Search Engine Marketing 

Search engine marketing is the companion to search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the organic growth of a website ranking through the use of meta tagging, algorithms, links and unique text. SEM or search engine marketing is using paid advertising in order to boost your website visitor numbers. There are many ways that you can do SEM and every search engine has its own programs and method, but the general rule is the same. A website will pay a search engine a set amount for each time that it presents the website high up in a search.  

If we look at the behemoth of the search engine world, Google, then we can see a clear difference in the SEO websites and the SEM websites. You can see all the naturally ranked websites on the left of the screen running down. These sites do not pay to appear; instead, they are selected according to their ranking by the search engine. If you look to the right of a Google search, you will see another column that presents several website options and usually some marketing information.  

Google Ad words will charge the website a set amount every time they show the website as the result of a search by a potential visitor or by every time that someone clicks on the link through to the website. This kind of pay per click campaign is highly popular with companies, but if not done correctly, it can quickly run away with your whole marketing budget. It is because of the complexity and precise nature of SEM that many companies do not leave their allocation of budget in the hands of the marketing department, instead they entrust the campaign development to a SEM specialist and a company that has experience in search engine marketing.