What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and how important it is for your BUSINESS?
Google results page is split into two areas, paid and organic sections. The main section is the organic search result (wide column on the left), Google sorts the results regarding the websites ranking for the search term (The keyword you are searching for results), the natural search can be achieved using Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
The First three results on top of the organic listings with small Ad icon are the paid ads and can be achieved with SEM, known as PPC, Pay Per Click.
So why is it really important to be on the first page of Google and also above the fold?
80% of the new users are coming from search engines, with billions of pages on internet and with its daily growth, how do you ensure that your site is one they engage?
More than 75% of users never make it past the first page and more than 90% of the clicks are on the links above the fold!
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) provides an incredibly targeted way to present your website to your desired audience.
With well performed SEM campaign results in high ROI (Return on Investment), the investment gains compare favorably to investment cost, the cost is paying for clicks on your ad, however no money is wasted because your ad is shown to the targeted audience and in locations that you want expand your business.
PPC campaigns should be managed carefully to avoid targeting the wrong audience and wasting the budget on non-profitable keywords.
Here is our best practice to properly optimized campaign:
Understand the business and the GOALS
The first step for us, is to understand your business goals to achieve through launching a PPC campaign.
Without underlying business goals to measure success against, SEM is waste of money.
We would like to know the answers to following questions:
- What goals should the PPC campaigns achieve? (Goals measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives)
- What type of actions should your visitors do to be measured as an accomplished goal?
- How much is each Goal worth to your business?
The answers will help us to understand the goals allow us to start developing a campaign that’s benefit to the business and delivers measurable results.
Keyword Research and Analysis
The objective of keyword research and Analysis is to generate, visits and Conversions which come from choosing the right Keywords to bid on.
Clients begin searching for a product or service on search engines by typing some keywords then they expect to see a list of relevant websites in the result page, so if the keywords are not in your campaign or the bid for that keywords are too low to be shown on the SERP, it’s more likely you miss the chance to present your website to the customer.
By understanding who your customers are, what words or phrases they are likely to use, and optimising your content to include these, you will find this to be one of the most valuable things you can do for your online marketing. Researching the right keywords will help you understand how the clients search for the service or products you provide.
The Ads Copy
Our best practice to write ads copy is to write a compelling ads with the focused keywords, review you competitors ads and use a proper call to actions and at end create different format of the ads for A/B testing and optimized the higher performing ads.
AB ads Testing
If you are unable to decide between two different sets of ad copy or two different landing pages, I recommend to set both on the campaign and watch the CTR carefully, increasing your CTR (Click Through Rate) is one the most important things you can do in your PPC campaigns.
Optimized landing pages
Landing page optimization (LPO) is one part of a broader Internet marketing process called conversion optimization, or conversion rate optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.
On the campaign-specific landing page, the entire page is focused on only one thing, it’s simple, speak to the right audience, and is well designed.
Measure Results
After launching the campaign we are able to measure and monitor campaigns activities and success and be ready to make improvement.
Here are some metrics that we recommend to evaluate the success of the PPC Ccampaigns:
Conversions, Quality Score, Click Through Rate (CTR), Average Cost per Click (CPC), Impression Share, Bounce rate, Impressions and Clicks
If you’re interested in onlinemarketing and want to engage visitors to your website you were already looking for the service product that you offer and if the Internet is important to your business you need to be looking very seriously at search engine marketing. Our analysis on your SEM campaign, helps you to have high ROI.
Paid search and natural search both have their place but if you’re not looking at SEM you are undoubtedly missing out on a massive opportunity.