What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Paid Search Advertising or Cost per Click (CPC), consists of placing ads for products or services on search engines and content sites across the internet. These ads are a small text link or image ad that link to the advertiser’s web content. The advertiser pays for click throughs from the ad.  Leading search engines include: Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

SEM is a measurable form of marketing and can be optimized based on testing and analysis of results.  SEM campaigns allow for a great deal of control and can be targeted for budgets, geographical and time restrictions.

How does Search Engine Marketing work?

When a searcher visits a search engine and enters a query - i.e. “plasma TVs” - the search engine will seek out search queries related to the selected keywords and display the results, which in this case may be links to web pages containing information about plasma TVs.

The search engine results page also displays paid ads that contain relevant keywords from the query. Paid search advertising results usually appear on the top or right side of the search engine results page.

SEM Quick Tips:

Set goals for your SEM campaign and choose success metrics to track accordingly.

Coordinate offline campaign efforts to better leverage the online SEM campaign.

Know your target audience and choose keywords based on how they will search for your product/services(s).

Expand into keyword phrases, two or three word phrases generally work best.

Group keywords into categories or AdGroups based on similar attributes to best identify results.

Write ads according to a single theme.

Have more than one text ad per ad group and search engine.

Include your campaign keyword terms.

Track and analyze results. Optimize throughout the campaign.

Test and refine; this applies to AdGroups, keywords and text ads.