Search engine Marketing

            

<.>Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.

<.>So, SEM is the marketing process with a goal of getting more visibility in search engines either by getting more free traffic (SEO) or paid traffic (Paid search advertising).

<.>Through paid search advertising you essentially buy advertising space in the search engine results. So instead of trying to rank higher and get the free traffic, you pay to appear in front of the searches.

  

1.The market for SEM.

<.>In 2007, U.S. advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on search engine marketing. In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S. search engine spend. As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing. Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider. It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency. As of October 2016, Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3%. Bing comes second with a market share of 4.36%, Yahoo comes third with a market share of 3.3%, and Chinese search engine Baidu is fourth globally with a share of about 0.68%.

                                             

2.When to use SEM

<.>Sooner or later you see that free SEO alone doesn't deliver the results you want. This feeling is especially strong after another update to the search algorithm, such as the Panda update, when your sites that used to rank well for your keywords get buried down the search results. At times like these, almost everybody will turn to PPC and paid search. However, even when the times aren't drastic, SEM is a good alternative. For instance, it works best in the following cases:

<.>For competitive keywords. Competitive keywords are too hard to conquer organically. If you have in mind how much time free SEO takes, for competitive keywords PPC is much cheaper than organic. Of course, if you start with Adwords and $3-4 dollar clicks, the costs will be huge but if you try competitive keywords on some of the Adwords alternatives first, most likely you will achieve better results for a fraction of the money you would spend on Adwords.

 

<.>When you need lots of traffic in a short period of time. Free SEO takes lots of time to see some effects. If you are under time constraints ‐ i.e. you need traffic on some occasion, you will hardly want to wait. For instance, if you sell Christmas stuff and your keywords are too competitive, you might end ranking well organically but it's no use to rank well for Christmas-related keywords in February, for example. Therefore, in November and December, you might want to drive huge traffic with PPC. If you want to start SEO at that time, it's just in time for next year's Christmas, so basically, in this case, PPC is your only alternative.

<.>For better exposure. Most experts think that it is Top 5, or even Top 3 for a particular keyword that matters. In other words, if you manage to make it to the 7th or 10th place, for example, this won't be as good as getting into the Top 5 and still, you will have invested a lot in free SEO. If you want to get better exposure, you need to consider paid listings. Paid listings for a given keyword are displayed above organic ones, so you are getting more exposure, but you also must have in mind that generally, users are more likely to click on organic results than on paid listings because they feel organic listings are more authentic.

<.>To find keywords that convert well. Paid SEM is a great source of keyword ideas for free SEO. After you launch a campaign, you will see that some of the competitive keywords you thought would do great for you, if you ranked well for them in Google, actually don't convert. It's quite logical that if a keyword is competitive, this doesn't necessarily mean it will convert well for you and it's best not to learn it the hard way.

<.>The wisest you can do is spend some dollars on a PPC campaign and see if this particular keyword converts well. If it does, then increase your free SEO efforts and your PPC budget for it.

3.Comparision with SEO

<.>SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO. SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO). SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done. A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time. SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

                                             

<.>In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition. Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and searches retargeting.

                                               

4.Keywords and Account Structure

<.>Another crucial aspect of keywords that are essential for the success of a search engine marketing campaign is account structure.

                                      

<.>Logical keyword grouping and account structure can help you achieve higher click-through rates, lower costs-per-click, and generally stronger overall performance, and keyword research can help you think about how to best structure your account.

                          

<.>AdWords and Bing Ads accounts should be structured in the following way for optimal results:

<.>Search engine marketing account structure

As you can see in the figure above, an optimally structured account is comprised of five distinct elements:

1.Ad campaigns

2.Ad groups

3.Keywords

4.Ad text

5.Landing pages

<.>Ad campaigns can, and should in many cases, focus on similar products or services. For example, if you run a hardware store, one ad campaign could focus exclusively on autumnal products such as leaf blowers, rakes, and leaf bags, whereas another might focus on power tools and so on.

                                         

<.>Ad groups allow for each campaign to be further subcategorized for relevance. In our hardware store example, one ad group could be for different types of rakes or varying models of leaf blowers. For the power tools campaign, one ad group might focus on power drills, while another could focus on circular saws. This level of organization might take slightly longer to set up initially, but the rewards – namely higher CTR at lower cost – make this effort worthwhile in the long run.