Skip to main content

What Is SEM and Paid Search Engine Marketing?

SEM is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. It is also called paid search and sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis.
SEM is short for “search engine marketing,” which once was used as an umbrella term to encompass both SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search activities. However, over time, many adopted the SEM acronym to refer solely to paid search.
Here at Search Engine Land, we generally use SEM and/or paid search to refer to paid listings, with the longer term of search marketing used to encompass both SEO and SEM.
Advice For Newbies
New to paid search ads? Don’t worry! Search Engine Land has the perfect series for you: PPC Academy. This special column began in 2010 and provides a different installment each week to bring you up to speed on paid search.
Another starting place is Google’s “Insider’s Guide To AdWords,” which you’ll find here in PDF format. AdWords is by many measures the most popular paid search platform used by search marketers, so the guide offers a useful introduction.
Of course, there’s much more to paid search than what’s covered in Google’s guide. You might consider some of the many print books out there with advice. Here’s our review of some newer books: A Roundup Of Best Search Advertising Books.
Advice At Search Engine Land
Here at Search Engine Land, we provide paid search advertising information and news in a variety of ways:
How To: Paid Search is our section that is devoted to practical tips and tactics about paid search ads.
Paid Search is Search Engine Land’s column that covers different paid search topics every week.
Search Ads Library Archives: This area of Search Engine Land provides a collection of all stories we’ve written on the topic of paid search. We also have subcategories, including:
  • Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting
  • Search Ads: Contextual
  • Search Ads: Domaining
  • Search Ads: General
  • Search Ads: Mobile Search
  • Search Ads: Pay Per Call
  • Search Ads: Video
In addition to covering paid search generally, Search Engine Land also has paid search areas specifically for each of the major search engines:
  • Google: AdWords
  • Microsoft: adCenter
  • Yahoo: Search Ads
Over on Digital Marketing Depot, there is an archive of PPC / Paid Search presentations available webcasts on demand, to anyone, for free.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Intel launches website to help gamers on integrated graphics get a boost in gaming performance

Integrated graphics solutions won’t get you far when it comes to gaming, but they’ve evolved to the point that you can actually get decent frame rates in relatively modern games with the right graphics settings. Looking to remove some of the guesswork for gamers on a budget, Intel has set up a site compiling the optimal settings for a bunch of titles based on your Intel IGP. To get started users must head to gameplay.intel.com and manually select their CPU. Intel will then show you a selection of games that are playable with your chip’s integrated graphics solution, or you can manually search for a particular title, after which you are presented with a screenshot of the in game optimizations and settings recommended by Intel. Intel doesn’t mention what kind of performance you can expect, nor what other hardware was used in their test system. But it’s still a good starting point for anyone wanting to find out what games are playable on a given IGP. While providing ga...

Is Google Testing The Penguin 4.0 Algorithm?

  I think we are on the verge of seeing Penguin 4.0 launch soon at Google - I think we are just about there. I know, I know, it's been a while. I have seen some chatter in the industry, on and off chatter, over the past 12 hours or so, that people are noticing some drastic changes with the Google search rankings on and off. It can be nothing, it can be a blip, it can be a different algorithm or it can be people making stuff up - but it also can be Google testing Penguin 4.0 to a limited set of searchers. The folks at WebmasterWorld over the past 12 hours or so have been asking about it: JS Harris, a senior Webmaster World member said: I have a small list of 10 distinct keywords for my site that I check when I wonder if a major update has occurred. The bottom few results on page one generally come and go but the top spots stay immortal. They stay there, that is, until there is a major update. I'm only ever mildly surprised when I see a would be con...

Google Earnings Report Shows New AdWords Ad Format Increased Click Through Rates

Google announced their Q2 earnings last night and beat estimates, although some are worried about mobile ads being an issue and Nikesh Arora leaving the company. But the earnings report showed a couple things advertisers here would be interested in, at least two things: (1) The new ad format used for AdWords ads in the search results, that blend in better, had a nice increase in click through rates and that lead to more money for Google despite lower CPC prices. Here are before and after on the ad formats: Old ad format: New ad format: (2) Google broke down where the paid clicks came from in more detail for the first time: Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 25% over the second quarter of 2013 and increased approximately 2% over the first quarter of 2014. Sites paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads we serve on Google owned and operated ...