Search engine marketing (SEM):

Search engine marketing SEM, is one of the most operative ways to grow your business in an increasingly inexpensive marketplace.

. With millions of businesses out there all vying for the same eyeballs, it’s never been more important to promote online, and search engine marketing (SEM) is the most effective way to promote their products and grow your business.

In this guide, you’ll learn an overview of search engine marketing basics as well as some tips and strategies for doing search engine marketing right.

Search engine marketing overview:

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages, or SERPs.

Advertisers bid on keywords that users of services such as Google and Facebook might enter when looking for certain products for services, which gives the advertiser the chance for their ads to appear along side results for those search queries.

These ads, often known as pay-per-click ads, come in a variety of formats. Some are small text-based ads, whereas others such as product listing ads (PLAs), also known as shopping ads, are more visual product-based advertisements that allow consumers to see important information at a glance, such as price and reviews.

Search engine marketing’s greatest strength is that it gives advertisers the chance to put their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re ready to make a purchase.

. No other advertising medium can do this, which is why search engine marketing is so effective and such an remarkably powerful way to grow your business.

SEM vs. SEO

SEM vs. SEO What’s the difference?

Generally, search engine marketing refers to paid search marketing, a system where businesses don’t pay Google for traffic and clicks but rather earn a free spot in the search results by having the most relevant content for a given relevant search.

Both SEO and SEM should be fundamental parts of your online marketing strategy. SEO is a powerful way to drive immortal traffic at the top of the funnel, while search engine advertisements are a highly cost-effective way to drive alterations at the bottom of the funnel.

Keywords: The foundation of search engine marketing:

Keywords are the foundation of search engine marketing. As users enter keywords as part of search requests into search engines to find what they’re looking for, it should come as little surprise that keywords form the basis of search engine marketing as an advertising strategy.

SEM Keywords Research:

Before you can choose which keywords to use in your search engine marketing campaigns, you need to conduct comprehensive research as part of your keyword management strategy.

First, you need to identify keywords that are relevant to your business and that prospective clienteles are likely to use when searching for your products and services. One way to accomplish this is by using Word Stream’s free keyword tool.

Simple Enter a keyword that’s relevant to your business or service and see related keyword proposition ideas that can form the basis of various search engine marketing campaigns.

Word Stream’s free keyword tool provides you with a range of valuable information, such as search volume for each individual keyword in Google and its general competitiveness.

In addition to helping you find keywords you should be bidding on, keyword research can also help you identify negative keyword search terms that you should exclude from your campaigns. Negative keywords aren’t terms with negative connotations but rather immaterial terms that are highly unlikely to result in conversions.

. For example, if you sell ice cream, you might want to exclude the keyword ice cream recipes, as users searching for ice cream recipes are unlikely to be in the market for your product.

This concept is known as search intent, or the likelihood that a prospect will complete a purchase or other desired action after searching for a given term.

. Some keywords are considered to have high commercial intent or a strong indication that the searcher wants to buy something. Examples of high-commercial-intent keywords include:

Buy

Discount(s)

Deal(s)

Coupon(s)

Free shipping Read more about commercial intent keywords in this blog post.

Keywords and account structure:

Another crucial aspect of keywords that is essential for the success of a search engine marketing campaign is account structure.

. Logical keyword grouping and account structure can help you achieve higher click-through rates, lower costs-per-click, and generally stronger overall presentation, and keyword research can help you think about how best to structure your account.

Google Ads and Bing Ads accounts should be structured in the following way for optimal results:

As you can see in the figure above, a perfect Google account structure is comprised of five distinct elements.

Ad campaigns

Ad groups

Keywords

Ad text

Landing pages

Ad campaigns can and should, in my case, focus on similar products or services. For example, if you run a hardware store, one ad campaign could focus exclusively on autumnal products such as leaves, blowers, rakes, and leaf bags, whereas another might focus on power tools and so on.

. For the power tools campaign, one ad group might focus on power drills, while another could focus on circular saws. This level of organization might take slightly longer to setup initially, but the rewards, namely higher CTRs at lower cost, make this effort worthwhile in the long run.