Search engine optimization is focused on improving your site to increase your organic search engine ranking. SEO basically revolves around strategically placing keywords on the site, building links, building site authority and using metadata that can be crawled by Google. SEM marketing positions you in “Ad” areas, while SEO helps you rank well organically.
With search engine marketing, on the other hand, you pay to play on the SERPs. Essentially, you pay to show your ads to users who are actively searching for the keywords you are targeting. You don’t need a high site authority to appear on the first page of Google when you want to pay for it.
Most search engines have an advertising platform for search engine marketing. The most well-known (and effective) platform to use is Google Ads. Bing Ads and Yahoo Search Ads are also SEM platforms you can use.
While all SEM platforms use the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model, it is important to note that not all PPCs are SEM.
For example, Facebook Ads and other social media advertising platforms are pay-per-click platforms that do not fall under the SEM category. Instead of showing your ads to people looking for similar content, like search ads, social media sites promote your product to people who just browse their own feeds. These are two very, very different types of online advertising.
Keywords are everything for SEM as they are for SEO. When you run SEM campaigns, you choose keywords that determine which ads appear on which searches.
Creating Google Ads (formerly AdWords) ads can be extremely frustrating because you have to fit all your ad text into such a small space.
For example, you can use our creative solutions to stand out from the nine other advertisers you share real estate with (or at least four competitors if you’re on mobile).