Search Engine Marketing Basics
Search engine advertising is a fantastic way to scale your business. With a huge amount of businesses online at the moment, advertising online has never been more vital.
By using search engine marketing correctly, you can gain exposure for your products and scale your business beyond belief.
Down below, we’ll take a little look at the way you can optimize your search engine strategies and make sure your marketing is executed in the way you intended.
What Is Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing (SEM) works by utilizing paid advertisements.
The ads from search engine marketing will appear when consumers search for queries on search engines. This works by having advertisers bid using certain keywords that are included in users’ search queries.
This allows advertisers to have their ads appear in front of those looking for those such queries. These are known as pay-per-click and can be displayed in many different formats.
Some of these are text-based, while others focus on product listings. These product listings are more visually-based, and allow potential customers to see information ad hoc.
The best thing about search engine marketing is that advertisers can get in front of customers who are ready to buy at that particular moment.
SEM Vs. SEO
SEM or search engine marketing refers to marketing that is paid for. In contrast, SEO is search marketing where businesses don’t pay for exposure.
This works by having businesses appear in search results by having content or pages that are the most relevant depending on what the user has searched for.
In actuality, both SEO and SEM are vital to a business’s marketing strategy. SEO is a great way to drive viable traffic into your marketing funnel.
Keywords: The Building Blocks Of Search Engine Advertising
People searching online start their journey by typing in search queries – these search queries will have keywords that help to find what the user is looking for.
These keywords are what search engine marketing is built upon and is used to inform advertising strategy.
Keyword Research
Before you begin to use keywords in your advertising campaigns, it is vital that research is conducted in order to work out which keywords are the most efficient.
In particular, you have to find the keywords that are relevant to your business.
This means finding keywords that customers will want to use if looking for the services and products that you offer.
One of the first ways you can do this is by using one of the many keyword tools that are available on the Internet.
When using one of these keyword tools, entering relevant keywords will bring up other suggestions on what other keywords are effective.
Keyword research can also yield what is known as negative keywords. These keywords aren’t necessarily bad, but they are irrelevant to your campaign.
Specifically, negative keywords denote keywords that are unlikely to bring conversions. Looking at all of these factors is known as a search intent.
This includes the chance that consumers searching for search terms will complete the desired action after searching for a search term. Some keywords have inherent search intent.
Keywords such as buy, discount, coupon, and more are keywords that are considered to be commercially viable.
Account Structure
When looking at your SEM campaigns, account structure is a very important aspect to consider.
By grouping your keywords together in a logical fashion, you can get better click-through rates. Doing so will allow you to achieve a lower cost per click and give you better performance overall.
Structuring your campaigns consists of a few different elements. These include your ad groups, keywords, text, and landing pages.
When running your campaigns, you should categorize them by their similarities. Ad groups allow you to categorize even further. While this level of organization can be time-consuming, it is rewarding, giving you better click-through rates.
More Ways You Can Optimize Your Campaigns
Down below, we’ve included some more tips on how you can get the most out of your SEM campaigns. By taking heed of these tips, you can maximize your ROI.
Spend Time On Your Ads
Writing ad text is a marketing basic that you will have to master. Writing ads properly will allow you to persuade customers that your services are vital. How you word your ads should offer solutions to your consumers’ problems.
Optimize Ads For Click-through Rates
Your click-through rates, abbreviated as CTR, are a very important metric to focus on. This will impact how much you have to pay per click, as well as your quality score.
Achieving a better rank with your ads can yield lower bids when advertising. To optimize this metric, look at your keyword relevance, as well as the keywords that you include in your ad copy and headlines.
Look At Your Quality Score
There are a lot of advertisers that do not value the quality score on the ads.
By getting a better quality score, you’re able to get a better ranking on ads, which means placing these ads will also cost less money. The simple solution to this is to be thorough in creating your ads and make sure they are as best they can be.
Consider Conversion Rate Optimization
While this metric is important, there is no one aspect that makes conversion rate optimization better.
Improving your CRO comes down to your mindset and the tactics you use.
Look at all of the variables that make up your campaign. Consider your ad text, your landing pages and the call-to-action that you include.
A/B testing is also important for this purpose. This is the practice of testing out different creatives to make sure you’re using is the best one.
Mastering Your Campaigns
Getting the best out of your search engine advertising campaigns will take a lot of time and effort. You also need to keep experimenting and trying out new things.
Getting success instantly is unlikely, but as long as you have a focus on persevering, you’ll be able to get great results long-term.
Need more marketing advice on PPC and other types of marketing? Hit our blog for some more top tips!
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