Search Engine Marketing for Beginners: Step-by-Step Approach

The search engine marketing or SEM is a digital marketing strategy used to increase the visibility and credibility by advertising and promoting the businesses or services through paid ads. The search engine marketing involves both organic searches as well as paid ads to increase traffic on the website or page.

To grow or market the business SEM is equally important as SEO. A composition of search engine optimization and search engine marketing can help to enhance the business at a rapid rate.

Difference between SEM and SEO

• Cost: In context of cost effectiveness the search engine optimization is costless, whereas the search engine marketing is the paid ad strategy.
• Speed: search engine marketing allows rapid web traffic growth, whereas search engine optimization or SEO is a long term process to gain traffic or rank higher on the search engine research pages (SERPs) on the web page or the site.
• Impact:  search engine marketing shows immediate results and rapidly increases the website visibility with the help of advertisement programs. Although, search engine optimization is a slow process and it attracts organic traffic due to its unpaid benefit.

Why do businesses need SEM?

In rapidly growing digital life, gaining a brand image is not an easy task and to maintain the brand awareness along with user friendly and quality search can be tricky. To ease the process businesses look for a handy option or tool that supports the overall performance of the online site and increases credibility. Search engine marketing does this work smoothly, helps in increasing the targeted audience and enhances brand awareness along with user’s experience on search engines.

Moreover, the search engine also drives traffic to the site and the landing pages. The web page or the website can also gain traffic through search engine optimization but the process of SEO is a long term process, whereas SEM offers better results.

Benefits of SEM

Advertising the brand can help the business to grow fast and achieve the desired and targeted audience to the website. The following are some of the benefits of search engine marketing in businesses.

• Instant Results: the ads give the instant result after the implementation.
• Highly Targeted: the ads are generally targeted to a specific audience that helps the business to calculate the outcome as per the certain niche.
• Measurable ROI: Campaign performance can be tracked in real-time.
• Flexible Budgeting: although the ads are paid, advertisers can easily control the spending and optimize the ads to lower the spend waste.
• Brand Awareness: instant results on ads can directly increase brand awareness and visibility.

Types of Search Engine Marketing

A successful search engine marketing can be done only when the organic traffic and paid advertisement are achieved simultaneously. There is a need to understand the strategy of search engine marketing for the better results. Here are the main types if search engine marketing (SEM):

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC): it is an advertising section of search engine marketing. The PPC increases traffic whenever someone clicks to the ad of the respective page or website. Every time when the ad is clicked, the owner or the advertiser needs to pay a fee. It eventually increases the traffic of the site.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the SEO attracts organic traffic on the web page or site through search engines. It emphasizes keyword research and increases brand awareness without implementing any cost.
• Local Search Advertising:  the local advertising focuses on geographical factors, similar to the local SEO. It is beneficial for the organizations that have the physical outlets and it can be helpful for the organization to achieve targeted audiences in the local search.

The search engine marketing applies different ads as per the demand of the web page or the site or depending on the industry type. Here are some of the different types of ads for SEM

• Shopping ads: the shopping ads are specific to product and service, if the user looks for any product or service for purchase. The relevant shopping ads will appear in search engines, Shopping tab, etc.
• Display ads: these are the image ads that generally appear on the websites and pages.
• Search Ads: ads that are visible for the user on the search engines of their relevant topic or search.
• Video ads: video ads are the relevant advertisements specific for the website or YouTube. These ads can be seen in between the video and promote brand awareness and drive traffic to the site directly.
• App ads: the app ads are designed to increase the app traffic across search engines, they help the business to flourish by finding new app users.
• Local Ads: these ads are helpful for the nearby or geographically targeted locations and promote the business locally.

Keyword Research and Strategy

The keyword research plays a vital role for achieving more traffic to the web page or the site. Understanding the impact of keyword research on the overall growth of the industry or the web page is crucial. Moreover, search engine marketing as well as search engine optimization both rely on keyword research to increase the site visibility, attract real traffic and to enhance the user experience.

Whenever the audience searches with a specific keyword or term, the search engine marketing assures that the brand appears on the search engine for the same search keyword or query.

There are numerous tools to search keywords as per the niche such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush and Ahrefs.  When the audience searches for keywords, they also find the sponsored ad at the top or bottom of the search engines.

Types of keywords

Businesses run keyword searches to create campaigns and ads on the online platform for the specific product, service or information they are providing. There are various types of keywords that affect the overall performance of the website. The following is the list of keywords types and their value as per the content.

• Short-tail and Long-tail keywords: the short tail keywords are popular and generic terms whereas the long tail keywords are specific and targeted to a particular topic or term.
• Branded and Non-branded keywords: branded keywords include the company name whereas the non-branded keywords have the keywords that are related to the products and services search.
• Negative keywords: the negative keywords helps the advertiser to exclude the irrelevant keywords from the ads or campaigns to enhance the user experience and get the target audience.

Type of SEM Campaigns

Campaigns are the set of ads and strategies for the organization to control overall budget each campaign can comprise multiple ad groups. Campaigns allow you to set an overall budget, choose audience targeting, multiple keywords and apply settings that affect all ad groups within the campaign. The following are some of the campaigns used in search engine marketing.

