Search engine marketing (SEM) involves promoting your website within search engine results pages. SEM involves boosting visibility using two strategies that are distinct yet complementary:

• via unpaid, organic means ;
• via paid advertising (sponsored links).

The first strategy involves an indexing phase, where the site is taken into account by web crawlers or robots, followed by a phase involving the optimisation of the site’s position in the search engine’s organic results.

See also: SEM/SEO.