Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of online marketing that involves the use of search engine result pages to promote business websites. Search engine marketing increases the visibility of websites through search engine optimization (SEO) or through paid advertising with the intent of increasing traffic to the website.
SEM is a broader term than SEO. SEM refers to all marketing activities that use search engine technology for marketing purposes. These include SEO, paid listings and ads, and other search engine related services and functions that will increase reach and exposure of the website, resulting in greater traffic.
Advantages of Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is advantageous in the following ways:
- Unlike other major sources of online marketing, SEM helps businesses connect with consumers at a time when the consumer is interested in purchasing the product or service. Email marketing, for example, involves sending emails to a database of consumers with the hope of inciting some of these consumers to purchase. However, the consumer receiving the email may not be interested in the product or service being sold, or the consumer may be interested in the product or service, but he or she may not be interested at that precise moment. Furthermore, email marketing can be seen as invasive to some customers and may lead to a loss in reputation. SEM catches the consumer at a time when he or she is actively looking for the product or service, resulting in a more engaged consumer and typically a more receptive response.
- Search engine traffic originates from a voluntary, audience-driven search. This means the visitors from a search-results link have not only selected your listing from among your peers, but have chosen the search query that resulted in your listing being shown. As a result, the audience is more engaged, relevant, and often ready to make a purchasing decision.
Some of the key metrics used to track SEM campaigns are as follows:
- Cost—The total amount spent on search advertising, which should fall within set budgets. Cost cannot be evaluated in a vacuum, and one must also consider reach, ROI, and other factors to determine if the cost is justified.
- Maximum Cost-Per-Click (CPC)—This defines the maximum amount a business is willing to pay when a potential customer clicks on an ad. A maximum bid is set for each keyword individually and also for a particular Adgroup (default Max. bid). An ad’s average position or rank is most heavily determined by two factors—quality score and maximum bid. While efforts should be constantly directed toward increasing the quality score, Max. bid is a key tool to change the average ad position. This should be used in such a manner that the top performing keywords in any campaign always fall into the desired range of average ad position.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)—Click-through rate is one of most important metrics to measure the performance of digital marketing campaigns. CTR is defined as the number of clicks an ad receives, divided by the number of times an ad is shown. CTR reflects the effectiveness of a keyword and the advertisement that goes with it. CTR can be improved by doing any of the following:
- Writing effective ads that are highly relevant to the keywords
- Improving quality scores
- Creating appropriate landing pages, site links, and extensions
- Using testimonials and ratings/certification badges from partners and authorized entities
- Quality Score—A quality score is the search engine’s measure of the relevance of keywords and ads. It is an important metric because it ensures that users see relevant ads for their searches. Improving the quality score maximizes the effectiveness of a campaign, as CPC drops and average ad position increases. Also, a good quality score is a reflection of effective landing pages, therefore, the conversions are also likely to increase. There are a variety of factors that affect the quality score. Some of those factors are listed below:
- The click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and corresponding ad
- The relevance of the keyword and ad to the search query
- The relevance of the keyword to its ad group
- The CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
- The quality of the landing page
- Conversion Rate—Conversion rate is perhaps the most important digital marketing metric to track. This metric shows the ratio of number of people who clicked on an ad and went on to complete the desired action (goal completion) on the website or mobile app to the total number of people who clicked on the ad (total clicks). The desired action can be a purchase, a trial, a sign up, or a form completion. Conversion rate is calculated using the following formula:
Search engine traffic consists of consumers who are interested in and searching for a particular term that is associated with the website. To leverage this tool and draw traffic to a company’s website, marketers must understand how to effectively use both paid and organic SEM and determine the potential exposure they can gain through both approaches.
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