• Search Network Campaigns
• Display Network Campaigns
• Shopping Campaigns
• Video Campaigns

Budget allocation and bidding strategies

Budget allocation strategy helps the business to manage the expense on a group, ad or campaigns by manual settings and bid adjustments. The budget allocation and bidding strategies in search engine marketing helps to maximize the conversion on the search engines.

• Manual CPC: Manual CPC is a budget allocation or a bidding mode that allows the business to set their specific maximum cost per click rate.
• Enhanced CPC: it is a biding strategy that automatically adjusts the cost per clicks to increase the lead conversion and manage the cost.
• Target ROAS: The Return on Ad Spend or ROAS is calculated on the amount of revenue the business is earning on each dollar spent on advertising. This budget allocation strategy analyzes and helps the search engine to predict the potential conversion value whenever the user searches for the product or services, business is advertising.

Campaign Optimization Techniques

• Adjusting bids based on performance will help the business to increase the conversion and manage the expense.
• Adding or removing the keywords as per the updates will help the page and the website to run smoothly and as per the search engine.
• Optimizing the rank of the advertisement will help to boost the audience size, increase credibility and provide the user experience 
• The improved quality score in search engine marketing help[s the business to work effectively and manages the expense value.
• A/B testing campaigns: it is an experimental campaign where the business tests or compares two versions of the content and analysis to enhance the outcome.
• Remarketing Campaigns: Remarketing is a marketing tactic that allows you to serve ads to target audiences that have previously visited a website or engaged with your social media content.

Campaign Targeting

Campaign targeting will allow the business to achieve a genuine and selective audience to increase the user experience. Targeting promotes the reach to the relevant audience. Here are some of the targeting types in search engine marketing:

• Geographic targeting: the advertisements that are only visible to certain locations or specific geographical areas.
• Demographic targeting: advertisements that focus specifically on a particular group, gender, age, etc. are considered as demographic targeting.
• Device targeting: to target the user depending on the device whether the mobile targeting or the desktop specific.
• Time-based targeting: advertisements that run for limited time. For example, the sale or the countdown of new series.

Landing Page Optimization for SEM

The landing page optimization for the search engine marketing is done to create a smooth and friendly user experience once they click the ad to improve the quality score and conversion. To optimize the landing page of the website for SEM lead generation here are the tips to follow:

• Adding catchy and clear headings to increase the user engagement.
• The web or landing page should also be conveniently accessible for the mobile users.
• The page speed also impacts the optimization process.
• Avoid bulk linking and unnecessary links.
• Design a landing page to increase the Call to action (CTA) on the page, for example: “Buy Now”, “Book Now” or “Get a Quote”

Tracking and Analytics

Tracking and analyzing the ads are the important step of search engine marketing management to enhance the overall performance of the site and the business and to analyze the return on investment (ROI). To track and analysis the search engine marketing techniques and growth, here are the some key feature to remember and follow:

• Conversion tracking: the method of tracking the user’s action on the website after the click on the website ads is conversion tracking. It calculates the conversion generated through campaigns, ads, keywords and more. Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion tags are some of the search engine marketing conversion tracking tools.

There are certain basic metrics to focus while tracking the ads.

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): it is the ratio of the clicks per ad and the impressions.
• Cost per click (CPC): it is the online advertising revenue template through which advertisers are charged every time a user clicks on ads.
• Impression Share: it is a percentage of the ad calculated as the impression the ads receive by the estimated impression the ad can receive.
• Quality Score: the quality score is a method to analyze the quality of the ad by comparing it to other advertisers. Quality score assists in managing and improving the quality of the ads to enhance the user experience.

Tools for SEM

The Search engine marketing professionals need various analytic and strategy tools to run an impactful advertisement and achieve a fruitful result for search result marketing. Here are some of the popular SEM tools:

• Semrush
• Google Ads
• Optmyzr
• Ahrefs
• WordStream
• Supermetrics
• Management
• Google Trends
• HubSpot ads
• Microsoft Advertising
• Microsoft Clarity
• Google Ads Manager
• SEMrush / Ahrefs / Moz
• Google Keyword Planner
• Google Analytics & Data Studio

Difficulties in SEM and How to manage them

The search engine marketing can lead to a high loss due to certain ignorance and difficulties. If performed without proper understanding and analysis one can risk the brand image and will cost high. Here are the challenges faced in search engine marketing along with the search engine marketing management tactics to overcome the issues:

• High competition and rising CPCs
• Click fraud and invalid clicks: accidental clicks, duplicate or no result clicks through a genuine user are generally the invalid clicks whereas, fraud clicks are done deliberately by the person or a bot to confuse the search engine or the server. Implementing filters that allow the business to block known fraudulent or spam IP addresses.
• Ad fatigue: Ad fatigue occurs when the user sees the same ad for a long period of time. To overcome this issue, businesses can run different ads within a gap of 3 to 5 days or as per the ad preference.
• Ensuring compliance with ad policies

Search engine marketing is a powerful and crucial tool for businesses seeking to achieve instant result, visibility and targeted traffic on search engines. A well-planned search engine marketing strategy needs detailed and updated keyword research, optimized landing pages, active management and regular monitoring.

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