What is search engine marketing?
SEM or Search engine marketing is a digital marketing strategy that helps to build up the visibility of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Once the industry term related to both organic search activities like SEO (search engine optimization) and paid, it now states almost exclusively to paid search advertising. SEM is rather referred to as paid search or PPC (pay per click).
Why SEM?
Along with a growing number of customers shopping and researching for products online, search engine marketing has become an important online marketing strategy for developing a company’s reach. Certainly, most of the new visitors to a website find it by doing a query on a search engine.
Advertisers only pay for impressions in SEM that outcomes in visitors, making it an effective way for an organisation to spend its marketing dollars. Each visitor as an added bonus gradually enhances the website’s rankings in organic search results.
As customers enter search queries with the curiosity of finding information of a commercial nature, they are in a great mental state to make a purchase, related to other sites such as social media where users are not clearly searching for something.
At exactly the right time, Search marketing reaches consumers that is when they are open to the latest information. Other than most digital advertising, Pay per Click advertising is non-intrusive and does not bother their tasks.
Results are instant with SEM. No doubt it is the fastest way to drive traffic to a website.
Working of SEM
They make use of complex algorithms to guarantee that the most appropriate results are returned for each search that includes location and other convenient information.
Sponsored ads appear at the top and on the side of search engine results pages in paid search advertising, to get more visibility and importance than the organic results.
For instance, if you are a consumer seeking a product or service online. You have to go to a search engine and type in your search terms also known as keywords.
You will notice different company ads in your search results page whose keywords match the keywords in your search.
These ads can be seen in eye-catching locations on the page, including the other search listings that match your keywords. The paid listings are extremely appropriate to your specific search, making it probable that you will click on them.
How SEM campaigns work from the marketer’s viewpoint.
Search Engine Marketing networks are self-serve operations. When a marketer chooses a network, they can get a campaign up within a short fraction of time.
When establishing a campaign within an SEM network, the marketer is prompted to:
- 1
Make keyword research and choose a set of keywords associated to their website or product
- 2
Choose a geographic location for the ad to be exhibited within
- 3
Develop a text-based ad to display in the search results
- 4
Bid on a price they are willing to pay for each click on their ad
It is quite easy to generate Text-only ads. Marketers type a headline, text for the body of the ad, a call-to-action and a URL for the hyperlink.
SEM is considered by many to be a very effective way to spend marketing dollars.
Examples of search ad networks
The two main search networks that Search Engine Marketing professionals target are Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) and the Bing Ads.
This is actually two networks: Google Search Network and Google Display Network. The first network includes search-related websites owned by Google, and the second consists of properties such as YouTube, Blogger and Gmail. The Bing Ads enable consumers to buy ads on both Yahoo’s network of websites and Bing’s network.
Google Ads is a very large network, the cost is generally lower on Bing Ads. Marketers can be capable of getting a better reach for a competitive keyword phrase for less than they get on Google. As per some reports the clickthrough rates are higher as well.
How A/B testing can complement SEM
As you are already forming an investment in search engine marketing to bring traffic to your website, it is a valuable attempt to optimise that traffic for conversions and boost the efficiency of your spending.
This way of testing your landing pages is an easy method to increase your spend, by optimising for average order value or revenue per page.
You can increase your Quality Score with search engine marketing networks by optimising your landing page thus lowering your average CPC.
Optimizely or other platforms similar to it can help you seamlessly structure and perform your A/B tests, providing real-time results to boost your confidence in business decisions.
