The internet is everything and there are two main players, well…more than two but for this article let’s keep it simple. On one end of the line are those who are looking to get something from the internet. These people visit the internet with any of the four types of intents; 

1. Navigational intent -  they are looking for a specific brand or website
2. Informational intent - they are searching for general information
3. Transactional intent - they want to make an online purchase
4. Commercial intent - they are searching for product reviews before making a purchase

People on this end of the spectrum are referred to as internet users and there are over 5 billion of them in the world. On the other end of the spectrum are those who provide the contents that are being consumed on the internet. These could be an individual or a company and they deliver this content through one or more content delivery channels, the top of which is a website/blog. 

Owning a website or blog these days is as easy as it gets, thanks to the evolution of the internet. This is a good thing since it means that more content can be accessed over the internet. But this also means that content providers have to compete with each other to get their content to the front of the line. By this, I'm referring to the search engine result page or SERP. 

What is the Search Engine Result Page (SERP)?

The Search Engine Result Page (SERP) is the page that displays the results of your search (or query) on a search engine such as Google. Being that Google is the most used search engine around the world, I will be using it as the de facto search engine and also refer to it whenever I say “search engine”. 

With so many people vying for the top spots on the SERP, content providers have to resort to various means to make their contents rank higher than the others because this guarantees that the target audience will see it, otherwise, what’s the essence? To give you a clear picture of just how stiff the competition is, take a look at these statistics from siteefy;

As you can see, it is not enough to simply deliver content, there are steps to follow if you want to rank high on the SERP and beat your competitors. Two techniques that are commonly used are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). In this article, I will be focusing on SEM, here is our detailed guide on SEO marketing. 

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is when you pay search engines to advertise your business on the SERP. So instead of spending a lot of time and effort on SEO with the hopes that one day, your content will appear on the first page of the SERP (which more than 75% of internet users focus on), you can easily skip to the queue by paying Google to advertise for you. Although this sounds quite easy, SEM is not for everyone, especially since it is less cost-effective compared to SEO. That’s not to say you won't get your money’s worth. Before we talk about the benefits of search engine marketing, here is how it works. 

Also Read: SEO  Marketing: A Deep Dive into the Details of SEO Marketing.

What are the benefits of SEM

It is measurable

With SEM marketing, you can easily measure how well your ad is performing. Google ad is an all-in-one platform that gives you useful statistics about your ad as well as those of your competitors in real-time. Impressions, CTR. ad rank etc are just a few of the features you can use to measure the performance of your ad. 

Fast results

One of the biggest advantages of SEM is that you get to see instant results in the form of traffic. If you own a new business, this is the fastest way to grow your brand awareness until you can do so without having to pay for it. That is until your website or business can generate sufficient organic traffic with SEO only. One thing you should take note of is that although SEM marketing can instantly help you build traffic, it doesn’t often lead to high conversion rates. To know more about this, see the section on SEO vs SEM. 

Easy to manage

After you have set up your ad, very little input is required from you from then on. Depending on your keyword (specifically search volume), you should start seeing results in a matter of days. From time to time, you may need to check your ad and see how well it is performing and if there is a need for adjustments.

How does SEM work?

If you want to use SEM as your marketing strategy, there are a few things you should know. First, you have to create an ad on Google Ads and then bid for the top spot on the SERP. The amount you’ll have to pay varies depending on the keyword of your choice and the number of competitors who are equally bidding. Now the ads work by pay-per-click meaning that you only have to pay your advertisers (in this case Google) when a user clicks on your ad. Here’s a breakdown of the steps involved in SEM

1. Keyword research 
2. Cost
3. Target audience
4. Ad auctioning 

Keyword research

This is the first and perhaps the most crucial aspect of SEM. Keyword research involves analyzing the keywords that your target audience uses when searching for products or services that you offer. So if you provide Online SEM Courses, then your target keywords should include these terms. Google also uses the keyword to determine how relevant your ad is and how much it will cost you to rank on the SERP.  

Cost

When you have selected your target keywords, the next thing you should consider is how much you are willing to pay. If the keywords you’ve selected are highly competitive (that is to say so many other businesses are also using the same keywords), then it will cost you more to rank for those keywords as compared to less competitive ones. You can reduce the amount of money you spend by using keywords that are very relevant (narrow and specific) to your business or niche. This will reduce your cost per click (CPC) and improve your Quality score. The quality score is one of the metrics used by Google in ranking ads, more on this later.

