are phrases used to target search engine marketing campaigns. When you search for these keywords, they see your ads.
- Broad Match – It contains similar phrases, singular or plural forms, misspellings or synonyms for the target term. Means that you use a search phrase or keyword without additions to the phrase.
- Phrase Matching – It targets the exact phase plus every phrase added to a word. It is a phrase with several words within “”.
- Exact Matching Keywords – Ads should appear only for the exact specific phrase. This excludes misspellings, singular, plural forms, moods, abbreviations, ordered words, or closely related words with the same intent.
- Negative Keywords – This excludes terms you don’t want to target or show your ads for. These search phrases are the variations of broad match, phrase match and exact match search phrases that you do not want to use in the campaign. The terms may be semantically related to search phrases but not associated with the search interests of the ad group and campaign.
SEM extensions
SEM supplements mimic organic results, but they also provide the opportunity to view additional information. Typically, the headers of a standard ad include two to three headlines, descriptions, and website URLs.
- SiteLink extensions
- exclamation Additions
- call Extensions
- message inquiries
- Location Extensions
- Advertiser ratings
- Surcharge
- Structured extensions
SEM focus
How you choose to target your SEM advertising tells the search engine when and where your ads should appear. The targeting indicates additional factors for the ads such as:
- Location targeting – It sets ads to only show people with a specific zip code or geographic location.
- Scheduling time – Scheduling allows you to select a schedule for the specific time period when your ads will appear such as certain times of day or specific days of a week.
- Demographic targeting – This is based on demographic categories such as gender and age. This type of orientation identifies age and gender.
- Device targeting – It sets the ad on specific devices such as phones, desktops, mobile.
How does the auction work within SEM?
The auction where bidding takes place for advertising is based on each search phrase. There are different prices in the sale. Whoever has the highest budget in an auction and has all the factors will be at the top. Not only is the price important, but there are several other factors as well. It is said that a large budget is advantageous, especially when you are targeting highly competitive keywords with high search volume.
How do ad auctions work?
If you are ready to invest in SEM, you must enter your bid in Google Ads or Microsoft Bing. To participate in the auction, you need to research which keywords are related to your product / service to bid on and decide how much you are willing to spend on that specific keyword. When Google finds your keywords that are relevant when someone searches on Google, you are in an auction. Not every ad is shown for the keyword. Some keywords do not have commercial content and are just a standard issue where the ads do not appear.
Two main factors that determine ad auction are your highest bid, your ad quality score.
Quality Score is a total estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. A Quality Score is then reported on a scale of 1-10 found in the keyword column status in the Google Ads account. The more relevant ads give a user more chances to click on the Ad. The quality result takes into account all the factors.
Knowing SEM gives you great benefits in making the new advertising strategies that help you generate potential customers and relevant traffic to your business.
