SEM – Search Engine Marketing is a paid search PPC advertising. SEM plays an important role to reach consumers who research and shop online to buy products or book services. The new consumer performs a search query on a search engine to find websites that deal with products or services they research for. To give consumers what they want, only relevant results to a search query are served by the complex algorithms of Search Engines. The goal which businesses want to achieve whether through organic or paid search is for consumers to find and contact them and finally become their customers. PPC advertising is used to advance the visibility of websites in the result pages of Search Engines.
Contents
The 7steps to PPC Advertising / Search Engine Marketing
Log in to your Google Ads account. Next, start with keyword research and use it for your new campaign. From the Google Ads, reporting monitor the performance of your campaign and link it to your Google Analytics. Optimize Google Ads to improve ROI by getting more clicks and conversions. Use the Google Ads editor for any changes and modifications. Automate Google Ads by running scripts to track campaign performance.
Search Engine Marketing Strategy
Select the target audience and how your promotion can fulfill consumer needs. Research your competitors and identify goals such as ROI, sales & position in the market, website traffic, etc
Keyword Research
Research keywords that your target customers would frequently use for search. Opt for negative keywords to weed out unnecessary expenditure.
Content Optimization
The content that goes on your website need to be optimized in terms of relevant content aligned to user interest and search, focus long-tail keywords and brand, include keywords in domain/ URL’s/ description/ title tags/ heading tags/ images/ alt tags/ meta tags/ images/ directory and filenames. The meta description appears below the link which can draw visitors to your site.
Website Indexing
If your website does not appear in a search engine’s index, visitors will not be able to find it in the search result page.
Link Building
Relevant inbound links is a must if you want to gain referral traffic that helps in better ranking and increases the site’s authority thereby driving target visitors to your website.
Paid Search Advertising
In any search engine results page, the sponsored ads appear at the top and the side of the page to gain importance over organic search listing results. The displayed Ads match the keyword used in the search query, hence relevant and appear in select locations on the web page that triggers a click on such Ads
Measure Advertising Success
This will depend on a number of Ad factors:
- Impressions– measures how often your ads are shown when visitors were on your page?
- Clicks– resulting in engagements with your website
- CTR– Click-through rate is the Ad Clicks divided by the Ad Impressions. A higher CTR is a good sign
- Click Conversion Rate- is the visitors who engaged with your website, did what you wanted them to do that resulted in a conversion.
- Cost– can be measured by CPC ~ Cost per click – The cost per visitor is known in terms of each user and Cost per Conversion is known in terms of a new user.
Search Engine Marketing (PPC Advertising)
The fastest way to drive traffic to your website is through Search Engine Marketing. Advertisers pay for visitors that click on your advertising displayed in websites which in addition automatically improves ranking in organic search results. Prospects search the web for finding commercial information and at this time are more open to receiving messages that are marketing in nature and can lead to conversions. PPC Advertising mainly focuses on:
Google Ads | Bidding & Budget
Google Adwords are classified under Google Search Network and the Google Display Network. The former comprises search-related websites owned by Google and the latter are properties such as YouTube, Gmail, and Blogger. Bid prices solely depend on the Ad copy, CTR, and the relevancy of Ads. To optimize it may be necessary to make bid adjustments by excluding a certain day of week & hour of the day, device, and audiences. SEM places Ads targetted to the search conducted by the user’s search engine based in line with the Advertisers’ budget for the number of Ads to be served. As per the bidding system based on demographics & location, paid Ads to become visible to users. SEM Ads are one of the most successful advertisements as advertisers pay only when users click on the Ad. Learn more by clicking on Google Ads Basics.
Keyword Research
Tools like SEM Rush offer intelligence about what keywords your competitor targets.
Quality Score
An increase in the Quality Score for your website can impact your Search Engine Marketing Networks thereby lowering your average CPC.
Advertising with Yahoo | Bing | Social Networks:
Prices are lower than Google Adwords and you can advertise both on Yahoo and Bing Networks by buying Bing Ads. Social networking eg. Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn serve relevant Ads based on the user information and interactions which are readily available for specific platforms. The social network advertising platform targets the user demographics which gives way to high conversion and sales at a much lower cost of acquisition. The Ads served to such users are known to target social media platforms.
Search Engine Optimization
Compared with SEO, Search Engine Marketing is short term, expensive, and brings quick results. If not managed efficiently can affect financially for the budget allocated. Click on SEO fundamentals to read more.
Creating, Optimizing, Tracking Campaigns & Ads
To create a campaign on any network select a)related keywords b) geographic location where ads are to be displayed c) text-based ads for display on search results with CTA, URL link, and headlines. d)bid price for each click. Campaigns need to be optimized for landing pages, keywords, ad copy, etc With campaign tracking data benchmarking is possible [a feature in google analytics] to improve budgeting and designing future campaigns
Tools
Research and select the most appropriate tools, that are best suited for the purpose. Paid Advertising can be carried out with the aid of many tools free or paid meant for:
- Keyword Research: [Competitive & Traditional, Generation & Grouping] Some eg are- Google Ads Keyword Tool, Ahrefs Keywords explorer
- Adwords: Some eg are- Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Ads, Ad Preview Tool
- Budget Estimation: Some eg are- Spyfu, SEM Rush
- PPC Campaign & Bid Management: Some eg are- Wordstream PPC Advisor, Kenshoo, adAlysis
- A/B Testing: Some eg are- Crazy Eggs, Google Auction Insights