If you’re a website owner and looking forward to increase your online presence quickly, search engine marketing, better known as SEM, is the way to go.
Search engine marketing is a form of digital marketing strategy that helps boost the website’s reach and visibility in search engines. While SEO is organic effort, SEM is solely paid search advertising; sometimes also referred to as pay-per-click (PPC).
How Does SEM Work
In SEM, sponsored ads appear at the top of and on the most prominent places on the search engine result pages, leading to more visibility and prominence as compared to organic results. Being incredibly specific to the keywords researched, these paid ads are more likely to get more clicks.
Following are some important dos and don’ts of SEM that every digital marketer should follow to ensure effective results.
DO Conduct Keyword Research
SEM basically involves bidding on keywords to get the ad placed, hence it is important to bid on the most relevant and trending keywords as per the business. Thus, conducting keyword research is a vital task before implementing the strategy. Using various keyword research tools, one can figure out what keywords drive people to the site the most.
DON’T Use Broad Keywords
Using broad keywords can be a bummer for your strategy. While performing keyword research, one should always prefer addressing specific aspects of the business, instead of using a vague term. For example, using the keyword ‘diamond ring’ is more preferable than ‘jewelry’.
DO Conduct Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting is a tactic through which a marketer can limit the areas where the ad appears. Geo-targeting is an easy and convenient way of cutting down the irrelevant traffic that could be bought to the site and increase the budget.
DON’T Forget to Create Landing Pages
When someone clicks on the ad, it will drive them to website and then they’ll decide if they want to explore more or exit the site. Creating landing pages that match the search terms can make them stay, but if they land on landing page that does not relate to their query or keyword, they are likely to leave. Hence, every search term in the SEM campaign should be linked to a landing page that is relevant.
DO Conduct A/B Testing
An SEM campaign should always have testing and tracking to see which ads, keywords and landing page combinations get the best result. A/B testing means creating two ad combinations, running them both and then analyzing which one performs better. The ad that performs the best is then kept and the other ad can be replaced with a new one, and the testing continues, until the ideal ad combination is determined.
Digital marketing is growing with every passing day and it has become really difficult to stay at the top. Applying these strategies in your SEM campaign can help outdo the competition and expand the reach.