Digitalisering
21. marts 2021
What is SEM?
SEM is an abbreviation for “Search Engine Marketing”, and it is an umbrella term that covers all marketing efforts on search engines. In Danish, SEM would roughly translate to “search engine marketing”.
Correct use of the term SEM
The term SEM is often used as a synonym for “PPC“, but this is not sufficient, as PPC only covers the paid part of search engine marketing.
If a person is responsible for SEM, they are responsible for the organic part of search engine marketing (SEO), as well as the paid part (SEA or Search Engine Advertising – for example Google Ads).
In other words, SEM is not an activity in itself, but an overarching category for all marketing efforts that involve search engines.
It is called SEA – not PPC
Now, let us get one thing straight. The subcategories of SEM are SEO and SEA, which are the organic and paid parts of search engine marketing, respectively.
SEA is an abbreviation for Search Engine Advertising, so it is quite clear from the term what it covers – advertising on search engines.
SEA is the overarching category for several advertising options, including PPC (Google Ads and Bing Ads) and YouTube Ads.
If you think of SEM as SEO and PPC, then the strategy becomes one-dimensional in my view, because you only focus on being shown in the search results. In doing so, you overlook the visual channels that are part of SEA, such as YouTube and Pinterest. On these channels, you also have the opportunity to market yourself on search engines based on what people are searching for, but in a way that allows you to present yourself and your product visually.
More channels will strengthen your visibility and your brand, and PPC and SEO quickly become “yes, we are visible on Google”… very good – but what about all the other channels your customers use to find inspiration, knowledge, and products?
Why think in terms of SEM?
SEM is a strategic way of working with search engine marketing. Instead of having separate SEO and SEA efforts, you ensure that they support each other.
For example
- Your PPC efforts should be used to test new keywords, and then you can implement the keywords that perform well in your long-term SEO strategy.
- If you are paying for many WH-questions in PPC, you may consider creating top-funnel blog pages that answer them and can drive traffic organically (SEO).
- If you get a lot of traffic from search engines but it does not convert enough, you can work with retargeting efforts on YouTube, where you showcase features or describe the product/service/benefits in more detail.
- If you have a complex product and long customer journeys, you should have a blog universe that answers many of the questions customers have along the way in their decision-making process. You will get this traffic organically, as it is informational, and therefore ads may not be shown for the keywords at all. But when the customer searches for the purchase-intent keywords, you are ready with ads.
And much more…
The point is that if you think of SEM as the overarching framework, it is not simply about “is SEO performing?” or “are we getting enough out of Google Ads?”, but rather whether the overall effort is performing and supporting the company’s objectives.
