What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
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Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to marketing efforts aimed at increasing the number of visitors to your website through the search engines. It can also include conversion analysis or what percentage of visitors perform your desired action.
The position of your website in the search engine results for particular keywords is search engine visibility. There are two main methods for carrying out (SEM): Search Engine Optimization (SEO); and pay per click (PPC) advertising.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is aimed at producing free organic rankings. Pay per click (PPC) advertising such as Google Adwords require payment, but the level of your bid is not the only determining factor.
Organic rankings are affected by a number of factors. These can be broken into two categories; on site factors and off site factors. An example of on site factors would be the written content on the web page. An off site factor would be links coming to your website.
With pay per click advertising there are important factors that affect you listing. One important factor of course is you bid price. However, your click through rate and landing page relevancy also play key roles.
Learning both methods and their proper combination can provide the best search engine visibility.
The goal of SEM is to achieve maximum conversion of visitors into customers. It is not just the quantity of traffic that matters, but how targeted and convertible it is.
