What is SEM?

When I first began working at an advertising agency, often after telling someone that I worked in search engine marketing or SEM, they would immediately ask, “What is SEM?”

I found the best, most concise answer to this question was to describe the initial few items on the Google search results page, the ones that were, at the time, labelled “ad”.

Usually the response I received was something along the lines of “Oh, those. I hate those, I scroll right past them. No offense.”

At this point I would shrug and assure them that no offense was taken, because this was a common response I received, and I understood where it was coming from. If not executed properly, SEM ads can come across as irrelevant, tone deaf and often very obviously an ad in a place where the user was looking for an answer to a question, not another advertisement.

Thankfully since then, features within Google Ads have made it much more attainable for marketers to meet potential customers on the search results page with content more attuned to what they are looking for.

First—a better definition of SEM.

Search engine marketing, or SEM, refers to ads that are served to users on the results pages of platforms like Google alongside organic (not paid ads) results.

Each time a user enters a “search query” into Google a rigorous process takes place behind the scenes where Google assesses and ranks both paid and organic results that are then shown to the user.

At the top of the page will be up to three paid results, if applicable, followed by organic results and sometimes more paid results. Other features like Google maps and AI summaries may also impact this order and resulting content.

What’s important to note is that Google compares search queries entered by users to keywords that marketers are bidding on. This is a primary factor in the decision of whether or not to serve an ad, and which ad(s) to serve, in the response to a query.

SEM is a pay per click form of advertising, so it is in both the marketers’ and in Google’s best interest for search ads to be appealing to the platform’s users. Google Ads has implemented a few features to help in this endeavor.

Keyword Match Types and Contextual Analysis

Along with selecting which keywords to bid on, marketers also have the option to indicate how strictly their keywords must match a search query before their ads are shown.

• Exact match is the most restrictive type, and is, as suggested by the name, when the query must match the keyword exactly for an ad to show.
• Phrase match is less restrictive in that an ad will show if the keyword and search query have the same meaning.
• Broad match is the least restrictive, allowing for ads to show when the keyword and search query match exactly, when their meaning is the same, or when the keyword is related to the search query.

Negative Keywords

On the opposite side of the spectrum, are negative keywords. Marketers use negative keywords as a way to restrict their content from certain search queries entirely. For example, a marketer might make a competitor’s brand name a negative keyword.

Responsive Search Ads

Marketers provide multiple variations of headline and description copy to Google Ads in a single responsive search ad. Google then uses machine learning techniques in addition to contextual analysis mentioned earlier to create variations of this ad from the marketer-provided inputs. Google Ads will favor combinations more likely to lead to the user clicking through.

Keyword Insertion

When writing ad copy, marketers can also indicate where in the ad copy Google Ads can directly insert the keyword that caused the ad to appear. This can be helpful when the marketer is promoting different varieties of a single product and can very obviously connect a search query to the marketer’s keyword—so long as the marketer has carefully vetted their keywords, used appropriate match typed and meticulously curated their ad groups.

Ad Extensions (ad assets)

In addition to making the search ad look bigger on the results page, ad extensions also help to feature additional information like specific offerings, a phone number that users can click while on a mobile device to call the business or short text snippets. These may make users more interested in clicking through the ad by providing potentially relevant information not found in the base ad copy.

Quality Score

Google Ads also provides more visibility to keyword performance in the form of “quality score”. This metric is derived from a combination of how relevant the landing page is to the keyword, how relevant the keyword is to the ad copy and the expected click through rate for this keyword. This value is not seen by the user, but marketers can use it as a way to check whether the keyword they are bidding on aligns with the ad copy and landing page associated with it.

Conclusion

I’ve heard less criticism of paid search ads on Google recently.

This could be related to how Google has changed the formatting to more subtly label paid search ads.

It could be related to changing perceptions around search in general, especially given increased use and reliance on generative AI to summarize content.

But I suspect the better user experience resulting from increased knowledge of best practices in SEM, in combination with with features like those listed above to help increase relevancy between search ads and search queries likely plays a part in this.

Photo by WDnet Studio on StockSnap