OMNY - OnlineMarketingNewYork.org
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) can be defined as a form of internet marketing that involves the use of paid and contextually strategic advertising placement on search engines. This type of advertising helps promote a company's website by increasing its visibility on search engine result pages.
Search Engine Marketing can be a very effective tool in comparison with traditional forms of advertising because it can be constantly streamlined or updated in a variety of ways. Two popular forms of SEM are pay-per-click and pay-per-action. In the pay-per-click format, your company will only pay its advertiser for an ad when a potential customer clicks on that ad while surfing the web and is thereby taken to your website. Taking the concept one step further, pay-per-action involves only paying for an ad when it leads to a conversion (sale, lead, download, etc.).
The strongest benefit of SEM is that you can modify your ad any time and have the changes take place immediately. You can test different ads to see which give the best click rates, adjust the keywords or phrases you've chosen, and adjust the amount you're willing to pay for a click. SEM is highly cost effective, quick and easy to implement, provides your company with a world-wide reach on popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, while also reaching a very specific targeted audience--people who are searching the web looking for the products or services your company offers. Your company can reach its targeted niche very effectively with Search Engine Marketing.