business digitization

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

• Set of strategies to increase the authority of a company's digital channels in search engines, integrating online advertising ads with organic positioning actions.

• In practice, SEM refers only to paid advertising campaigns on search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!.

• SEM helps improve brand visibility and direct qualified audiences (people who meet specific characteristics) to your website quickly.

Advantages of SEM

• It works faster than SEO, giving results in the short and medium term. For its part, SEO works in the medium and long term (although it is still necessary to implement it).

• SEM allows you to segment and bring only the audience that interests you to your website.

• Helps increase the visibility of your brand.

• SEM tools like "Google Adwords" ("Google Ads") allow you to generate and measure conversions, monitor your campaigns in real time and make adjustments.

• You can plan with small budgets. You decide how much you want to invest each day and how much you want to pay for each click on your ad.

• In addition to appearing in search engine results, you can do so on websites that have some relationship with your brand.

Disadvantages of SEM

• Unlike SEO, SEM is an interruptive practice, since it provides information not requested by the user.

• Those who use ad blockers may not see your content.

• It only works as long as you pay. That is why you must define a prior strategy (budget, objectives, deadlines, etc.).

• There are many brands competing for the same keywords. This causes costs to increase and makes it increasingly difficult to position yourself.

SEM vs. SEO

• Expenses to position in search engines

  • SEM: is known as the publications that appear in the top positions of search engines and in which the advertiser pays for each click received from users.

  • SEO: it goes beyond the work done on the website to optimize its content so that it has greater visibility in search engines.

• Speed ​​of results

  • SEM: generates results immediately; of course, if you stop paying, you stop seeing those strategic changes.

  • SEO: the strategy begins to give results over a longer period of time.

• Performance predictability

  • SEM: it is easier to establish investment guidelines, post campaigns or take them out of circulation whenever we decide because of course, we are paying to have control.

  • SEO: you can control the strategy you use and the content you generate but you do not have the possibility of accurately measuring whether you are on the right track or not.

• Investment breadth

  • SEM: is a payment tool; the user has to make an investment in the search engine to be able to generate their campaigns.

  • SEO: does not require economic investment but creative investment since good positioning is achieved naturally and thanks to search engine algorithms.

• Search engine placement

  • SEM: publications, in general, appear published at the top of the portal or on the right side and are often identified as advertisements.

  • SEO: publications appear in the central area of ​​the page.

• Keyword management

  • SEM: it is much simpler because there are no limits to choosing the keywords to use and in terms of content, it must be more precise and related to the chosen keywords and a structure that denotes sales intention.

  • SEO: there are limitations in terms of the number of keywords to choose to achieve good positioning and in terms of content, it is essential to have quality material that is interesting and attractive to the reader.

Essential Concepts for Making an SEM Strategy

• Adwords (Ads). It is a Google tool that allows you to do paid advertising on the internet. You can create ads to appear in Google search results or on web pages that relate to your keywords.

• Keyword. They are the words and/or phrases that are typed in the search engine when performing a search. The search engine returns the results most related to that keyword, so you must choose very carefully which terms you want to be found with. There are tools to find keywords like Google's "Keyword Planner."

• Ad group. They are several ads that respond to the same group of keywords.

• Campaigns. Campaigns are made up of similar ad groups (with a common link).

• Search network. These are the places where your ads will appear. This can be at the top or right of the results page, on Google sites (Google Play, Google Shopping, and Google Maps), or on Google's "Display Network" search partners, such as YouTube.

• Impressions. It is the number of times your ads are shown. Every time your ad appears in Google results or elsewhere on the search network, it's considered an impression.

• Clicks. Number of times your ad banners are clicked. These allow you to know if a particular ad is attractive to those who see it.

• CTR ("Click Through Rate"). It is the number of clicks each of your ads receive with respect to the number of impressions. It is calculated as a percentage and helps measure the impact of your campaigns.

• Daily budget. It is the maximum amount you are willing to pay each day. It depends solely on you.

• CPC ("Cost Per Click") bidding. It is the average value you are willing to pay for each click on your ads. You can define a maximum CPC to avoid going over your daily budget. You have the option to choose between manual or automatic CPC bidding.

• CPM ("Cost Per Thousand") bidding. Cost per thousand impressions. In this case you do not pay per click, but for the number of times your ad appears.

• Quality level. It is an estimate that Google makes of the quality of your ads, landing page and keywords. The higher the quality, the lower the prices and the better the position of the ad.

SEM Strategy

• Objectives (reach, traffic, conversions, etc.).

• Target audience, location, search intentions, etc.

• Keywords.

• Landing page for your ads.

• Competence.

• Campaigns and ad groups.

• Ad contents.

• Budget.

Whether you are self-employed, an SME or a large company, at U2-LAB™ we help you with everything you need, at all times, from the beginning of the project to its completion and beyond, so that you have peace of mind and can dedicate yourself to what really matters: growing your business/company and offering your clients services of the highest quality, effective and efficient.