Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing or SEM has the same goal as SEO: be found where your potential customer is already looking for something you offer. SEM is a much more overt approach to making yourself findable on the web. You pay for listings or rankings for certain keywords. The advantage is that often paid campaigns help raise your natural page ranking; additionally, the budget can be tailored to specific needs or concerns and can be adjusted in real time.

To have a successful SEM campaign, a solid optimization foundation should already be in place. Once the organic methods of “being found” are covered, paid advertising within a search engine is a great way to kickstart the process of driving traffic to your website. For more information on building a better SEO for your website click here.

There are several avenues in which to advertise through these channels. All are very effective, but vary depending on your industry and goals.

Contextual Advertising

With this direct type of SEM, your ads are placed alongside content that is relevant to your chosen keywords These ads can appear in conjunction with search engine results or in prevalent areas on websites. For example, if you had a company that sold memorabilia, your ads would appear beside sports stories or on collector blogs, increasing the chances of someone clicking through to your website. This brings traffic back to your site because you are targeting people with an already established interest in your product, service, or event.

The most popular channel to advertise through is Google AdWords, which is distributed across a large (and growing) Google Network, but a host of other ad generators and ad servers are available based on goals, budget, and target market.

Demographic Placement

While your ads are placed across the internet, they may not be targeted to only appear on sites that match your keywords. Instead, ads are distributed to a certain demographic that research would suggest would be interested in your product or service. This can be done through ad servers (like Google AdWords) or more specific ad buying company. A more targeted demographic approach might include in-depth research and targeted selection of blogs or websites from which to purchase ad space.

Paid Inclusion

This is the simplest form of SEM, but still extremely effective . With this type of advertising, your company will appear as a sponsored listing in a search engine results list. Though they are highlighted as such, you will appear at the top of any search list relating to your targeted keywords. This makes you highly visible and highly findable. It also helps for users to see you and your company as industry leaders in that area because you are the easiest to find and the first one they see. While natural ranking is what any SEO strategy should be aimed towards, paid listings can help drive traffic to improve your natural rankings for targeted keywords.

Contact Us today to find out more about advertising on the most popular sites online, search engines.