Search engine marketing, also called SEM, is a relatively new form of Internet advertising that makes use of the natural algorithms of search engines to promote websites. These search engine marketing campaigns rely on highly targeted keyword phrases that are meant to be well represented in searches made by users of search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. This ensures that your website appears near the top of search results generated by these search engines. SEM is not directly monetized. However, it can provide a strong link building campaign, and as such it can be beneficial in generating traffic for your website. At this point, however, the benefits of SEM become apparent.
SEM includes the use of paid advertisements and Pay Per Click (PPC) in addition to organic search engine optimization, which is the process of optimizing your web pages based on original and unique keyword input. Paid ads from online advertising companies such as Google AdWords, Yahoo’s AdSense, Microsoft’s Ad Center, and AOL are commonly used to support the search engine marketing campaigns of online business owners. Pay Per Click ads are ads that display right when a user searches for a keyword containing those of these paid advertising companies.
A user, after having performed a search on a particular search engine marketing company, will typically have the option of clicking on one of the advertisements that he or she has been shown. This means that these advertisements are displayed at the very top of search engine lists (at the very top of the results page). When a user clicks on any of these ads, you will pay a certain amount of money (either a flat fee or a percentage of the total space used) to the advertiser. When you implement search engine marketing strategies, you must make sure that you choose ads from a reputable company that can guarantee a high quality score so that your ads generate a maximum bid.