SEM refers to the “paid for” advertising within the results of a search.

This screenshot shows that digitalmarketinginstitute.ie appears on top of the sponsored links (yellow area).

Because SEM is a “paid for” listing, it is possible to be top of the ranking immediately however, to remain top of the list on the “paid for” advertising can become costly. SEM is often implemented in conjunction with SEO. An SEO strategy can now take up to 6 months to take full effect. We would therefore recommend implementing an SEM campaign to ensure you always appear in the results of the search. This can be done for the company in general or for specific campaigns (or a mixture of both). We take a focused approach with our clients encouraging them to develop landing pages (or marketing pages), populated with the keywords and SEO implemented to drive specific business to those specialist areas.