Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Next in SEM…

SEM is a non-intrusive form of marketing. Marketers understand that the person is in a hunt mode and is looking for information which may directly or indirectly be of commercial nature.

Keyword research plays a critical role in selecting and bidding on the right set of keywords and this can give the advertiser excellent results. Choosing the right keywords can make or break search engine marketing campaigns.

The objective is to choose keywords that have high volume and low competition. This will increase the likelihood that the ad will rank well and bring the PPC down.

There are several keyword research tools that you can use to do SEM keyword research. These keyword research tools give insight into the search volume and competition level of keywords, most keyword research tools also give information about the average or current estimated PPC/CPC for the keywords.

This keyword analysis gives a good idea of the keywords that will not only be beneficial for the SEM campaign but also cost effective.

Factor In These Points As Well When SEMing –

• You can type your search slowly and take note of Google’s Autofill, looking for keyword areas you hadn’t considered.
• You can take note of whether competitors are advertising on these keywords and verify the competition level that ads are showing for these keywords.
• You can screenshot competitors ads and take note of ad extensions and copy used and then create a better version.

All search engine marketing platforms work on a bidding system, where advertisers place bids on certain keywords and audiences. Whoever bids the most, ranks the highest. You only have to pay enough to outbid the next highest bid.

The SEM campaign has to play a balancing game between ranking higher and paying too much for the clicks.

Most SEM platforms take the quality of the ads into account, which you can tap to outrank the competition even if you can’t afford to outbid them. To calculate the quality score most SEM platforms look at factors such as how strong the landing page is and how relevant the ad is to the keywords selected.

As a lower required CPC will mean you can pay more for ad placements and in the long run optimizing the quality score can help the campaigns significantly.

Google gives each ad a quality score and takes that quality score into account when calculating where the ad ranks: Maximum Bid * Quality Score = Ad Rank/Position.

Many forms of search are now evolving including voice search and search within app environments. Many countries have their general purpose or specialty search engines locally build up to meet the needs of their local population.

Search engine marketing encompasses a number of different skills, including but not limited to:

• Search engine advertising
• Search engine optimization
• Link development and social media optimization (SMO)
• Specialized search engine optimization (video, local, mobile, etc.)

You can likely expect organic search to continue to be pushed further down the page as advertising takes up more space. Understanding how to use search engine marketing effectively is an important skill for every marketer.

We at BPM help suggest the right keywords and execute & optimize the search campaigns for our clients to deliver best results.