What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

The commonly used term used to describe paid marketing, known as search engine marketing is used to promote personal websites. Such search engines consist of but are not limited to google and bing. This in fact used to be a strategy used for the referral of all the different types of  search optimization methods used, both paid and unpaid, but recently its become specialized and simply refer to pay-per-click campaigns and other types of search engine optimization one pays for. If you look bellow there are several different methods listed. 

PPC Advertising

The term, PPC Advertising is a simple method that stands for pay per click.  This is basically the method of putting ads on search engine results page to lure the customers into clicking them with appealing content. They are typically on the right sidebar, but depending on the search engine platform this may vary. PPC works on a bidding system. The highest bidding individual for certain keywords is then placed at the top of the search bar. 

Pay-Per-Call

Similar to what was previously mentioned, there is another type of advertising that should be taken under consideration, because it uses the same initials as per-per-click. It is known as pay-per-call. It isn't used as much yet but how it works is that you receive a phone call for an advertisement through phone. This is a form of mobile advertising that will most likely get used more as time to come. 

CPM

CPM, another form of search engine marketing is also highly used. This stands for cost-per-thousand impressions. An impression is when your ad is being displayed by a computer. Banner ads, sidebar ads, and any CPM type of advertisement is based upon 1000 impressions. For the purpose of doing things ahead of time, it is important to determine how many times you want the ad to be presented (in multiples of 1,000) and then launch. Of course there is a downside which is that there will be money invested into the ads whether or not you gain from this. 

SEM & SEO

As time goes on the future of search engine marketing will surely rise as trending webspace pick up traffic and increase in larger number of advertisers fight for the limited quantity of space that is available. This is where the SEM combines with your regular SEO comes into good use and can be used to become successful. In the end it all comes down to the correct context related advertisements to attract the necessary audience, no matter if you are using PPC ads or CPM ads, visual or text. Advertisements need to be at peak aesthetic performance to know where or not it is worth the cost you are investing. 

- Sherwin Iravani, Content Marketer @ Cruzado Marketing