Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the umbrella term for all marketing activities within search engines. It covers both paid search advertising and organic search engine optimisation.Open glossary entry → brings together the measures companies use to become visible through search engines. In practice, SEM is often split into two areas:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) covers all measures that help a website become more visible in unpaid (organic) search results.Open glossary entry → (SEO): organic, unpaid visibility in the search results,
- Search Engine Advertising (SEA) means paid ads in the search results, usually billed on a pay-per-click basis.Open glossary entry →: paid ads, frequently billed on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a billing model in online advertising where the advertiser only pays when a user actually clicks the ad. Impressions alone are free.Open glossary entry → basis.
Some definitions use SEM more narrowly to mean only paid search advertising. In the broader and more common sense, however, SEM includes both disciplines.
The advantage of SEM is that it reaches users at the exact moment they are actively searching for information, products or solutions. Organic and paid measures can be combined to build both short-term reach and long-term visibility.