What is Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a group of tactics that boost rankings in search engines like Google. Even in this evolving world of social media marketing, usually over 70% of a website’s traffic is from search engines, and of those search engine rankings, a full 40% goes to the first ranking alone. That means at least 30% of all your traffic comes from successfully achieving the 1st place ranking on search engines.

Consider: how many times have you gone to a search engine and moved past the first page? 1 out of ten times? One out of 50 times? This should give you an idea of how competitive rankings can be. If your website does not place within the first page of critical keywords, you’re losing traffic, probably half of all traffic to your website.

As stated before, SEM is an umbrella term for many tactics, including SEO, link building, landing page optimization, and the building of relevant content for a website. All these tactics work together to produce rankings; employing one tactic is likely not to work.

A careful distinction should be made between Internet marketing, search engine optimization, and search engine marketing, as often these words are used interchangeably. We describe each difference below.

SEM is a subset of organic marketing, which is a subset of Internet marketing.

How does SEM and Internet marketing differ?

Internet marketing is a very broad range of tactics, whereas SEM is just one Internet marketing tactic:

How does SEM and SEO differ?

SEO is a sub-tactic of SEM that only includes organic rankings, whereas SEM includes both organic and paid rankings.

How do you use it? (The Application)

SEM is used within the pages of your website for organic search marketing, and within a program like Google Analytics for paid search (PPC).

Pitfalls of SEM

Like any marketing, it can be abused, or focused upon so intently to the detriment of all else.

• SEO pitfalls: Since organic SEO directly manipulates website content, there is a tendency to abuse the quality and quantity of keywords, called keyword stuffing. This tactic is a dangerous game to play. Best write convincingly with proper keyword terminology inserted and let search engines take their course.
• Paid Search pitfalls: PPC marketing is indeed hotly debated as to relevance and value. PPC campaigns can spiral out of control in terms of cost, especially if crafted poorly; if they are too specific, they bring in no visitors, if too broad, the costs can be enormous. And remember, paid advertising is not a lasting effect – once turned off, your rankings go away.
• Focusing exclusively on SEM: SEM and SEO are probably the most well-known tactics in the Internet marketing arsenal, therefore, they often get more ‘airtime’ than other tactics. Remember, however, tactics like social media marketing and analytics/metrics are just as important.

How We Help

We have 9 years of running integrated SEM and Internet marketing campaigns, with an average of 5:1 ROI for over 70 clients. Contact us for a free consultation!

What To Do Next

Read our subsections of SEM to the right.