Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to the promotion of your service or website on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This process is completely a paid task, where you will pay the money to search engines for listing your website or service on the very top of SERP upon dedicated keywords.

The publisher bids on the keywords that a visitor might enter when looking for the service that the publisher offers. Such paid ads are also recognized by pay-per-click, it means the engine will charge only when a person clicks on that advertisement. SEM comes in various formats. If we specifically talk about Google, as this platform covers the 80% SEM market. Most of the SEM ads are in the form of text-based ads, product listing, and visual ads as well.

Why are SEM Agencies Important?

According to multiple sources, it’s found that every month almost 170 billion searches are performed on different search engines out of which 100 billion are on Google itself.

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is the best way to drive high-quality traffic to your website directly. Sem is one of the most effective ways to get a huge amount of customers in a very short period and grow your website even in an extremely tough competition.

This type of marketing is one of the most effective ways to earn a huge amount of targeted visitors that are in search of your services already, hence you get higher conversions. Allows website owners to present their services to the buyer in a moment when they are ready to purchase. If compared to other forms of marketing, no one can offer this type of service.

Here, in this article, we’re going to write an ultimate guide on how you could get an ideal and efficient SEM agency for your website. So let’s get into it!

SEO vs SEM?

Most people might get confused about the difference between SEM and SEO and think both are relatively the same. It’s completely wrong!

However, both are related to search engines and their base is on search engines, but the way of working is completely different! Below we’ve explained the difference between SEM and SEO in very short line: –

SEO: SEO or Search Engine Optimization refers to ranking on the organic results upon the dedicated keywords. You can also say this process is the rank of your website on organic result as organic SERP of your website on search engines happens without paying any money to search engines nor requesting them.

It requires a lot of changes in your website until Google and other search engines start ranking it on their organic SERPs. For example, you need to optimize the loading speed, content, keywords placement, backlinks, and many other tweaks to increase the SEO score. The more SEO score your website has, the better rankings you’ll get on organic non-paid SERPs.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing is completely different from SEO. It works by showing your website or service on the very top of the SERP. Of course, you would have to pay the search engine for ranking your business on the first page.

Unlike SEO, SEM doesn’t require any kind of modifications to your website, all you’ve to do is to pay the money and get on top of the SERPs. However, your advertisement would only be ranked upon the dedicated keywords you choose.

SEM is based on pay-per-click, meaning the search engine would charge you when someone clicks on your advertisement.

Moreover, another thing you should remember is SEM listings always get a tag of “Ad” on SERPs to distinguish between which are organic results and which are paid results. Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo and many other search engines use this rule to show their transparency to the user. But it wouldn’t affect your clicks in any way.

SEM Agency Checklist | Things to look at Before Hiring any Agency

When you’re in search of the best agency, it could be difficult to find the ideal and worth purchasing agency. Scammers are everywhere and they are always looking for newbies to scam them.

To prevent this scam and loss of your money, it’s important to know what services you could expect from an SEM agency. There are tons of agencies out there in the market and the prices and services might be different. We would highly recommend you to research anyone why below we’ve mentioned some main things that you should consider in every SEM agency: –

Transparency

Transparency of the work isn’t compulsory nor related to the quality of the work, but it is related to customer satisfaction. Some agencies might create a frustrating puzzle in the work they do for your website. They do the work without sharing anything or hiding most of the things from you.

If we talk about it in simple language, transparency is the process of being honest, open, and straightforward about the work they’ve done on your website. Agencies who show transparency of their work would share all the information related to the performance, cost, work, and all internal processes.

It’s not compulsory and you should not reject any agency if they don’t show transparency, as some hide their work for security purposes. But a transparent agency is better, as they share all the things that they have performed on your website.

Pricing

Pricing is another important factor that you should consider before hiring any agency.. Some agencies charge on the commission of the PPC of your ads. This means to say, you’ll only be charged when someone clicks on your advertisement.

Whereas some agencies charge one fixed amount, they have nothing to do with your PPC advertisements. Now, depending on your preference, both could be good and both have their advantages and disadvantages.

In our vision, we would go with commission-based pricing, because in that way you will be sure that you’re not paying any extra money to the agency. You can choose any type of pricing model that you may like.

Quality of the Services that the Agency Offers

Quality is the only thing for which you’re paying money. You don’t want to hire an agency that’s quality is not up to the mark. It would be a complete waste of your money if you pay for bad service work.

We recommend that you use the basic package of high-quality service, instead of paying the same amount for premium service in poor quality services. Yes, some scam agencies do this, they only play with the numbers like showing 500 ad postings, 800 clicks, but in reality, they are worth nothing if their strategy is not good.

However, old school service with a small number might be beneficial for you.

Benefits of Hiring SEM Agency

Not that you know everything about SEM agencies and what things you should look for in an ideal agency. However, it’s human nature, we don’t do anything unless it benefits us.

The same rule applies here; you don’t want to spend a huge amount of money on an agency that doesn’t affect your business in any way. That’s why below we’ve explained some main benefits of hiring an SEM agency for your website.

High Conversions

Using an SEM agency for your website or business could give you better conversion rates. Conversion rate refers to the number of visits divided by the number of sales on your website.

In the case of SEM advertisements, you get targeted audiences. All the visitors who visit your website or business through your ad are already looking for something that you offer. Hence, you get better chances of sales and high conversion rates.

It’s important to use SEM properly, like using keywords in the right way, otherwise, you’ll just gonna waste your money!

Reviews

A word of mouth plays an important role in the sales of your service. For example, if a person uses your services, if he recommends your same service to his friend, then there are much higher chances that friend would purchase the same service from your company when needed.

In the online world, we call it Review and it works just as a word of mouth by other users. If you’re offering a great service then people who purchase from you would review the product. That’s how people know the experience of others with your product, and it massively increases your chances of sales.

Even nowadays, people prefer online shopping, because in online shopping they can see other people’s experience with the product and purchase accordingly. It’s obvious, the more people will purchase from your website, the more reviews you’ll get.

Increase SEO Performance

Yes, it also helps to increase the overall SEO performance of your website. If you ever got rankings on Google, then you must know the amount of traffic you get is directly proportional to the rankings on Google. The high amount of visitors and conversions means high rankings on organic searches of Google!

Therefore, you get the best of both worlds: high conversion rates + high SEO rankings in the future. Still, if you don’t see an increase in your SEO score, it means there is some issue with your website that you need to resolve.

Makes your Regular Customers.

There are millions of benefits of using SEM agency, but we’re ending this topic after this benefit. In our vision, one main and biggest advantage of using SEM agency, could provide you regular customers. The main benefit of a regular or returning buyer is that you can easily understand their pattern of buying. For example, if you sell online services, you would know the requirements and the pattern of work he wants from you. This process could decrease the time in doing research for an article and saves your time. According to our experience, we would definitely prefer the regular and returning buyer, instead of new one