Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is one of the oldest and most effective forms of digital advertising. No matter your business, utilizing Google or Bing search ads can bring in new business almost instantly. While SEO and other methods are effective, they take months, even years before you see any dividends.
Paton Digital has spent over a decade utilizing Search Engine Marketing strategies to help businesses and organizations find success.
The advantage of Search Engine Marketing as opposed to Social Media Marketing, for instance, is you are targeting warm leads. Potential customers are searching for your services and many are ready to buy.
And while it is important to have a large fan base to some, having a productive sales funnel is a necessity no matter what your business. If you’re into drop servicing, healthcare, or a podiatrist in private practice, you can take advantage of what SEM has to offer.
Creating and optimizing an effective SEM campaign is difficult. That’s why we’re here to help get things set up properly so you’ll avoid unnecessary spending and develop a positive ROI as quickly as possible.
Search Engine Marketing is all about positioning your brand or business in the front of search engine users based on their keyword queries. Businesses engage in SEM in order to increase the visibility of their brand or products to potential customers who are searching for what they have to offer.
Running an effective SEM campaign can be time-consuming. That is why businesses who are serious about digital marketing hire a group like Paton Digital. We spend so much time strategizing and building these types of campaigns that optimization is second nature to us.
Ready to get started? Contact us today, book a strategy session, or reach out with any questions. Still not convinced? We’ve provided some background information below on everything you need to know about Search Engine Marketing.
Search Engine Marketing: Basics, Strategies and Tips
Organic growth is great but it’s not a one-fits-all solution. Search Engine Marketing picks up where organic growth left off. If you are new in the business, you’ll soon realize that it’s hard to be placed on the SERPs (search engine results page) map by relying only on organic growth.
A competitive marketplace and aggressive businesses make it crucial for businesses to incorporate SEM in advertising and promoting their products and services. We have written an all-encompassing and detailed guide on the basics and strategies employed in Search Engine Marketing.
What is Search Engine Marketing?
SEM is a digital marketing strategy that utilizes paid advertising to increase your business’s services and products on SERPs. The goal is to increase your rank on search engines, even with the complex algorithms running in the background.
In search engine marketing, businesses place bids on keywords that are most likely to be entered by users when searching for a product. Ads can then appear when users run search queries; the purchase journey begins.
The challenge lies with the advertiser. These pay-per-click ads can be created in different forms:
· Products-based ads.
The effectiveness of SEM lies in the fact that ads meet enthusiastic customers who are willing to purchase at that very moment.
How Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Works
Behind every search engine, there are complex algorithms based on mathematical models that are responsible for churning out search results. The most relevant results are based on keywords, location and other information such as the user’s search history.
Search engines display as at the very top or the left section of the search page. They are placed strategically so that the user can easily locate what they are looking for. The work cut out for the advertiser includes:
· Selecting a set of keywords after conducting thorough keyword research.
· Selecting geographic location depending on ad relevance.
· Coming up with text-based ads to be shown in the search results.
· Place a bid on the price per click
All these touchpoints are explained in detail in this article.
Google has two search networks under Google Ads (formerly AdWords): Google Search Network for Google-owned websites and Google Display Network for other forms of media such as YouTube, Gmail, and Blogger. The other prominent ad network is Bing Ads.
Bings ads is dwarfed by Google Ads but generally is cheaper.
Keywords: The Mainstay of SEM
It is impossible to conduct an effective SEM campaign without using the most important building block: keywords. This is a no-brainer; users enter keywords when running search queries.
SEM Keyword Research
The first phase of this process is to conduct an extensive and thorough keyword research campaign. This is part of keyword management which includes keyword discovery to choose which keywords to use; keyword research and analysis to identify your well-performing keywords; grouping your keywords and taking action which includes creating copy of the most relevant and productive content.
The first step is to identify the most relevant keywords for your business. The most logical thing to do is to choose keywords that would-be customers will most likely use when searching for your service or product. There are tens of free keyword tools that give you keyword suggestions; you only need to enter the most relevant keywords for your business.
The next step is to identify negative keywords that can only be done if you conduct extensive keyword research. Negative keywords are keywords that are most probably not going to bring conversions. When separating the wheat from the chaff, you should have one thing at the back of your mind: search intent.
Search intent is the probability that a user will engage your sales team or complete a purchase after searching for a term. Some keywords have higher commercial intent than others. Examples include coupons, buy, deals, discounts, and free shipping.
SEM Ad Auction
New entrants in the industry often believe the long-standing fallacy that a search engine marketing agency with the highest advertising budget, will rank highly. While it may help particularly when going after highly competitive keywords, it is far from being the prerequisite to successful SEM campaigns.
