Search engine marketing, or SEM, is one of the most effective ways to grow your business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. With millions of businesses out there all vying for the same eyeballs, it’s never been more important to advertise online, and search engine marketing is the most effective way to promote your products and grow your business.
Search Engine Marketing – An Overview
Search engine marketing is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (or SERPs). Advertisers bid on keywords that users of services such as Google and Bing might enter when looking for certain products or services, which gives the advertiser the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.
These ads, often known by the term pay-per-click ads, come in a variety of formats. Some are small, text-based ads, whereas others, such as product listing ads (PLAs, also known as Shopping ads) are more visual, product-based advertisements that allow consumers to see important information at-a-glance, such as price and reviews.
Search engine marketing’s greatest strength is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to put their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re ready to make a purchase. No other advertising medium can do this, which is why search engine marketing is so effective and such an amazingly powerful way to grow your business.
SEM vs. SEO
SEM versus SEO: What’s the difference?
Generally, “search engine marketing” refers to paid search marketing, a system where businesses pay Google to show their ads in the search results.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is different because businesses don’t pay Google for traffic and clicks; rather, they earn a free spot in the search results by having the most relevant content for a given keyword search.
Both SEO and SEM should be fundamental parts of your online marketing strategy. SEO is a powerful way to drive evergreen traffic at the top of the funnel, while search engine advertisements are a highly cost-effective way to drive conversions at the bottom of the funnel.
Keywords: The Foundation of Search Engine Marketing
Keywords are the foundation of search engine marketing. As users enter keywords (as part of search queries) into search engines to find what they’re looking for, it should come as little surprise that keywords form the basis of search engine marketing as an advertising strategy.
SEM Keyword Research
Before you can choose which keywords to use in your search engine marketing campaigns, you need to conduct comprehensive research as part of your keyword management strategy.
First, you need to identify keywords that are relevant to your business and that prospective customers are likely to use when searching for your products and services. One way to accomplish this is by using WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool.
Simply enter a keyword that’s relevant to your business or service, and see related keyword suggestion ideas that can form the basis of various search engine marketing campaigns.
WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool provides you with a range of valuable information, such as the search volume for each individual keyword in Google and its general competitiveness.
In addition to helping you find keywords you should be bidding on, thorough keyword research can also help you identify negative keywords – search terms that you should exclude from your campaigns. Negative keywords aren’t terms with negative connotations, but rather irrelevant terms that are highly unlikely to result in conversions. For example, if you sell ice cream, you might want to exclude the keyword “ice cream recipes”, as users searching for ice cream recipes are unlikely to be in the market for your product.
This concept is known as search intent or the likelihood that a prospect will complete a purchase or other desired action after searching for a given term. Some keywords are considered to have high commercial intent or a strong indication that the searcher wants to buy something. Examples of high commercial intent keywords include:
- Buy
- Discount(s)
- Deal(s)
- Coupon(s)
- Free shipping
Keywords and Account Structure
Another crucial aspect of keywords that is essential for the success of a search engine marketing campaign is account structure.
Logical keyword grouping and account structure can help you achieve higher click-through rates, lower costs-per-click, and generally stronger overall performance, and keyword research can help you think about how to best structure your account.
A perfect Google Ads account structure is comprised of five distinct elements:
- Ad campaigns
- Ad groups
- Keywords
- Ad text
- Landing pages
Ad campaigns can, and should in many cases, focus on similar products or services. For example, if you run a hardware store, one ad campaign could focus exclusively on autumnal products such as leaf blowers, rakes, and leaf bags, whereas another might focus on power tools and so on.
Ad groups allow for each campaign to be further subcategorized for relevance. In our hardware store example, one ad group could be for different types of rakes or varying models of leaf blowers. For the power tools campaign, one ad group might focus on power drills, while another could focus on circular saws. This level of organization might take slightly longer to set up initially, but the rewards – namely higher CTRs at lower cost – make this effort worthwhile in the long run.
The Search Engine Marketing Ad Auction
One of the most enduring misconceptions about search engine marketing is that whoever has the largest advertising budget wins. Although a larger advertising budget can certainly be advantageous, especially when targeting highly competitive keywords, it’s far from a requirement for success with search engine marketing. This is because all ads go through a process known as the ad auction before appearing alongside search results. For the purposes of this explanation, we’ll be focusing on the ad auction in Google AdWords.
How the Ad Auction Works
The ad auction process takes place every single time someone enters a search query into Google. To be entered into the ad auction, advertisers identify keywords they want to bid on and state how much they are willing to spend (per click) to have their ads appear alongside results relating to those keywords. If Google determines that the keywords you have bid on are contained within a user’s search query, your ads are entered into the ad auction.
How Ads ‘Win’ the Ad Auction
Not every single ad will appear on every single search. This is because the ad auction takes a variety of factors into account when determining the placement of ads on the SERP, and because not every keyword has sufficient commercial intent to justify displaying ads next to results. However, the two main factors that Google evaluates as part of the ad auction process are your maximum bid and the Quality Score of your ads.
Maximum bid is the maximum amount you have specified you are willing to pay for a click. Quality Score is a metric based on the overall quality of your advertisement. Google calculates these metrics during the ad auction to determine the placement of advertisements. The result of this calculation is known as ad rank.
