Given the huge amounts of money spent on SEM, it’s a sure bet that you are going to consider whether you should spend some of your valuable dollars on SEM as part of your overall marketing strategy.

SEM involves using search engines (such as Google) to promote your product or service. Billions of searches are performed every single month. When you start an SEM campaign, you decide how much you are willing to spend and the keywords that you want to bid on. You set your maximum budget (per day/per month) and if you happen to be among the highest bidders for a given keyword when search results are being delivered, your ad will be shown alongside search results (on the side or at the top, for example). SEM ads are circled in red in the following search on Google for “graphic design”.

SEM is a simple idea and can be a powerful tool for many companies. It can also be costly and ineffective for other companies.

While much has been written about SEM by many self-professed “experts”, it’s not easy to find useful tips for SEM campaign(s). And there’s also this – a huge amount of SEM content is not only bullshit – it’s wrong.

I am not suggesting that you should become an expert in SEM or manage your own SEM campaigns. SEM can be complicated and it does require a great deal of attention. We’ve been using and recommend Keyword First if you want some expert help in this area.

On the other hand, plenty of people self-manage successful SEM campaigns. Don’t be intimidated by all of the options and tools. If you decide to conquer SEM on your own, I want to share with you what we’ve learned about SEM over the past seven months.

I am not an expert in this area. These are the things I would have wanted to know back in May 2008 when we launched crowdSPRING – and I hope that they help you to avoid some of the SEM mistakes we made along the way.

So, here we go – the 10 things I would have loved to know about SEM the day we launched crowdSPRING:

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