SEM

Effective Search engine marketing – the paid game.

Once upon a time, SEM encompassed both SEO and paid search activities but nowadays SEM focuses more on using paid advertisements on search engines to acquire website traffic. The purpose of this blog will be to discuss a little about SEM and how SEM can drive traffic numbers and conversions if executed effectively.

Let’s start out with one of the most prominent practices within the SEM channel – Paid per Click Campaigns (PPC). PPC marketing is defined by wordstream as an advertising tool where online businesses pay for each time their advertisement is clicked on by users. Basically PPC campaigns allow businesses to purchase visitors to their website instead of the long drawn out process of sourcing traffic organically. The whole PPC component got us thinking, is there a textbook blueprint of an effective PPC campaign out there?

It turns out that there are a few key elements that make up an effective PPC campaign. First up is thorough customer research. Formulating an audience to target and discovering the types of phrases they use to search for desired products is the first step in achieving an effective PPC campaign according to neilpatel. The more accurate the list of keywords are at predicting what targeted users search for, the more effective businesses will be at exposing their advertisements to potential customers. A tip for generating an optimal list of targeted keywords: use keyword analytical tools such as keywordplanner to evaluate search volumes and keyword competition.

The next element of an effective PPC campaign is organising keywords into groups based off relevance. The higher the similarity between keywords in a group, the easier it will be to track performance of specific advertisements. Also remember to keep keywords dynamic, meaning you should include a mixture of generic keywords and long tail keywords to cover all bases of your target audiences searching intent.

The main take away here is to understand the importance of both customer research and keyword grouping development. The more thoroughly both steps are completed, the better the chance of an effective and profitable PPC campaign.