What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
Search Engine Marketing uses paid advertisements as a strategy in digital marketing to increase the visibility of a website and rank higher in search engine results page (SERPs).
Companies pay to get their products featured on top of the SERPs and those appear as “sponsored”. These paid ads are commonly referred to as “pay-per-click” ads and come in various forms like, text-based ads and product listing ads or shopping ads, that let consumers see crucial information at first glance.
SEO vs. SEM
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of paid advertisement, where companies pay Google to feature their website on top of the results page.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is different from SEM, as SEO doesn’t rely on paying Google for clicks and traffic, instead focuses on optimizing content and keywords to earn a high rank.
Both ways are a highly effective part of the marketing strategy. SEO is a useful tool to ensure continual traffic at the top of the funnel, whereas SEM is great to drive conversions at the bottom of the funnel.
How does SEM work?
While SEO relies on content optimization to boost organic traffic, SEM relies on targeted ads to drive paid traffic.
What are the steps to an effective SEM?
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- Conduct keyword research
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- Find the one with the most search volume
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- Identify a space in the SERPs to place the keyword
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- Come up with a text-based ad to place in the page
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- Calculate the cost per click (CPC)
Pay per click campaigns, means marketers pay search engine providers every time a user clicks an ad. The revenue accumulated from consumers buying the product via the ad should be higher than the cost of PPC.
SEM Keyword Research
Before you select keywords, it’s important to first conduct a thorough research of keywords relevant to your business. You can use Google Ads Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs. Next, go for words with a high search volume and then you can go ahead and set up your ad.
Best SEM Practices
- Ad: Independent ads users see
- Campaign: Highest level in google ads account. A single ad can have numerous ad groups. Campaigns allow you to create budgets, target audience, and apply these to all ad groups
- Keyword: Terms bid for in each ad group
- Ad group: In the campaign, ads groups organize campaigns by a common theme. Each ad group can contain multiple ads and a set of keywords.
Optimise Landing pages
It’s important to make sure your landing pages are relevant to the ad that got your customers to you in the first place. This will help rank higher, drive website traffic, and increase conversion rates.
Setting up PPC campaigns
Pay Per Click campaigns revolve around a certain theme depending on the business objective. Ensure to keep your ad campaigns organised.
AD Auctions
An ad auction process begins every time a user enters a keyword into the search engine. To be part of the auction, you need to first identify the keywords you want to bid on and calculate the cost per click. If google identifies your keyword with the keyword the user has searched for, your ads will be part of the ad auction.
How do Ads win the Ad auction?
Not every single Ad will appear in the search query. The ad auction considers many factors before placing your ad in the search query.
- Maximum Bid: The amount you are willing to pay for a click.
- Quality Score: Measures the overall quality of your advertisement. Google measures both these actors before placing your advertisement. The calculation is known as ad rank (Max. Bid x Quality Score).
A high quality score can help you score higher in the ad position at lower costs. Because Google likes ads that are related to what users search for.