One of the most used and effective disciplines is search engine marketing or SEM positioning, which manages to boost positioning and promotion in search engines like Google through pay-per-click campaigns and management of sponsored links
In addition to search engine positioning (SEO), the Internet also offers us other techniques to help our website and eCommerce improve its visibility, with the goal of attracting more users and converting visits into customers. Segmentation, immediacy and profitability to be there when your customers need you.
What is SEM?
SEM is the abbreviation of an English heading, Search Engine Marketing. It is an online marketing system that aims to promote websites by increasing visibility in search engines on their results pages.
The primary mission of SEM positioning is to attract new customers and generate quality traffic to the website. It is based on pay-per-click positioning through the insertion of sponsored ads in the main Internet search engines, paying only when the user clicks on an ad and lands on the client's website. Currently, Google Ads is the reference platform for SEM marketing campaigns.
As we will see later in more depth, SEM positioning campaigns allow both large and especially small and medium-sized companies to achieve visibility on the Internet immediately with a small investment, making their products and services known to a wide audience. In this way, SEM search engine marketing compared to advertising in traditional media – much more expensive –, makes any company regardless of its turnover volume able to be within reach of its potential customers when they need it.
SEM and SEO as complementary tools
If it is about wanting to bring more audience to a company website or an online store, it is essential to carry out a good digital marketing strategy, in which the search for optimal web positioning on the first pages of search engines is unavoidable. To do this, we use two techniques: SEM and SEO positioning. Beyond considering them as independent compartments, treated together within our search engine positioning strategy we will manage to give more impulse to our website. Now more than ever, unity makes strength! But, do we know what benefits natural positioning (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) provide? We will offer you the key clues below. Stay tuned.
Advantages and characteristics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Regarding SEO, we can highlight the following advantages and characteristics:
- It is a profitable technique that can bear fruit, but always in the long term.
- Use of keywords with which we can drive the user's search to the area of business that best suits our interests. To achieve this, it is essential to make a good keyword study.
- Search engines to position websites have parameters that reward content with value, and not corporate ones. In writing such content, it is essential to work the appropriate keywords to make that content have more reach, favoring the positioning of our website.
- Search engines regularly return to the website in search of new content, which means that you can monetize the strategy progressively, depending on the results you are achieving.
- SEO web positioning is a long-distance race that requires constant work of optimization and analysis and measurement of the results, not only to improve the existing but to find new opportunities.
Details and advantages of online advertising through SEM
- SEM is a tool that works through pay-per-click campaigns (PPC): The owner of a website only pays when a user clicks on their ad and goes to the page.
- It provides a high short-term profitability. The website positions itself in the first places from the very first moment. As soon as the campaign is activated, the ads appear prominently.
- The power of segmentation is one of the great advantages of SEM positioning campaigns. For example, we can achieve that our ads are only visible in the geographic area where our company operates, thus gaining in effectiveness.
- The budget of your Google Ads campaign is decided by you alone, investing what you need or expanding it whenever you wish.
- Languages, location, keywords, reach, contact details... This type of PPC campaign allows you a personalized configuration tailored to the needs of your business.
- At all times you will know the return on your investment (ROI), which keywords bring you more sales, which ads are working better, etc.
- That analysis and data recording will allow you to make adjustments and optimize the SEM positioning campaign progressively to obtain the best possible results.
Therefore, it is clear that SEO is effective in the long run, a long-distance race, a type of positioning strategy designed to obtain long-term results. On the other hand, if you want to achieve visits quickly, the SEM campaign is the ideal one. However, from Elevam Community, as specialists in SEM and SEO positioning, we believe that the best choice is to invest in both strategies to achieve an optimal search engine marketing strategy, as they complement each other; SEO allows us to pay less money for the pay-per-click of SEM. When a business begins to have presence on the Net, it must carry out an efficient SEO strategy and, while it begins to bear fruit, invest in SEM positioning. The latter will give results from the very first moment, so that, with time and thanks to SEO, the investment in SEM can be gradually reduced.
Benefits provided by SEM with Google Ads
Thanks to Google Ads, any business can start a SEM campaign in a few steps, and can begin to enjoy results soon. More than 60% of Ads campaigns are carried out in a few hours. Likewise, this tool allows a wide range of configurations, such as who should visit us, at what time, how much we will pay for each click, modify the content of the sponsored link and, the fundamental one, for what type of searches our ad will appear.
So, with Ads advertising, we channel potential customer traffic, that is, we can get the visits to be effective, of quality and fast, since it is aimed at people who can perfectly be potential customers. Users search for a solution in the search engine and the specific ad relating to that search appears, so it ensures, practically, that many visit the page and make some purchase.
SEO, for its part, can generate a good number of visits in the long term, but, in comparison, they do not guarantee, in such a way, that they are productive and quality visits. Therefore, the Google Ads tool is much more direct and immediate.
Google Ads plans are within reach of micro, small and medium-sized companies
It should be noted that Google Ads advertising and marketing plans are an appropriate solution to help promote small and medium-sized businesses, with the purpose of achieving more sales of their services or products in a short period of time. And it is that all the advertising options it provides are designed to adapt to the needs and budget of the requesting company.
Finally, it should be emphasized that the ads included in these Ads campaigns do not only appear in the search results on Google. The Google Ads platform offers users not only campaigns for Search Network, but also Display Network (remarketing) and YouTube Ads. In future articles we will delve into all the possibilities that the pay-per-click campaigns that Google Ads puts within our reach.
Bet on SEM and start selling!
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If you want to apply this in your company with a team that combines technical SEO, GEO and paid acquisition measured against the income statement, request a no-commitment audit. You can also check real case studies or read the public GEO baselines that Elevam Labs publishes every quarter.