Target audience

One of the advantages of search engine marketing is that you can specify who your target audience is. These are the people who are likely going to benefit from seeing your ad. Some ways you can use to define your target audience are by their location, the type of device they use, language, and time zones. 

Ad copy

The last step to take before you start bidding is to create a good ad copy. So what’s an ad copy? It is the block of text that is seen on the SERP when google displays your ad. The ad copy has three main segments;

The URL - your website URL is displayed in green

The Headline - is usually in blue and is further divided into three segments each capable of holding up to 30 characters. 

The Description - the main text of the ad where you can highlight the details of your business. It is good to keep this brief, straight to the point, and close with a call to action text like “buy this now” or “start saving now”. You can enter up to 90 characters in this section. 

Once you have all this in place and have created an ad copy you think will attract the right audience, then it’s time to compete in the auctions. Yes, you heard this right, Google doesn’t just take your money and goes ahead to display your ad for the world to see. You have to compete with other businesses and content creators for the top spot. 

How Google’s Ad Auction Works

When a user enters a search query, the search engine returns several results that are relevant to the query. One of the ways it determines this is by looking at the keywords in the query. This is why keyword research is a very important step in SEM. If the keywords in the query match those that are used in a given ad, then the ad or ads that have that keyword will be entered into an auction. To win the auction, there are two things you must consider;

Bid Amount - All things being considered, Google ranks the ads based on the bidding amount. So the highest bidder will likely appear at the top of the SERP, and the same goes for the second and third-highest bidders. The more competitive a keyword is, the higher the amount needed to win the bid. Of course, this works similarly to a typical auction where the highest bidder wins. 

However, being the highest bidder is not a guarantee that your ad will show up on the SERP. This makes sense because Google has to ensure that users get to see only relevant and meaningful ads. To do this, it uses another metric (alongside the bid amount) to determine if an ad is worthy or not. This is known as the Quality score. 

Also Read: Crowdfunding 101: Here is everything you must know before starting a crowdfunding campaign for your startup

Quality score - This metric is used to determine how good your ad is compared to similar ads in the same category. The quality score is measured on a scale of 1 - 10. A high-quality score indicates that your ad is very relevant to users searching for your keyword, while a low-quality score means your ad does not apply to the users searching for your keyword. The quality score is calculated using three performance indexes;

1. The expected clickthrough rate (CTR) - Google estimates how well your ad will perform by comparing it to the CTR of similar ads that had been displayed over a specific time (usually 90 days timeframe). 
2. Ad relevance - The user intent is used to determine if your ad will be relevant or not. Depending on how the user structures the query, Google will determine if the user’s intent is transactional, commercial, informational, or navigational. SEM ads are usually displayed for commercial or transactional queries.
3. Landing page - When the user clicks your ad, they are redirected to a page, this page is referred to as the landing page. Google evaluates the landing page of your ad to ensure that users get the best experience. 

There are additional factors that could impact the quality of your ad even though they aren’t used in calculating the quality score. These factors are; the type of device being used to access the search engine (mobile or desktop), the location of the user, and the time of the day. 

How to improve your SEM campaign in four (4) steps

As you can see, a successful SEM campaign goes beyond just having a large advertisement budget. You need to have a good quality score as well and here is how to go about it in 5 easy steps,

1. Do proper keyword research

Your target keyword can make your ad a very successful one or an expensive money pit. Because of this, you must be strategic about how you conduct your keyword research. First, you must consider what keywords your target audience uses when searching for your product or services. Google Keyword planner is a free tool that can help you in your keyword research. Additionally, you can look at what keywords your competition ranks for and use the same. When you have come up with a number of these keywords, then it's time to narrow down the list. To do that, think about;

1. Your user’s intent - choose a keyword that matches the intent of your users. The closer the keyword is to the user’s intent, the more relevant your ad will be and the lower the CPC you will have to pay. 
2. Use keywords with a good search volume - you don't want to set up an ad that gets to be seen by just a handful of people, a wrong keyword can do this. So make sure you look at the search volume of the keyword you are using. With Google keyword planner, you can even forecast how a keyword will perform at a given time. 
3. Use keywords that are easy to rank for - Depending on your budget, you may only be able to rank for some keywords. So you have to look at how much you are willing to spend and how much the highest bidders are spending for the same keyword. Optimizing your ad quality alone won’t work against competitors that have a good ad copy and a huge budget. In such cases, you should consider;
4. Increasing your bid amount - look at the average CPC for your keyword, if your bid is lower than the average, then you should consider increasing it. ‍