Given that Google AdWords’ Quality Score comprises half of the ad rank formula, it is one of the most crucial metrics search engine marketers can focus on. High-Quality Scores can help you achieve a better ad position at lower costs because Google favors ads that are highly relevant to user queries.
What are the Tools to Learn in PPC Marketing
With digital marketing becoming a mainstay for business growth, Pay Per Click advertising is gaining in popularity. PPC campaigns are central to any digital marketing team’s success. But the questions that hound PPC marketers remain the same: How can I cut costs and amplify revenue on my PPC campaigns? How do I improve click-throughs and conversions without compromising on traffic quality?
Are there tools that can help me achieve all this so it isn’t a chore?
You bet. This helpful list of tools are must-haves to excel in your PPC career. And if you aspire to build a PPC career someday, these tools and platforms will help you gain all the hands-on expertise you need!
Tool for PPC Competitor Research
It is vital to know about your competitors as well, while researching your competitors’ paid search marketing strategy, you can use free Google search or you can pay to use other search tools.
- Competitor Research via Google
The first step is to see your actual competitors. I can’t count the number of times that a company has told me who their competitors are – only for me to find out those aren’t their AdWords competitors. AdWords has a great tool called ‘auction insights’ where you can see who you are competing against for a selection of keywords.
If you want to do a nice audit on these companies, take a look at:
- Ads: What offers are they including?
- Website: Are they using dedicated landing pages, unique offers, special discounts, or something else to entice the user?
- Their funnel: What is their overall sales funnel? To get a great idea of this, signup for their newsletters, download whitepapers, take a trial and see how they interact with you.
Special note: Please don’t use your company email address for this!
- Get alternative keyword ideas.
The Keyword Planner Tool is your go-to research place for AdWords. This tool makes it easy to look at keywords, find keyword volume, plan out your budgets, etc. Every marketer should know this tool.
- Bing Ad Intelligence
Bing Ad Intelligence is a free Excel plugin that Bing offers to view a lot of great data about keywords, search volume, and more. It has a great feature set and is one of the most overlooked PPC tools on the market.
- Examining AdWords & Bing Auctions
Take a look at the live search results and use the Ad Preview Tools to see what these ads look like by device (does your competition use a dedicated mobile site or special mobile offers?) You can gain perspective on all these aspects by analyzing the ads your competitors are using in search results.
You could gain clarity on what are the various Google AdWords & Bing Ads features, like call extensions, site links, automated extensions, and the ratings your competitors are using. You can even pay close attention to call tracking, dedicated pages, and special offers beyond the title, description, and link your competitors are employing.
The verbiage your competitors use in their ad copy could prove to be vital. You could consider quoting very affordable rates, to help convert the leads and grab the attention of potential converts. These may be items you want to include in your ad to draw attention and clicks to your website.
Landing pages are quite essential when it comes to converting your clicks into customers. By adding a phone number to your landing page, you could have the benefit of gaining a customer, instead of losing the person to your competitors.
Competitor Research via Other Tools
We just covered various aspects of how to meticulously research your competitors using Google, let’s look at some of the top paid search marketing tools that can help you dive even deeper into your competitors’ strategies.
KeywordCompetitor
KeywordCompetitor helps you capture your competitors’ paid keywords, ads, and landing pages. It keeps track and provided a daily update on any changes to ads, keyword positions, and landing pages so you know if competitors are gaining on you.
Best Use of KeywordCompetitor: to enable a search and find your competitors’ paid and organic keywords. When competitors begin to get the upper hand, you will be notified so that you could take measures to step up with effective strategies.
iSpionage
iSpionage provides insight into competitors’ effective keywords, ad copy, and ad budget. You could run a few sample queries to see the limited data provided by this tool.
Best Use of iSpionage: This tool has the ability to find out exactly what your competition is up to and gives you an almost unfair advantage. Whether you’re an agency or running your PPC/organic campaign at home on a small budget, iSpionage will give your business the tools to enhance your ROI.
SEMrush
SEMrush helps you quickly find your advertising competitors based on the keywords you plan to target. You could click on your competitors to see what other keywords they target their ads toward and the ad copy they use.
Best Use of SEMrush: you can find out who the top organic and paid competitors are for a particular keyword in Google or Bing.
SpyFu
SpyFu creates visibility for every place your competitor has shown up on Google, including all of the keywords they have bought and the ad variations they have used. You could run a few sample queries to check the capability of this tool.
Best Use of SpyFu: view the most profitable keywords of competitors based on their last several years of advertising history.
KeywordSpy
KeywordSpy enables you to uncover the competitive landscape by displaying your competitors’ PPC campaign strategies and pinpointing the most profitable keyword and ad copy combinations they use.
Best Use of KeywordSpy: Employ the ROI indicator to quickly gauge the value of keywords.
Adbeat
Adbeat enables you to uncover any advertiser’s online strategy, and see what works for them, spy on ad copy split testing, and find unique creatives used by an advertiser.
Best Use of Adbeat: scan through the top ads and the formats of the ads (text, flash, video, etc.). it works well in helping you become a leader in content network advertising channels.
