The digital marketing arena is witnessing transformations with every passing year, offering modern marketers a wide array of tools, tricks and channels which help them better target audiences. One of the hottest areas for marketing businesses is SEM or Search Engine Marketing. In this, efforts are targeted at marketing in search engines like Bing, Yahoo and Google.
What exactly is SEM?
Generally, SEM refers to paid search marketing, which involves businesses paying search engines like Google to display their ads in search results. This is in contrast to SEO, wherein the business does not pay the search engine for clicks and traffic; they earn a free position in search results by having the best content for a specific keyword search.
Online Strategy for marketing
SEM and SEO are both core components of the online strategy for marketing. SEO serves as a powerful mode to propel evergreen traffic at the top position of the funnel, while SEM ads are a highly cost-effective mode for driving conversions at the funnel’s bottom.
SEM can generate instant results for ads since one is paying for placement on results pages of search engines. However, results for SEO efforts can involve years or months to show up in one’s targeted searches.
There is a common misnomer that SEM and SEO overlap in their function. The fact is, running SEO campaigns has no impact on organic search results and vice versa.
SEM
SEM is crucial because there is annual growth in online shopping. The paid ads, called pay-per-click ads, are found in a variety of formats. A few of them are text-based and small ads, while some others are product-based, visual ads that help customers view crucial information at a glance- like reviews and prices.
The biggest strength of SEM is that it provides advertisers the chance to place their ads in front of customers who are motivated and ready to buy at the exact moment when they wish to buy.
This cannot be accomplished by any other medium, and therefore, SEM is an effective mode and powerful way to grow your business.
Keywords
The foundation of SEM is keywords. When net users enter keywords (as part of search queries) within search engines in search of products or services, keywords serve as the basis of SEM in the form of advertising strategy.
Keyword research
Prior to selecting which keywords to use in the SEM campaign, there is a need to conduct comprehensive research for the sake of strategy for keyword management.
Firstly, you should identify keywords which are relevant to the business and potential customers are likely to use when they search for your services and products. There are several online tools to do this, like the Free Keyword Tool of WordStream.
Final Keywords
Secondly, besides helping you to find keywords to bid on, detailed keyword research can aid you in identifying negative keywords, which are search terms to exclude from the SEM campaign. Note that negative keywords are not wrong terms but terms that are irrelevant to customers and do not lead to conversions. For example, while you may market an ice cream brand, ‘recipes for ice cream’ may be irrelevant and classified as negative keywords.
This idea is referred to as search intent or the chance that a potential visitor to the website will convert or buy a product or take the desired action following a search for a term.
Certain keywords are deemed to have high commercial intent, which is a strong sign that searchers for keywords wish to buy certain items. Examples include – 1) buy, 2) deal, 3) discount, 4) free shipping and 5) coupons.
Account structure and keywords
- Account structure is another critical feature of keywords which is vital for the success of the campaign of SEM.
- Account structure and logical grouping of keywords help you accomplish higher CTRs (Click Through Rates) and lesser CPC (Cost Per Click).
- This overall, stronger performance, as well as keyword research, can aid you in structuring your account in the best way.
Five of the distinct elements which make for an ideal account structure for search engine ranks include Ad groups, Ad campaigns, Ad text, Keywords and Landing pages.
Such efforts to organize ads may initially take long to set up at first- but the rewards in terms of low CPC and high CTR make such efforts useful in the long run.
AD auction
A major misconception is that the winner of SEM is one who has the biggest advertising budget. Though a big budget can, of course, be beneficial, particularly while targeting highly competitive keywords but, it is not a sure-fire recipe for the success of SEM. The reason is that all ads undergo a process called an Ad auction before appearing on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
How does the auction work?
Every time a search query or word is entered into a search engine like Google, the Ad auction takes place. For entering the ad auction, marketers have to identify keywords to bid on and indicate the quantum they are willing to invest (per click) so that their ads appear alongside search results related to keywords. When Google decides that keywords bid on are included within the search query of a net user, ads will be entered into the ad auction.
The two main factors that determine the ad auction process are the Quality score of the ad and the maximum bid on keywords. Maximum bid refers to the highest amount that you specify as ready to pay for a click. The metric of the Quality score depends on the overall quality of the ad.
Quality Score
The quality score is a vital metric to be focused on by marketers. High-quality scores help you accomplish superior ad positions at lesser costs since Google rewards ads which are most relevant to queries of users. ORM Services India also helps impact the quality score of ads.
In sum, it is not simply targeting of competitive keywords that make SEM so powerful- rather, it is the mix of innovative pay-per-click model, auction-based bidding and high search intent. Through knowledge of such principles, all marketers can begin to influence their potential customer’s right when they are ready to buy or convert.
