The SEM or search engine marketing It is a very effective way to increase your search engine presence and attract highly qualified traffic to your website. For companies, investing in SEM is a way to multiply their visibility and achieve quick marketing results.
There are certain difficulties when defining what is search engine marketingon the one hand there is the official definition of the term and on the other, the way in which marketing professionals actually use it.
According to the official definition, search engine marketing encompasses all the tools, techniques and strategies that help us optimize the visibility of websites and web pages on the Internet. search engines like Google and other similar sites. What we are looking for is to appear among the first results when the user performs a search related to our brand.
In theory, search engine marketing encompasses both types of results. But in practice, we call SEO the techniques aimed at improving organic positioning and SEM the techniques aimed at appearing among paid results. To avoid confusion, from now on we will use the term SEM or search engine marketing only for the latter.
Therefore, the search engine marketing consists of a series of tools, techniques and strategies aimed at optimizing search engine advertising, seeking to appear among the top positions, obtain lower costs per click and maximize conversions derived from ads. The most well-known and used SEM platform is Google Ads, but there are also other solutions, such as Bing Ads.
Keywords or keywords: These are the terms that users enter into search engines and that cause a specific ad to be displayed. They don’t have to be single words, in fact, they are usually groups of words or phrases, such as “buy Nike sneakers” or “what is the best accounting software.”
Agreement: When configuring a campaign in Google Ads, we must define the degree of correspondence between the keywords we have selected and the term that the user enters in the search engine. This is what is known as “concordance.” For example, if we opt for a broad match, the ad will be shown when the user searches for synonyms or terms similar to the keyword. With an exact match, the ad will appear only when the user enters the unchanged keyword in the search engine.
Text ad: It is the standard type of ad that is displayed in search engines, although today we have more options, such as shopping ads. It typically includes a title, a customizable display URL, and a short description.
Ad Group– In Google Ads, an ad group consists of multiple ads that appear for the same keywords. This way, we can see which are the most effective ads.
Bell: In Google Ads, the campaign is like the “umbrella” under which we organize different ad groups with similar objectives. For example, if we have an online school supplies store, a campaign could cover groups of ads for textbooks, another for backpacks, and a third for drawing materials.
Landing page or landing page– The website the user is directed to after clicking on an ad. To achieve good results with search engine marketing, this website must be optimized to achieve conversions or for users to perform a specific action (for example, completing a form to download an ebook). The keywords, the displayed ad and the landing page should always be aligned to ensure a good user experience.
search network– The places where your ads can appear. The most common is to work with search ads at the top and right of the results page, but we can also show them on other sites such as YouTube or Google Maps.
Impressions: number of times an ad has been shown.
Clicks– Number of times an ad has been clicked.
CTR: percentage of clicks with respect to total impressions.
CPC: average cost per click.
Quality level: score that Google gives to ads and keywords and that influences their cost per click. This score is determined based on ad relevance, click-through rate, and landing page experience. The goal of the system is for higher quality ads to occupy higher positions and have a lower cost per click.
Generate highly qualified traffic. Generating traffic organically can be a very long and tedious process, in which the results are only seen in the long term. Search engine marketing allows us to accelerate it and get users to our website from the beginning. Furthermore, we have the guarantee that these users are interested in what we offer, since they have searched for it themselves.
Generate visibility. Appearing at the top of Google and other search engines, even if the user does not click, makes our brand become associated with a specific need.
Generate conversions. In the end, the ultimate goal of Google Ads and other search engine marketing tools is to improve our business results. To do this, we will create optimized landing pages that put users on the path to conversion.
Get the most out of your budget, whatever it is. One of the great advantages of search engine marketing is that it is a suitable solution for companies of all sizes, since the minimum investment is very affordable. On the other hand, if your brand is growing, you can increase the investment and complexity of your campaigns to continue growing. Plus, since you only pay if you get results (in the form of clicks), you ensure that your budget is getting the most out of it.
Get measurable results and track in real time. Search engine marketing solutions like Google Ads provide us with a large number of metrics about the campaigns and allow us to know what is happening at all times. In this way, it is very easy to correct course to achieve better results.
Search engine marketing or SEM has great potential to help companies achieve their objectives quickly and in a scalable way. To get the most out of it, the ideal is to have experts who have extensive experience positioning brands on Google.
If you want to take advantage of all the benefits of search engine marketing for your brand, contact us!