While digital environments have gained importance, we have been talking more about digitalization with the new digital platforms that have entered our lives recently. So, the increase in the use of digital media has naturally increased the desire of companies to be visible in the digital environment.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a type of internet marketing that tries to increase the visibility of a website in search engines. Recently, the term has come to mean website traffic and marketing through paid advertising. With search engine marketing, firms pay for ads to appear at the top of search queries on search engines.

Search engine marketing (SEM) and Search engine optimization (SEO) are terms that are confused with each other. Initially, SEO was considered a part of SEM, but over time SEO has become a separate marketing area. In SEO, the goal is to increase the appearance of your website or web pages in search engines. However, unlike SEM, SEO marketing does not require payment for it. On the other hand, SEM is a form of internet marketing where the marketer uses paid advertising. SEO gives results in the longer term, while SEM can show results in a shorter time.

How Does SEM Work?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is based on the auction system. The areas where the ads will be displayed on the page are limited by the search engines. Advertisers compete in the auction held for these spaces. Winning ads usually appear at the top of the search results page.

In search engine marketing, you also first place a bid in an auction. However, this offer is not enough. Besides the SEM auction, your relevance is of paramount importance. It is a factor in how relevant the site is to the search on the search engine and is normally shown on a 1 to 10 scale. Its name is referred to as quality score in search engines.

For example; the firm with the same bid price but a higher quality score will appear higher up on the search page. Likewise, we can calculate which site will appear higher by calculating the business's auction score (price x relevance). We can give an example over the company X and Y. Let's say firm X bids $4 per click, and its relevance is 5. When firm Y bids $3 per click, let the relevance be 10. Firm X will have an auction score of 20, while Firm Y will be ranked higher, with 30 points, despite bidding less.

SEM has pricing per click, meaning you pay if users click on your ad. This process named as "Pay-per-click". In addition, a cost-per-click method is also available. In the cost-per-click method, you are charged the unit price determined when your ad is displayed in the search results.

What Does SEM Do?

Search engine marketing allows you to increase your brand awareness through advertising in general. Providing direct access to your customers, SEM is a very effective move in digital marketing. SEM, which provides brand awareness and customer gaining, can also be applied on social media platforms together with search engines such as Google and Yandex. It allows you to reach potential customers who are searching for words and phrases related to your company, called keywords.