What is SEM?

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. 

Search Engine Marketing(SEM) is a type of Internet marketing associated with the researching, submitting and positioning of a website within search engines to achieve maximum visibility and increase your share of paid and/or organic traffic referrals from search engines.

SEM involves things such as search engine optimization (SEO), keyword research, competitive analysis, paid listings and other search engine services that will increase search traffic to your site.

Contrast with SEO

SEM is a broader term than SEO. Where SEO aims to provide better organic search results, SEM helps you successfully target users of search engines via advertising (paid) links in search results in addition to organic search to send targeted traffic to your website.

SEO and SEM are not competing services. SEO is considered a subset of SEM services. Today, if you want to conduct business on the Internet you need to be visible in both organic and advertised links, which means you need both SEO and SEM.

Organic / Natural Listings: - Any good search engine, such as Google or Bing, has “editorial” or “organic or “natural” listings. These are listings that appear without anyone paying for them. They are provided as a core product of that search engine, in the same way that a newspaper has a core product of writing stories about topics it believes are of interest to its readers, rather than to its advertisers.

Paid Search / CPC / PPC Listings: - Search engines also have paid search ads, sometimes referred to as “CPC” or “PPC” listings. Those acronyms come from the way advertisers are charged for these ads, on a Cost-Per-Click or Pay-Per-Click basis. You pay, you get listed. When you stop paying, your listing goes away. Similar to newspapers, these ads typically appear alongside – but – separate from the editorial content. They are also not supposed to influence the editorial coverage.

SEM thus involves use of marketing principles, only in a way that the strategizing is around reaching out to your consumer via search listings.

When this term is used to describe an individual, it stands for “Search Engine Marketer” or one who performs SEM.

The Difference between SEM and SEO

The phrases SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) are similar and sometimes used interchangeably, SEO and SEM are different services.

SEO helps users find you based on search results. The results often vary by market, yet the competition is stiff. Unless you rank high so that your company is on the first or second page of the results, chances are most users will not always find you. There are usually no fees that you pay to the search engines for SEO.

With SEM, you place your advertisement –that you pay for– in the search engines above or next to the search results. Users placing a search will see your ad. SEM gives you more control over your advertising than SEO. Plus, SEM can send more targeted traffic to your website than just SEO.