What is SEM?

What is SEM?

• Digital Marketing
• December 03, 2018

Years back, when search engine optimization (SEO) was introduced for optimizing websites for better visibility, no one cared about anything else. No one ever thought there might be other modes that would help to increase the conversion rate or boost your website traffic.

But later, when search engine marketing (SEM) was introduced, we understood there are other ways of increasing traffic to our sites. Search engine marketing is something that emerges from an aspect that would help to take care of SEO and paid search as well. With time, as new changes evolved, people started considering SEM as an activity that was more of a paid search. Paid listings are usually a term used in conjunction with SEM. While search marketing could account for SEM and SEO in a collated form.

SEM activities also include paid search ads, pay-per-click, paid search advertising, cost per thousand impressions or CPM, cost per click (CPC).

Now the interesting part is many people think that since they do are using SEO, they do not need SEM or vice-versa.

But that does not work that way. Both are important to your business. Regardless of which one is prioritized, mark in mind that one is equally important as the other one.

To begin with, SEO helps to ensure that your site loads faster and quicker. Also, it helps to ensure that your site offers a seamless user experience. This is applicable to SEM. The same approach is applicable to SEM as well. If you do not apply this to SEM, all your paid efforts will go in vain. Then there is also Google’s quality check system. When Google places the SCORE from a quality check, people happen to see that when they click on a particular website. If the site is not user-friendly, you’re doomed when your user leaves because each click is chargeable. So it is advisable to focus on SEO first. Once you have done your SEO efforts, you will automatically attract more searches. This will help you to take care of SEM and then work on other keywords for better business.