Search engine marketing

SEM (search engine marketing) is an Internet marketing technique that includes raising the visibility of websites in search engine results pages (SERPs) mostly via the use of paid advertisements. SEO, which is the process of adjusting or rewriting website content and site design in order to attain a better position in search engine results pages in order to improve pay per click (PPC) listings, may be included into SEM campaigns to increase click-through rates.

Advertisers in the United States spent $24.6 billion on search engine marketing in 2007. In the second quarter of 2015, Google (73.7 percent) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3 percent) alliance accounted for almost 100 percent of all search engine spending in the United States. According to statistics from 2006, search engine marketing (SEM) was expanding far faster than conventional advertising and even other avenues of web marketing. The management of search campaigns may be done either directly with the SEM vendor or indirectly via the use of a SEM tool provider. It may also be available as a self-service option or through an advertising agency.

As of October 2016, Google has a market share of 89.3 percent of the worldwide search engine market, making it the industry leader. Microsoft's Bing comes in second place with a market share of 4.36 percent, followed by Yahoo in third place with a market share of 3.3 percent, and Chinese search engine Baidu follows in fourth place with a market share of around 0.68 percent.

The practise of search engine marketing is also a kind of business analytics, with the primary goal of providing relevant information to enterprises in order for them to identify business opportunities and produce profits. SEM can assist firms in optimising their marketing efforts, attracting a larger audience, and generating more consumers.