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                                                                Search Engine Marketing for Beginners

SEM Introduction:

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the marketing of a website by purchasing advertisements on search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. SEM is used for the promotion of websites to increase the visibility in the search results and to increase the traffic of users on the website. SEM targets websites using keywords used for searching purposes by the users. This Search engine marketing course will teach you the basics of how search engines work and how to use them effectively to market your business.

SEM is a part of digital marketing in which the marketing of websites is done by purchasing advertisements on search engines. Let us see what search engines mean briefly:

The search engines use algorithms that give the results which are most relevant according to the keywords entered by the users in the input field of the search engine. The algorithm should be efficient such that it always gives the right result. 

Paid search engine marketing strategies target the audience by showing the advertisement in their search results. The ads which are shown in SERPs after the organic listings will help the organization increase the visibility of its website, blog pages, profile pages, etc.

Terms related to SEM for Beginners: 

1. Network of advertising: A network means a group of websites where advertisers can place their ads. The revenue which is generated by the advertisements that are appeared on the websites is shared with the advertising networks.

2. CTR (Click-through rate): It simply means the number of times users click on your ads through the websites which are displaying your ad. CTR is calculated by dividing the total clicks that a user will do on your ads by the total number of ads shown on that website.

3. Impression of your ads: Your ad impression is the number of times your ad got displayed on the website. It depends on the keywords used in SEM for targeting the customers who will search for your keyword-related phrases in the search engine.

4. The score of quality: It is a score that is given to a website by calculating the CTR of the website. The higher the quality score of a website, the lesser you can pay other advertisers for your ads to get displayed on the website.

5. Campaign: Campaign simply means the whole advertising group which shares the idea or the theme for advertisement messages. These messages define the main objective of the advertisements.

Steps for using SEM: 

1. Choose an effective strategy for your website marketing.

2. Pick the right keywords that match the content of your website.

3. Optimize the content on your website to appear in the organic search results.

4. Link popular websites in your own website such that your website will be targeted by those websites.

5. Finalize your website for indexing in the search results.

6. Take help from Marketing ads for your website.

7. Analyze results of the marketing and see if any changes are required or not.

Working of SEM:

SEM works on the following four steps:

Step-1: Control of the campaign: It is the foremost task for advertising companies to create an ad campaign for your advertisement. It is essential to target the object to get the highest targeting of users on the website through the ad.

Step-2: Bidding of keywords: After the campaign, the advertising companies start bidding for the keywords that will work for your target audience or users. You need to choose the right keyword for your website and you have to bid the most useful keyword against your competitor bidders to get the keyword.

Step-3: Ads creation: After the bidding procedure, they start creating your ads by using the keywords you chose. In this step, the ads for your website are created and set up on the landing pages.

Step-4: Tracking and Optimizing your ads: In the last step, you have to track and monitor your ads like the duration and the number of times your ads get displayed on the landing page, and how many times the users clicked on the website.

There are two SEM platforms for search engines where your ads can be displayed. The most used Platforms for SEM are Google and Bing:

• Google Ads: You may have seen an ad and when you try to remove the ad, it may have shown like this “why google ads?” or something like this. Those ads are displayed by google ads by using the search engine marketing strategy.

• Bing Ads: Bing users are more than 3 million. Bing serves ads for the search engines Yahoo and MSN. Bing displays the ads to those users who are not using Google. Bing didn’t work for websites that are on Google.

Difference between SEO and SEM:

SEO and SEM are two different terms that SEO focuses on organic traffic on websites by natural search results. 

SEM is a process in which the traffic on a website is increased by purchasing ads that appear on search results. 

SEM is focused more on pay-per-click advertising in which we have to pay for every click made on our website advertisement. While SEO is used for organic search and doesn't include any paid advertising of the website.

Ways to learn SEM better:

1. Read blogs content on Search Engine Marketing: Reading will help you get an idea of what SEM actually is. It will help you to understand most of the facts that you are going to do practically in SEM.

2. Take courses: Courses will help you learn deeply in Search Engine Marketing.

3. Learn from Google: Google also provides a free course on Search Engine Marketing of 3 hours of duration in which you can learn the basics of SEM.

4. Enroll in college or university courses: There are a number of colleges that provide training in SEM through online mode. You can learn from them.

5. Enroll in GLA courses: Great Learning Academy provides you with a free search engine marketing course. This course is completely free where you can learn the basics of SEM and for more info, you can enroll in one of our digital marketing courses.