Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is the marketing process of getting more visibility in the search engines. You can do this by getting more free traffic – SEO – or paid traffic – paid search advertising.
With paid advertising, you are buying advertising space in the search engines. You pay money to come up under the various search terms associated with your products and services, within your business environment and your industry. You pay for results.
The most well-known advertising for paid search advertising is Google Adwords. With Google Adwords, you can get your ads to appear in the Google search results and pay for clicks you receive while being there. This process is commonly referred to as pay-per-click or PPC advertising.
SEM traffic is considered to be the most important source of Internet traffic because of how targeted and specific it is. When people have a question or a problem, they head to the search engines to find out the answer. So when a searcher clicks on a result and follows it to a specific web page, they are more likely to convert to a high-quality lead.
The relevance of the displayed information and advertisement makes SEM traffic more valuable than any of the other sources.