Search engine marketing (SEM) most often refers to paid search and SEO. Pay per click (PPC) is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked and is the format in which ads are purchased on the main search engines. The search engine results page (SERP) will display the ads that you create to direct viewers to your site, and the fee you pay is usually based on clicks of these ads. In other words, you can pay to rank on sponsored search listings.
Paid search is a great option if you are not ranking well in the search engines with organic search alone and is an extremely powerful tool and a valuable asset for enhancing your company’s online presence and complimenting your SEO strategy.
Read why your SEO and PPC efforts should complement each other and lead to a more successful search strategy.
AdWords is an automated auction – when you advertise with Google Ads, your ads can appear on different places across the web depending on how you target your ads, to whom you choose to show them, and the types of ads you create:
You write the ads and choose relevant keywords and key phrases that describe your business – the services or products you offer and the content to which you want to drive on your website – these keywords will then trigger the ad when people search for these words or phrases.
I’ve provided a simple outline of the process below.
Broad match: This is a keyword setting that allows your ad to show when someone searches for that keyword or a variation of it.
Broad match modifiers: Help control when your ad can appear for closely related keywords. Broad match modifiers can also help your keywords achieve a higher click through rate (CTR) with a more targeted audience, which in turn can help your site get more paying customers or other conversions.
Exact match: You can show your ad to customers who are searching for your exact keyword, or close variants of your exact keyword. Close variants include searches for keywords with the same meaning as the exact keywords, regardless of spelling or grammar similarities between the query and the keyword.
Phrase match: This is a keyword setting that allows your ad to show only when someone’s search includes the exact phrase of your keyword, or close variations of the exact phrase of your keyword, with additional words before or after.
Negative match: Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers.
Yellow = paid for – PPC | Green = organic – SEO
You set a daily budget and for each campaign you can dictate how much money Google can spend on those ad placements per day. Google also offers a feature that allows you to request that your budget be spread out across the day – this works well for brands that want to establish a presence throughout the day.
Google will try to spend your full daily budget, but the ability to do so ultimately depends on your keywords and also on the effectiveness of your ad copy.
There are four basic metrics that are important for paid search: impressions, clicks, conversions, and spend.
These 4 basic metrics are important to track regularly, but the analytics that will be the most critical for optimising your campaign are actually derived from combinations of simpler ones – these include: click through rate, conversion rate, cost per click, and cost per acquisition.
