Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Market – Overview
Internet has now become an important part of human life, it has connected individuals worldwide through social media, e-mail and exchange of information. Search engine marketing, commonly referred to by its acronym SEM, is cost effective method of Internet marketing which is often used to gain visibility and traffic on search engines. Basic purpose of SEM is to improve website’s ranking on various search engines such as Google or Bing. SEM is very broad term which refers to number of different activities including search engine optimization (SEO), search retargeting, and social media marketing. During the recent years, SEM has become popular with the rising number of Internet users around the globe and numerous IT and non-IT enterprises aiming to expand their business by strong Internet marketing. SEM helps an organization to gain return over investments (ROI) by enabling proper search engine marketing strategies.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Market – Trends and Opportunities
Information seekers and Internet shoppers prefer using keyword searches for getting desired result, thus, by using the keywords which are commonly used by individuals an organization can increase its visitors substantially. A keyword search deals with fetching the popular search terms in order to carry search engine optimization (SEO) of content on any site, thus helping them to rank higher in search results, this also helps to drive amount of activity on the site. Search through keyword is a step that cannot be ignored because it sends right kind of visitors to a site by simply using the right keywords, thus an enterprise can increase its possibility of turning traffic into revenue. SEM benefits organizations in increasing presence over major search engines and provides another channel to promote the brand and company. This also allows an organization to speak directly, openly and honestly to its customers. SEM helps in maintaining competitiveness in the search engine marketing (SEM) market enabling an organization to stay on top.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Market – Segmentation
Although SEM drives the business and creates opportunities for site traffic conversion. SEM results take time, thus delaying the time to get an ROI. Furthermore, lack in control over optimization due to continuous changes made into algorithms affects the ranking, creating need for continuous revision of SEM strategies. For companies with small budgets it is not always possible to formulate new strategies, which is hindering the growth of the search engine marketing (SEM) market.
There are many new features that companies are looking forward to integrate in their SEM strategies. Video advertising, the incorporation of YouTube advertisements in Google AdWords and YouTube shopping advertisements are some of the key trends in SEM. Video advertising is anticipated to stay an important element of SEM during the coming years and interactive advertising, which enables user to test an application or perform another interaction is expected to gain increasing traction during the coming years. Furthermore, mobile is expected to be future of computing, hence website owners have optimized their websites for mobile devices which will give rise in demand for specialized mobile device SEM services during the coming years.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Market – Key Players
With the rising number new entrants in every industry, the companies are focusing on provision of new competitive SEM strategies to promote their company. Some of the SEM vendors include 360i, WordStream, Google Inc., Analytix, Screaming Frog Ltd. and Internet Marketing Inc.