7 tips to better your Search Engine Marketing - The BigRock Blog ...

SEM stands for ?Search Engine Marketing?. It is the process of gaining traffic from visibility on search engines.

SEM is an umbrella term that covers two broad areas:

• Gaining traffic through organic SEO efforts
• Gaining traffic through paid search advertising

Search engine optimization?(SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a?website?or a?web page?on a?search engine?s result page. What it really means is that the higher and more frequently a site appears in the search results, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine?s users.

However, SEO is a long-term process which requires a lot of effort and ongoing attention. Paid Search Advertising on the other hand helps drive relevant traffic to your website immediately if you have optimized campaigns and sufficient marketing budgets.

The internet has changed the concept of marketing tremendously. SEM is like a tab in a telephone book that would lead customers directly to your business when they search for services or products using search engines.? SEM, if done properly, can help small businesses compete with much larger companies online.

The next question that probably comes to your mind is ? What are the basic factors you need to keep in mind while drafting out a successful paid advertising search strategy?

1. Focus on Quality Score

Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords and landing page are to a potential customer. Having a high Quality Score means that your ad, keyword and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking for your product. Google constantly updates its quality score based on your keyword performance.

2. Focus on your Marketing Funnel

An ideal Marketing Funnel will look somewhat like this ?

Ad Impressions >> Clicks on the Ad >> Visits to your Site >> Conversions

Once your Ad is visible on search engines, the quality of the ad is what will determine the ?Click Through Rate? ? This is basically the number of people who will click on your Ads. These people then get directed to your website and here is where the true test lies. The quality of your Landing Page is extremely important. If your content and design visually appeals to the visitors, there?s a high possibility that they will end up purchasing your products. The conversion rate of visitors to customers depends on the type of products you offer, the features of your products and also, the load time of your page. If a page takes too long to load, a person might close the tab and never visit your site again.

3. Measuring reach and frequency

By analyzing reach and frequency data, you can find out how many people saw your ads and how many times they saw them over a certain period of time. Reach is the number of unique customers exposed to a particular advertisement during a specified period of time. Frequency is the minimum number of times a unique user saw your ad over a given time period. You will need to carry out a number of simple experiments to determine the ?Optimal Frequency? when users are most likely to click on your Ads and which gives you maximum conversions.

4. Target ads to a specific geographic location

When it comes to advertising, consider the real estate adage: ?Location, location, location!? Regardless of how great your ad is, it probably won?t perform as well if it doesn?t appear in the right places. Reach your customers where they are and where your business can serve them by using AdWords location targeting.

5. Set up your ad?s target language

If you don?t speak the native language while visiting a foreign country, you might find it tough to get your message across. Similarly with AdWords, you want to make sure your advertising message shows to your customers in the right language.

With the AdWords?language targeting?feature, your ads can appear for customers who use Google products and third-party websites in the languages that your campaign targets. This helps ensure that your ads will appear on sites that are written in the language of the customers you?d like to reach!

6. Create a campaign with targeted keywords and interest categories

Your ads are eligible to appear based on the similarity of your keywords to the search terms on Google. Only one keyword can trigger an ad per search term. Picking the right keywords is extremely important for your campaigns to be ROI positive. So, if you deal in Sports Merchandise, picking ?football? as a keyword would be the ideal choice. You might also want to keep in mind Keyword Match-Types which help ?you control which searches can trigger your ad

Building an effective campaign structure is extremely important as it translates your objectives into actual conversions. Interest categories are great for helping you reach people as they browse Display Network websites based on their interests, even when the content they?re viewing may not be immediately relevant to your ad. With over 1,600 interests to choose from, you?re bound to find a category that works for your business.

7. Schedule Ad Campaigns

When you create a new AdWords campaign, you can control how long it runs. This comes in handy when you already know the date you want your campaign to end ? say after a promotion or offer expires, for example. Just set that?end date?in advance, and when the day comes, you won?t have to change it manually. Google Adwords automatically sets your start date to ?today? unless you specify otherwise. In this manner, your campaign starts as soon as your first ads are approved.

These are some of the very basic pointers you must keep in mind while building your paid advertising strategy.

Do you have any SEM activities that?you?ve?undertaken for your website? Share your tips in the comment section below

Source: http://bigrock.com/blog/website/7-tips-to-better-your-search-engine-marketing

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