Beginners Guide to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and its working process.

Learn the basics of search engine marketing and some tips and strategies for perfect search engine marketing.

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Beginners Guide to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and its working process.

What Is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

In a growing competitive marketplace, Search Engine Marketing is an efficient way to grow your business.

It is very important to promote online because they are several millions of Business that are competing for the same eyeballs. 

In this post. you’ll learn the basics of search engine marketing and some tips and strategies for perfect search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing is the mode of marketing a business by paid advertisements that are displayed on search engine results pages (or SERPs). 

Advertisers bid on profitable and relevant keywords that users of services such as Bing and Google enter when searching for certain products or services online which gives the advertiser a chance for displaying their ads to appear along with results for those search queries.

These ads are also called as pay-per-click ads, display in a variety of formats. Some are small text-based ads and other ads such as product listing ads also know as PLAs are more visual, product-based ads provides users with more important information like price and reviews at-a-glance.

Greatest benefit of Search Engine Marketing is it offers bidders or advertisers a opportunity to display their ads infront of customers or users who are willing to buy or determined to buy at that specific time.

Thats why Search Engine Marketing is an effective advertising Medium to grow your business.

SEM vs. SEO

Generally, “search engine marketing” is a paid search marketing, a system where businesses pay Google or other mediums to display their ads in the search results.

Whereas Search engine optimization, or SEO, is opposite to SEM where businesses need not pay for Google for traffic and clicks; they get a free place in the search results by possessing the most relevant content for a given keyword search.

SEM and SEO must be the fundamental parts of your online marketing strategy. SEO is a great way to generate evergreen traffic at the top of the funnel whereas search engine advertisements are a highly cost-efficient way to make conversions at the bottom of the funnel.

How Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Works?

Keywords are the root of Search Engine Marketing

As a part of search, users enter the keywords into search engines to find what they are looking for.

So, Keywords form the root of search engine marketing as an advertising Strategy.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Keyword Research

You need to do Comprehensive keyword Research as a part of Keyword Management Strategy to select the keywords for use in search engine marketing Campaigns.

Identify the keywords that are highly relevant and prospective customers possibly use when searching for your business products and services.

Thorough keyword research will also help you in identifying the negative keywords that result in unlikely conversions.

Example: Free

Some keywords generally have a high commercial intent which gives a strong indication that the user wants to purchase something. 

 Some Examples of highly commercial intent keywords are:

  • Discount(s)
  • Buy
  • Deal(s)
  • Coupon(s)
  • Free shipping

Account Structure and Keywords

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

Higher Click through rates,low cost-per-click and overall stronger performance can be obtained with logical keyword grouping and Account Structure.

Keyword Research can help you structure your account perfectly.

Bing Ads Accounts and Google Ads should be structured in the following method for better results.

As shown in the above figure, a better structured account comprises of 5 distinct elements. They are:

  1. Ad campaigns
  2. Ad groups
  3. Keywords
  4. Ad text
  5. Landing pages

Ad Campaigns focus on similar products or services.

For example, if you run a clothing store, one ad campaign could focus exclusively on Men products such as Men’s Accessories, Ethnic Wear, Bottom wear, Basic top Wear. Another Ad Campaign should Focus on Women’s Wear.

Ad groups provide each campaign to be more subcategorized for relevance. In our clothing store example of Men’s Products ad Campaign, one ad group could be for different types of Ethnic Wears. For the Men’s Accessories campaign, one ad group might focus on masks, caps, belts. Initially It takes longer to set up this level of organization. but the results – namely higher Click-through rates at lower cost – make this effort worth

Search Engine Marketing Ad Auction

One of the most lasting misunderstandings about search engine marketing is that whomever has the largest advertising budget gains. A larger advertising budget can be a advantage, especially while targeting highly competent keywords, but this alone won’t give success with search engine marketing.

 because all advertisements go through a procedure known as the ad auction before displaying alongside search results. For this explanation, we’ll be concentrating on the ad auction in Google Ads.

How does the Ad Auction work?

The ad auction process takes place in the backend whenever a potential user enters a search query into Google. To be enrolled in the ad auction, advertisers choose keywords they want to bid on, and declare how much they are likely to spend (per click) to display their ads alongside results relating to those keywords. If Google decides that the keywords you have bid on are covered within a user’s search query, your ads are entered into the ad auction.

How Ads ‘Win’ the Ad Auction

Not every ad will be displayed on every search because the ad auction takes a different factors into account when deciding the placement of ads on the SERP and not every keyword has enough commercial intent to justify displaying ads next to search results. 

The two principal factors that Google considers as part of the ad auction process are your Quality score and the maximum bid of your ads. 

Maximum bid is the maximum cost you have allocated to pay for a click. 

Quality Score is a metric that depends on the overall quality of your ad.

 Google measures these metrics during the ad auction to decide the placement of ads. The result of this calculation is called as ad rank.

The Importance of Quality Score in SEM

As Stated Google Ads’ Quality Score is half of the ad rank formula, it is one of the most vital metrics search engine marketers can concentrate on. High-Quality Scores can help you achieve a better ad position at very lower costs because Google picks ads that are highly relevant to user queries.

In the table, you can see that Eventhough Advertiser 1 has the lowest maximum bid, they have highest Quality Score, that indicates their ads are given top priority in terms of placement during the ad auction: