What Is SEM & Paid Search Marketing?

SEM is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. It is also called paid search and sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis.

SEM is short for “search engine marketing,” which once was used as an umbrella term to encompass both SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search activities. However, over time, many adopted the SEM acronym to refer solely to paid search.

Here at Search Engine Hive, we generally use SEM and/or paid search to refer to paid listings, with the longer term of search marketing used to encompass both SEO and SEM.

Advice For Newbies

New to paid search ads? Don’t worry! Search Engine Hive has the perfect series for you: PPC Academy. This special column began in 2010 and provides a different instalment each week to bring you up to speed on paid search.

Another starting place is Google’s “Insider’s Guide To AdWords,” which you’ll find here in PDF format. AdWords is by many measures the most popular paid search platform used by search marketers, so the guide offers a useful introduction.

Of course, there’s much more to paid search than what’s covered in Google’s guide. You might consider some of the many print books out there with advice. Here’s our review of some newer books: A Roundup Of Best Search Advertising Books.

Advice At Search Engine Hive

Here at Search Engine Hive, we provide paid search advertising information and news in a variety of ways:

How To: Paid Search is our section that is devoted to practical tips and tactics about paid search ads.

Paid Search is Search Engine Hive column that covers different paid search topics every week.

Search Ads Library Archives: This area of Search Engine Hive provides a collection of all stories we’ve written on the topic of paid search. We also have subcategories, including:

Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting
Search Ads: Contextual
Search Ads: Domaining
Search Ads: General
Search Ads: Mobile Search
Search Ads: Pay Per Call
Search Ads: Video
In addition to covering paid search generally, Search Engine Hive also has paid search areas specifically for each of the major search engines:

Google: AdWords
Microsoft: adCenter
Yahoo: Search Ads
Over on Digital Marketing Depot, there is an archive of PPC / Paid Search presentations available webcasts on demand, to anyone, for free.