What is SEM?
SEM, or search engine marketing, utilizes paid advertising using keywords to boost visibility for products or services within a browser. Think of the last time you searched for a product or service, did the top few results have AD next to the link? That’s SEM. SEM is a great way to boost visibility for your business, the higher you rank in a browser the more clicks to your site.
To use search engine marketing you bid on keywords that you think your audience will search for in a search engine. When a user types a particular search query, the advertisers who bid the highest for that keyword will get their ads displayed first.
SEM vs SEO?
The main difference between SEM and SEO is that SEO uses free organic strategies in order to rank higher in search engine results while SEM is paid for advertising. SEM should be used in conjunction with good SEO practices, you want your site to appear in both the organic search results and the paid Ad results. The more frequently your site appears within a browser’s search results page the more traffic you direct to your site.
5 Tips for Good SEM
- Choose specific keywords, while you may think that using broad terms or phrases will bring in more traffic, often choosing unique keywords can be more beneficial to your site. Be specific so your audience can find you.
- Review your keywords, monitor your SEM keywords, are they working? Are you making a return on your marketing investment? If not, it’s time to shake it up, change your keywords.
- Keep it on brand, What does your site look like? Does it reflect your brand and business? Make sure your images, fonts, language on your site reflects the brand you’re building.
- A/B test, test your Ads, You can use A/B testing to test different landing pages, wording, product pages. Which one gets more traffic? Monitor and measure results to boost clicks.
- Landing pages matter, You can pay for SEM and develop great SEO practices but if a user clicks on your site and your landing page is dated, chances are they won’t stick around for long. Update your landing page to keep it current and on brand.
If you need assistance with SEO or SEM please reach out to our team of professionals here at Brand Iron.
CEO | Brand Champion
Michael Doyle has been changing the face of Brand Marketing for over two decades. He built a tech-based advertising agency, DNA Advertising, into a multi-million dollar company. Michael sold the company as part of a national IPO in 2000. Michael founded Brand Iron in 2002 and has since lent his expertise to hundreds of other businesses in dozens of industries around the world.
