Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to a set of tools, techniques, and strategies that optimizes the visibility of websites within the search engines. In simple words, it is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on the paid promotion of websites. It mainly uses paid search ads like Google Ads, Bing ads, Yahoo ads, and so on. However, SEM may use all other marketing strategies, either paid or free, whichever helps the website to generate better results.
This is one of the great advantages of using SEM for business. SEM largely depends on paid search ads and its budget. In other words, it largely uses the PPC form of advertising. By using PPC ads, you can easily target a wider audience across the globe. With respect to the size of your business, you can determine the amount of money you want to spend on keyword research and ad campaigns. Using the keywords properly and creating relevant ad campaigns with these keywords can attract internet users to your ads. Your ads will appear in front of the audience whenever there is a related search query. Thus, SEM can help to expand your online reach.
Yes, SEM can really lower the bounce rates. Whether you believe it or not, the right SEM techniques or strategies can significantly lower your bounce rates. This means it will make sure that your web page visitors spend more time on your site. Making the visitors spend more time on your web pages will lower your bounce rate. This will help in boosting your website ranking on the search result pages. If you fail to retain visitors' attention, they will just abandon your site and go to your competitors. This is something you don't want to happen as a business owner, right?
Yes, SEM helps in establishing the brand in the market. As an extended aspect of online marketing, SEM helps in branding. If you compare it with traditional marketing, SEM helps to excite online prospects with good service and great deals. This helps in building the brand name, gaining more customers, and even loyal customers. High brand value can make your brand website more visible on the search engine result pages. Moreover, it will help you generate more website traffic and have a better conversion rate.
Surely, it is one of the greatest advantages of using SEM whether you have a small or large business. For small enterprises, SEM can work greatly to target the local searches. Over 70 percent of internet users look for local services and goods. If you also want to target the local people, SEM can help you do that easily.
Well, this is a great disadvantage of using SEM. Since SEM is targeted marketing which means marketer needs to spend a lot of time in the formulation of the right tactics. Once the marketer drafted the final blueprint then it needs to take care of daily updates so that its search engine ranking doesn’t fall down. So in simple words, all businesses and firms do not have that much time to spend on this planning.
As mentioned above, SEM can be really time-consuming. This forces many brands to outsource the task of SEM. It means you need tons of cash to spend on outsourcing so as to get fruitful results. In some cases, SEM services don't live up to the expectations and your resources can get exhausted or overused. This might lead you to have a negative impact on your business, losing a lot of money. It means SEM isn't getting to benefit small and medium-sized businesses. They might not have enough funds to spend on this marketing strategy.
Search Engine Marketing has become popular and there are many companies that are using this strategy. They are using this strategy to compete for equivalent keywords. This competition causes costs to rise for using the keywords. That's why it becomes difficult to urge an honest ROI.
As different from other marketing solutions like native advertising, SEM allows invasion to the user's space with content that they are not looking for. For instance, if the user you're targeting has a billboard blocker, they'll not see your ads.