What is actually “search engine marketing”?
Search engine marketing (SEM, for short) is a sub-area of online marketing and belongs to the discipline of inbound marketing. Search engine marketing includes all measures that contribute to a website or online shop receiving more website visitors via the corresponding search network.
Search engine marketing can be divided into two areas: search engine optimization (SEO, for short) and search engine advertising (SEA, for short). These sub-disciplines of search engine marketing can be applied across various search networks. The best-known network is undoubtedly Google. However, there are other vertical search engines such as Amazon (product search), YouTube (video search), Spotify (music search), Bing, or DuckDuckGo (alternative search engines).
In this blog post, we would like to show how broad the field of search engine marketing is and what options a company has in search engine marketing to get customer contacts via the search engines. Here we go!
SEM = SEO + SEA
Search engine marketing deals with visibility and reach. It is important for companies to take the top positions for relevant search queries. On the one hand, this can be done via paid search engine advertising, so-called PPC advertising, in which the advertiser pays a click price for each click. The positions are assigned via a bidding process based on the quality of the ad texts and the ad targets (i.e., the website target page).
In the Google search engine, for example, the SEA rankings are placed before the SEO rankings. This means that the paid search ads receive a larger share of the traffic via the search engine since the ads are obviously more relevant to the user.
On other search engines, the distribution looks different. At Amazon, the ad spaces are allocated at intervals, and at these intervals, there are always organic offers that are not paid for.
Search engine marketing and the algorithms
Positioning is done differently in the search engines. But all search engines pursue one goal at the same time: maximum relevance. Because only if the search engine delivers relevant results for the search queries will users continue to use the search engine in the future and thus ensure sales.
The search engine Google, for example, places the user experience at the center of the evaluation. Websites that help the user and best serve the user’s search intent have a higher chance of performing.
Factors such as loading times, visit duration, and interactions play a major role.
Search engine marketing of the future
A lot will happen in search engine marketing in the future. The classic on-screen presentation of choices will largely give way to voice responses. At this point, only one answer will be of interest: the most relevant. Especially when procuring everyday products and asking simple questions, voice search will largely replace the classic display search and thus also change user behavior in the long term.
Search engine marketing today
Search engine marketing today is limited to the areas of SEO and SEA, whereby both disciplines can be broken down into many tactical measures.
Relevance does not arise without reason. For this reason, companies should think about the search queries and provide appropriate content for them. At this point, too, creativity has a good opportunity to generate reach and replace paid advertising.
Answer the questions of the target group on a technically correct basis, and the rankings in the organic area will provide your website with sufficient visitors.
Conclusion on search engine marketing
Use targeted search engine marketing to attract potential customers or prospects to your website during the research phase. Use the purchase decision process for yourself with a good search engine ranking before your competitors do. We would be happy to support you in the area of SEO or as an AdWords agency in the area of SEA.
