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SEM (Search engine marketing)

What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)?

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, that is, marketing strategies for search engines

SEM is the set of tools, techniques and strategies that allow us to display a page in the first positions of the search results, but it will be necessary to make a payment according to the search engine conditions.

In other words, SEM consists of designing paid search engine ad campaigns that will be displayed next to the organic search results (URLs that didn’t paid for the spot, but have a good SEO strategy).

1. SEM: Bidding model

The SEM campaigns for creating ads on search engines, regardless of the search engine, were all based on a bidding model, where the cost per click or CPC is especially relevant. That is, the advertiser only pays each time an user clicks on the ad banner.

The CPC selected by the advertiser is not the only aspect to take into account so that the bid is decided towards one advertiser or another, although it has its weight, it is also true that in this type of bids the relevance of the content is also relevant, as well as its concordance with the keywords the user is searching for.

In other words, the price will not be the only rule for choosing the ad that will be displayed. Therefore, you should try to create relevant ads and optimize them as much as possible, because this way, the CPC of the SEM campaign would be lower and therefore it would be much more profitable.

2. Advantages of working with SEM

Below we are going to list the main advantages of applying a SEM strategy, one of the most important online marketing methods and with very good results, if you know how to work with it properly.

  • Drive traffic to our website. With this we are in a position to achieve our objectives (whatever we want in the SEM campaign), they can be: generate leads, sell products or services, improve brand recognition, promote an event, etc.
  • “Immediate” ranking. While SEO ranking requires time for a page to be displayed in the top search positions, a SEM campaign places your site directly in the top positions of the results from the moment you launch the campaign.
  • You can segment your visitors With SEO, you create content and wait for users to visit your site. With SEM, you can segment the visitors and select who will visit your pages, with several options, such as age, gender, interests, interactions, etc. SEM campaigns are more effective and allow us to reach the users we want to impact.
  • Immediate results. Generally, as soon as you start it up, you can begin to know if the SEM campaign is being profitable or not, real-time metrics are the key to it.
  • Many customization possibilities. SEM campaigns can be modified in real time, to adjust them by changing what is necessary: ​​segmentation, location, bids, budget, etc.
  • Flexible budget. The budget that is assigned to a SEM campaign can be changed at any time, either to increase or decrease it without the need for a minimum.

3. Most popular search engines for SEM

There is life beyond Google, so when it comes to SEM campaigns you should value more search engines, because they can also give us a good ROI. The three most popular solutions are:

  • Google Ads. It is the main player in many countries, since it monopolizes most of the searches and its use is essential.
  • Microsoft Advertising ó Bing Ads. It is the second by audience, offers very good segmentation options and is easy to use.
  • Yahoo Advertising ó Yahoo Ads. It is Yahoo’s proposal, which in some regions is not as popular as it used to be, but it certainly makes it easier for you to impact users in an excellent way.