Do you want to increase your company's visibility and gain more customers online? Then you should explore the world of SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, more commonly known as search engine marketing.

What does SEM mean?

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on reaching customers through search engines, particularly Google, the world's most used search engine.

With search engine marketing, potential customers can be reached online when they themselves are searching for a product or service, or information about it. This makes SEM an effective means of increasing a company's visibility on Google, boosting web traffic, and of course, accelerating sales.

All from local service providers to international online stores can benefit from SEM in the form of increased discoverability and customer base.

SEO + SEA = SEM

SEM or search engine marketing consists of two separate components, which are SEO or search engine optimization and SEA or search engine advertising. Together, SEO and SEA form SEM, which in practice is a set of methods to increase a company's visibility on Google.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO or search engine optimization is an important part of SEM. SEO improves a website's visibility on Google organically, meaning without advertising.

This is achieved by optimizing the company's homepage or online store to be user-friendly for the customer and compliant with search engine requirements, which generally means making technical, structural, and content changes to the websites.

Achieving visibility with SEO usually takes at least a few months, which is why it is a long-term digital marketing strategy.

However, the results of SEO are often more stable and long-lasting than those of SEA, as the website has "earned" its place among Google's top search results through a well-functioning website and high-quality, customer-beneficial content.

With properly executed optimization, a company can, over time, achieve continuous visibility in search engines and drive traffic to the website without allocating resources to advertising at any stage.

SEA (Search Engine Advertising)

In SEA, or search engine advertising, conversely, payment is made for ad space on Google's search results pages, allowing the company's ad to appear in the search results before the organic search results.

Advertising is done using the Google Ads tool.

SEA is also an important part of SEM, as it is a highly effective way to increase a company's online visibility and quickly attract more visitors to the website and/or online store.

Search engine advertising reaches a large number of customers significantly faster than search engine optimization. It also allows a company to be found on Google's first page with keywords for which the website would otherwise find it difficult, slow, or unlikely to achieve visibility solely by optimizing the site.

SEA can therefore outperform SEO when the targeted keyword has a massive amount of searches and competition in organic search results, or when the website is new.

With SEM, the right customers are reached at the right time.

When done correctly, SEM is an effective way to increase visibility on Google and reach potential customers at the right time, that is, when they are ready to buy or when they are searching for information about a product or service.

SEO, which is a long-term strategy, can be used to improve a company's visibility in search engines with targeted keywords and attract more visitors to the website without investing a cent in advertising.

With SEA, you get immediate visibility on Google by ranking before organic SEO results, and you pay the search engine for this.

To ensure your company gets the most out of SEM, you must choose the right keywords in both SEO and SEA, create attractive ads, target and optimize campaigns, and optimize your website for search engines and conversions.