Search engine marketing often abbreviated SEM is a valuable dimension of marketing on the Internet that relies on the widespread use of search engines.
Google
alone generates millions of searches every single minute of
the day by people all over the globe. Some of these people are searching for
businesses like yours.
Successful
SEM ensures that these individuals are connected to information about your
company, products and brand — and not your competitors.
Why Is SEM Important?
Because
search engines are the go-to information channel in the Digital Age, visibility
on search results pages is an absolute must.
Neglecting
to market your business effectively on search engines is the digital equivalent
of not listing your company in the yellow pages or forgetting to put a sign on
the front of your store.
It’s
bad business.
And,
it isn’t just about attracting new customers, but also re-engaging past clients
and encouraging them to return.
SEM
achieves both of these goals.
Types Of SEM
There
are two primary avenues that businesses can take to achieve search engine
marketing: paid search marketing or organic search marketing. This article will
primarily focus on the former, but we’ll briefly touch on and explain organic
search.
It’s
important to note that it is not a one-or-the-other scenario. Most businesses
deploy both paid and organic search marketing tactics.
Organic Search Marketing
This
side of SEM deals with building your site’s authority and reputation through
search engine optimization strategies.
Search engines
optimization, like Google or Bing, only want to send users to sites that
they know are safe and authoritative, particularly on the subjects related to a
user’s query.
Improving
your authority allows your website and its pages to rank higher on search
results. The higher your rank, the more visibility you have through search
engines.
Paid Search Marketing
The
other SEM road to take is the paid search
marketing route. Instead of achieving organic search results, this strategy
allows businesses to pay a little money to place ads at the top of the results
pages.
When
we talk about visibility on search engines, paying for a top spot on the page
is really powerful. Consumers want quick answers to their searches and they
often won’t mind, or even notice, if the result is a paid ad.
When
done right, paid search marketing is a small investment for a lot of potential
rewards.
The Differences Between Organic And Paid
Search Marketing
The
most immediate difference is obvious. SEO and organic search marketing are
“free.” While it may cost money to hire a specialist or content creator, SEO
strategies don’t cost anything but time. Paid advertising has a cost.
Beyond
that, there are other, less-obvious differences between organic and paid SEM.
Speed
Organic
SEM through SEO can take months, or even years, to really pay off. It is very
hard to climb the search rankings for certain keywords or topics that have a a lot of competition.
With
paid SEM, your results are much more immediate. There’s no waiting for
strategies to mature. If you have a live paid search campaign running, you have
opportunities to place ads above the organic results for your targeted keyword
searches.
Traffic Intent
No
matter what SEM road you take, the goal is to drive traffic to your website.
However, ad traffic has different qualities from organic traffic.
Ad
traffic typically has higher buying intent. The people that choose to click an
ad over an organic result are motivated to buy and want to make a purchase quickly.
Organic
traffic, on the other hand, is individuals that may still be in the
discovery phase of buying. They may not be ready to buy right away.
Measurable
It can
be hard for marketers to really know what sort of returns are created by
organic search marketing? It is hard to understand how much was spent and
what level of results that investment has generated.
This
is not so with paid search marketing. There are a direct cost element and an
in-depth dashboard of metrics that show exactly how users are responding
to your search ad content.
Calculating
your ROI is incredibly straightforward.
Understanding PPC And Paid Search
Marketing
With
the benefits of paid search marketing explained, it is obvious why many
companies choose this route. Sure, it costs a little more, but the ability to
get fast, measurable results from customers that are ready to buy is critical.
For a more deep analysis of PPC marketing is to be a better
understanding of Paid search marketing.
What Does ‘PPC’ Mean?
Paid
search marketing uses the PPC model of Internet advertising. PPC stands for
pay-per-click, which means companies pay for their search ads when a user
clicks the content.
If the ad is placed on a search results page, but a user clicks a different paid or the organic result instead, then the business/advertiser doesn’t pay anything.
This
keeps costs relatively low. Plus, because the user still sees the ad, there is
some brand awareness gained, even if they don’t click.
How Much Does PPC Cost?
So,
what happens when someone does click an ad? How much does this
cost a business?
When a business created a paid search for the marketing campaign, they
decide how much they will bid for each keyword or potential ad placement.
This the bid is essentially how much you’re willing to spend on a single click. If you
bid $0.50, then you’ll pay 50 cents for each click for that keyword.
How Are Ad Placements Decided?
You
are bidding against the other marketers that want the same ad placements. The
winner of the auction determines which ads are displayed and in what position.
Remember,
the top results have the best visibility.
That
said, it isn’t just your bid amount that matters. PPC platforms don’t want to
create an environment where only the biggest wallets prosper because this would
hurt the integrity of their search engine.
Thus,
they also factor in things like the quality of the ads, how relevant they are
to the intended keywords and more.
In
Google Ads, these qualities culminate in your “Quality Score.” Google uses
this, along with your bid amount, to determine your ad rank and ad position.
The
better your Quality Score, the less you pay!
Conclusions
The
best search engine marketing strategy is to use both paid and organic tactics
together. Paid search marketing through PPC ads can be a great way to gain
visibility on those search results pages where you can’t seem to rank
organically.
The
better you are at interweaving these two types of SEM, the better your overall a digital marketing strategy will be.
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