Search Engine Marketing - SEM
Search engine marketing - Seriously high performance strategies for generating search traffic
What is Search Engine Marketing / SEM?
Search engine marketing seeks to promote your website by increasing its visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engine marketing includes activities such as search engine optimisation, paid placement (pay per click advertising), contextual advertising (e.g. Google AdSense) and paid inclusion (paying for standard listings). Fundamentally, search engine marketing is the practice of purchasing paid search listings. Search engine marketing is often referred to as search marketing or SEM.
Why use search engine marketing?
If your website consistently gets listed in the top 5 of all search engine results pages for all your preferred keywords then perhaps search engine marketing may not be so high on your agenda – if, however, you are like the rest of us then it should be top of your agenda. The reason is simple:
No other online advertising method gets you noticed so much, for so little, so quickly!
Search engine marketing – done right – can dramatically increase sales, brand awareness and provide a better understanding of your actual market.
Is it expensive? It can be, however there are many tips and tricks you can put into place to minimise expenditure and maximise your click through rates and return on investment. The beauty of pay per click advertising is that you can control the placement, keywords and more importantly the budget for your campaign on a daily basis. For more on pay per click advertising see our PPC page.
How does search engine marketing work?
Primarily it starts with developing the right strategy and defining which keywords you want to be listed under (and which ones you don’t!). With the strategy and keyword lists in place it is vital to create a variety of adverts specifically targeting each keyword – making them as relevant as possible. These adverts can then be listed as sponsored links on the search engine result pages (SERPs) for your chosen keyword/keyphrase. The cost of this placement depends on the popularity of the keyword.
Successful search engine marketing campaigns
In order to create really successful search engine marketing campaigns it is vital to blend the campaign with search engine optimisation (SEO) activities. If search engine marketing can be likened to sending out party invites – search engine optimisation is the setting up of a really good party!
The key to blending SEM and SEO is to make them both part of the same strategy and optimise each step of the impression to conversion process with the same keywords, content and message. It is vital that whatever prompted the searcher to click in the first place is followed up once they land on the returned page.
Serious search engine marketing strategies
Serious Ideas offer the full range of search engine marketing techniques and are greatly experienced at integrating these together to make the perfect search engine marketing strategy. Below are just some of the services we offer:
- Market research
- Keyword research + analysis
- Keyword effectiveness indexing
- Advert copywriting
- Pay per click advertising
- PPC management
- Landing page creation
- Search engine optimisation
- Etc…
Let us help you gain Serious visibility on the search engines.
Top Tip
Always drive your PPC adverts to a specifically optimised page on your website which delivers high impact related content. Don’t just rely on your homepage being able to deliver for all your keywords.
For more tips why not sign up to our free online marketing guide where every week or two you’ll receive fresh tips on how to promote yourself online.
