Search Engine Marketing (SEM): What It Is & How to Do It Right

SEM, or search engine marketing, is one of the best strategies for expanding your company in a market that is becoming more and more competitive. Search engine marketing is the most efficient approach to market your items and expand your business because there are millions of businesses competing for the same consumers’ attention online.

This guide will give you an introduction of search engine marketing fundamentals as well as some advice on how to effectively use search engine marketing.

Search Engine Marketing – An Overview

Using sponsored adverts that show up on search engine results pages, also known as SERPs, is the practise of search engine marketing. Advertisers place bids on terms that customers of search engines like Google and Bing would use when looking for specific goods or services, giving them the chance for their adverts to show up alongside search results for those keywords.

These advertisements, also referred to as pay-per-click advertisements, come in a variety of formats. Some are brief, text-based adverts, while others, like product listing ads (PLAs, sometimes called shopping ads), are more visual, product-based marketing that let customers see key details, such pricing and reviews, quickly.

The biggest advantage of search engine marketing is that it gives businesses the chance to display their adverts in front of motivated consumers who are prepared to buy at the exact moment those consumers are prepared to do so. Search engine marketing is so effective and such an extraordinarily strong technique to expand your business since no other advertising medium can achieve this.

SEM vs. SEO

What distinguishes SEM from SEO?

The term “search engine marketing” typically refers to paid search marketing, which is a system where companies pay Google to display their advertising in the search results.

Instead of paying Google for traffic and clicks, businesses who employ search engine optimisation, or SEO, receive a free listing in the search results by having the most pertinent content for a particular keyword search.

Your internet marketing approach should include both SEO and SEM as essential components. The top of the funnel can be effectively filled with evergreen traffic by using SEO, while the bottom of the funnel can be filled with conversions at a very low cost by using search engine advertisements.

Keywords: The Foundation of Search Engine Marketing

The cornerstone of search engine marketing are keywords. It should come as no surprise that keywords are the foundation of search engine marketing as an advertising strategy given that people enter keywords (as part of search queries) into search engines to get what they’re looking for.

SEM Keyword Research

You must do in-depth research as part of your keyword management plan before you can decide which keywords to utilise in your search engine marketing campaigns.

You must first choose keywords that are pertinent to your company and that potential clients will probably use to find your goods and services online. Utilising the Free Keyword Tool from WordStream is one way to achieve this.

Enter a term that is pertinent to your product or service and you will be presented with related keyword suggestion ideas that can serve as the foundation for different search engine marketing campaigns.

The Free Keyword Tool from WordStream gives you access to a wealth of useful data, including the Google search volume and general competitiveness of any given keyword.

Thorough keyword research will help you not only locate phrases you should be paying on but also negative keywords, or search terms you should keep out of your ads.bad keywords are irrelevant terms that are very unlikely to lead to conversions rather than ones with bad connotations. If you offer ice cream, for instance, you might want to avoid using the phrase “ice cream recipes” because people looking for those are probably not interested in your product.

The possibility that a prospect will make a purchase or do another desired action after looking for a particular term is referred to as search intent. Some keywords are regarded as having a high degree of commercial intent, which is a clear sign that the user wants to make a purchase. High commercial purpose keyword examples include:

Buy
Discount(s)
Deal(s)
Coupon(s)
Free delivery

In this blog post, you can learn more about keywords with a business objective.

Keywords and Account Structure

Account structure is another critical component of keywords that is necessary for a search engine marketing campaign to be successful.

Higher click-through rates, cheaper costs-per-click, and generally stronger overall performance can be attained with logical keyword grouping and account structure, and keyword research can help you think about how to arrange your account most effectively.

For best performance, Google Ads and Bing Ads accounts should be set up as follows:

A perfect Google Ads account structure consists of these five aspects, as shown in the diagram above:

Publicity stunts
Advertising campaigns
Keywords
Text ads
Page landings

Many times, ad campaigns should concentrate on comparable goods or services. For instance, if you own a hardware store, one advertising campaign would just highlight fall-related products like leaf blowers, rakes, and leaf bags, while another might highlight power tools and other items.

Each campaign can be further subcategorized for relevancy using ad groups. One ad group in our hardware store example would feature various rake types or leaf blower models. One ad group for the power tool campaign might concentrate on power drills, while another might concentrate on circular saws. The initial setup may take a little longer with this level of organisation, but the long-term benefits, such as greater CTRs at reduced cost, make this work worthwhile.

The Search Engine Marketing Ad Auction

The idea that whomever has the biggest advertising spend wins when it comes to search engine marketing is one of the most persistent. Larger advertising budgets can undoubtedly be helpful, especially when focusing on highly competitive keywords, but they are by no means a prerequisite for success with search engine marketing. This is so that search results can show alongside ads that have already gone through the ad auction process. We’ll concentrate on Google AdWords’ ad auction for the sake of this exposition.

How the Ad Auction Works

Every time a user types a search query into Google, the ad auction process begins. Advertisers choose the keywords they wish to bid on and specify the amount (per click) they are ready to pay to have their ads show next to results for those keywords in order to be included in the ad auction. Your ads are entered into the ad auction if Google determines that the keywords you have placed a bid on are present in a user’s search query.

How Ads ‘Win’ the Ad Auction

Not every advertisement will show up for every search. This is because not every search has enough commercial intent to warrant displaying advertising next to results, and because the ad auction considers a number of factors when choosing the placement of ads on the SERP. However, your highest offer and the Quality Score of your advertising are the two key elements that Google considers while conducting the ad auction process.

Quality Score and SEM: Its Importance

One of the most important indicators search engine marketers may pay attention to is the Quality Score of Google AdWords, which makes up half of the algorithm for determining how ads rank. Due to Google’s preference for ads that are extremely relevant to user searches, high Quality Scores can assist you in obtaining higher ad positions at reduced costs.

As you can see in the table below, despite having the lowest maximum bid, Advertiser 1 has the greatest Quality Score, which means their advertising will be placed first during the ad auction:

Possibly the most significant metric in search engine marketing is Quality Score. Read this article from PPC University to find out more about Quality Score and the effect it can have on your campaigns.

Succeed at Search Engine Marketing with WordStream

WordStream only engages in search engine marketing. Whether you’re new to paid search marketing or a seasoned pro, we aim to provide you everything you need to succeed at search engine optimisation.

WordStream’s Google Ads Performance Grader

Understanding which portions of your campaigns need work and which are succeeding is one of the most difficult components of search engine marketing. Use the free Google Ads Performance Grader from WordStream to assess how well your account is doing.

The Google Ads Performance Grader completes a thorough evaluation of your search engine marketing account in 60 seconds or less and finds areas where quick improvements can be made. Ten important search engine marketing benchmarks are used to evaluate accounts, including:

Wasted money
The frequency of clicks
Quality Rating
Keywords used negatively

Get your grade today and start making immediate improvements to your search engine marketing campaigns with the WordStream Google Ads Performance Grader, which is completely free.