Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, refers to a set of tools, techniques and strategies designed to increase your business’s online presence. The goals associated with SEM strategy are generating new leads, selling products online, building brand awareness and diverting traffic away from competitors. Although the term SEM traditionally included SEO actions, it has more commonly come to refer more exclusively to paid activities like pay-per-click advertising.

The sheer number of available avenues for SEM placement is quite breathtaking, including Google, Bing, YouTube and other search engines. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn round out the most popular SEM lineup. Direct ad placement on influential websites is also an option. Part of developing an effective SEM strategy is identifying which platforms are most effective for your advertising goals and audience. Collectively, these sites represent billions of views every day.

While SEO is considered a long-term process that builds and evolves as your site rank increases over time, SEM ensures that traffic is driven to your website and that your business can be visible to highly targeted audiences from day one.