How Ad Auction Works
Ad Auction is a continuous process that takes place every time a user enters a search query. In Google Ads, for example, advertisers choose the keywords they want to bid on and indicate the amount per click they are willing to spend. Your ads will “participate” in the ad auction if the keywords you chose are part of users’ search queries.
Expectedly, some ads will not appear on every successive search. Some reasons include:
· The different factors Google uses to determine ad placement in SERPs.
· A keyword’s commercial intent may not justify ad placement against search results.
The two most important factors in play are Quality Score and Maximum bid. Quality score is a number assigned to your ad based on its keywords’ relevance, click-through rate, the relevance of your landing page and the overall quality of your ad. The Maximum bid is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for an ad. These two rank your ads.
Account Structure
How you structure your account is a crucial part of your SEM campaign. You can achieve higher click-through rates while using lower costs per click just by logically grouping your keywords and account structure. This is the recipe for a strong overall performance.
Bing Ads and Google AdWords are structured using five cascading elements.
· Ad campaigns
· Keywords
· Ad text
Landing pages
An Ad Campaign should solely focus on similar services and products. For example, an electrical appliances store can distinguish ad campaigns based on factory appliances and home-based ones. Each will then trickle down to ad groups which can then be clustered in terms of varying models of a particular appliance.
Keywords pick up the baton. The information about detailed keyword research should help you in that regard. While this degree of organization is cumbersome and arduous, the rewards are worthwhile.
Quality Score in SEM and Its Importance
The quality of your ad determines your quality score. As such, it is the most important metric in SEM. Ads that are highly relevant to search queries receive a higher rank and it helps regardless of your ad budget. Quality Score is important because it determines which ads are eligible to be enrolled in the ad auction and how ads are ranked.
The Difference Between SEM and SEO
A confluence of SEM and SEO is highly important for your online marketing strategy. But they are fundamentally different.
Search Engine Marketing is a system that allows advertisers/businesses to pay for ad placement in search results. Conversely, Search Engine Optimization, businesses are ranked based on the relevance of their content per keyword search query.
SEM propagates conversions at the bottom of the funnel while SEO is effective at its top. The secret lies in being aggressive on both ends.
Optimization using A/B Testing to Boost SEM
Once you have been able to attract conversions, it makes sense to maximize traffic. It makes for a good way to improve expenditure efficiency. A/B testing should help you get into the fray.
A/B Testing is a method of comparing two variants of a website to find out which performs better. The business owner displays two variants of its website to users at random. The better performing one is that which yields better conversion.
A/B Testing can also be used to optimize landing pages. You can structure your landing page to know if it’s pulling its weight.
The Best SEM Tools
You might want to use SEM tools that help you efficiently advertise your products or services. Below is a handful of them.
1. Google Trends
Want to track a specific keyword using different parameters such as location/region, time of the day/period, or language? Google Trends has got you covered. As is suggestive of the name, this tool helps you identify trending search terms; you don’t have to waste resources on a keyword that’s not getting any popular.
Google Trends also helps in assessing the level of interest in your service or product in a particular geographical area. This will lighten your load. You’ll only tie your money to locations that help the business grow.
2. SEMRush
SEMRush enables you to undertake thorough keyword research, site audits, track your keyword ranks, and do extensive traffic analysis among other functionalities.
Part of effective SEM is finding out what your competitors are focusing their efforts on. SEMRush helps you achieve that by helping you track your competitors’ marketing efforts, scrutinizing their regional presence so that you can ultimately decide how much to spend on which keywords. It also helps you know your main paid search competitors, the keywords they are bidding on and the content of their ads. All these help you in your SEM campaign.
3. Keywordtool.io
Keywordtool.io gives you a broader net: you’ll get keywords from multiple channels such as Google, Bing, Instagram, Amazon, the App Store, and Twitter. It then gives you variations of keywords and phrases from your base keyword just so that you can spread your wings.
You can generate keyword suggestions and up to 750 long-tail keywords. Even more, through its search trends feature, you can determine if your desired keywords are increasing in popularity.
4. Google Ads Keyword Planner
This is a befitting tool that can help you find out the most relevant keywords. Beyond that, you can track how different search queries for different keywords change over a specific period. Google Ads Keyword Planner also helps in budgeting.
It will suggest bid approximations for each keyword. After determining your ideal keywords, you can proceed to launch your ad campaign right from the tool. That’s why this tool is super useful.
5. SpyFu
SpyFu allows you to see the specific keywords different competitors are purchasing on Google and narrow it down to the tests they run. You only need to search a domain to view all keywords bought by that business on GoogleAdWords. SpyFu gives 12 years’ worth of data. It also allows you to monitor ranking on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
It takes a lot of time and effort to master the dynamics and basics of Search Engine Marketing. Learn the ropes, work your way through being relevant and creating great content.
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