2. Compare the top-ranking ads in your keyword

Competitor research is an important part of any marketing campaign. If you want to know how to be the best, you have to know who the best is and see what they are doing. The fastest way to do this is by analyzing your competition’s ads. You can do this by entering a query with the keyword that you want to rank for. 

The top SEM ads that appear on the SERP are your target. When analyzing your competitor’s ads, you should focus on the keyword placement, headings, ad copy, landing page, etc. You can use this knowledge to plan your own SEM campaign. 

3. Improve the clickthrough rate

The clickthrough rate is a measure of how likely users will click on your ad when it gets displayed on the SERP. A low clickthrough rate will reduce your quality score, and a low-quality score will hurt your campaign effort. After creating your ad copy, Google Ads not only ranks your ad but also shows you important statistics which you can optimize. 

One of these is the expected clickthrough rate. If your ad shows an expected clickthrough rate of average or below average, then you have some work to do, You should be aiming for a CTR that is above average, and here are some tips you may find useful.

1. Write a more compelling headline
2. Make sure your ad copy matches the intents of users who search for your keyword
3. Include a call to action
4. Make your ad copy as clear as possible by highlighting the key benefits and being as specific as possible. 

4. Improve your landing page

Along with the CTR, Google also analysis the landing page of your ad copy and provides a rating of above average, average, or below average. If your landing page is rated above average, then you have nothing to worry about. But if you have a rating of average or below average, here are a few things you can do to improve it. 

1. Optimize your website to load faster. 
2. Make sure the landing page is relevant. If your ad is about Versace purses, make sure your landing page is about Versace purses. Anything else will lower the user experience and increase the bounce rate. You don't want this to happen because, to Google, it means the users ate not getting what they want from your landing page. 
3. Make the landing page easy to navigate. 

SEM vs. SEO: What are the differences?

SEO and SEM are both marketing strategies but they differ in some ways. In this section, I’ll explain four ways the two marketing strategies differ from each other.

Organic vs Paid traffic

Take a look at the screenshots above. Both screenshots are of the same SERP for the query “SEM courses online”. But the SEM results come with the label “ad”  while the SEO results do not have any labels. That is because SEM ads are paid advertisements while SEO results are not. 

SEO is a marketing technique that you can use to improve your ranking on the SERP organically. That means you don’t have to pay to drive traffic to your website or rank higher on the SERP. If you know what you’re doing, SEO can effectively drive organic (unpaid) traffic to your website. The most important thing (amongst others) is to provide relevant and impactful contents that will appeal to your audience. 

While Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves paying for your content to appear at the top of the search engine result page. In some instances, you may see that search engine marketing is used as an umbrella term for SEO and PPC (Pay-per-click). This is not wrong, but for the sake of differentiating between paid and organic traffic, SEM is now used only when referring to paid advertising. 

How fast does it take to see results?

Another difference between SEO and SEM is how fast it takes to see results. SEO takes time and even though you get to see results if you remain consistent, it could take anything from a few months to years. Some of the factors that will determine how long it takes to rank on the SERP when using SEO are; the quality of your content, your competition, and how old your website is. 

Newer websites take longer to get indexed and build enough authority to compete for the first page on the SERP. The story is quite different from SEM. If you outbid your competition and create quality ads,  then you can start seeing results (traffic) as soon as your ad is up and running. 

Cost

SEM  tends to cost higher than SEO. Here is why. If you want to run an effective SEO campaign, all you have to do is hire experts who are knowledgeable enough to get the job done. Better still, you could take an online class and learn all you can about SEO. This will save you so much money in the long run. SEM on the other hand is not so straightforward because you have to bid for your ad to appear at the top of the SERP and the highest bidder gets the top spot. 

Bidding by nature is unpredictable, you can never really tell just how much your competition is willing to spend on an ad. Secondly, with SEM, you are paying the search engine (in this case Google) per click. Although you are guaranteed a good amount of traffic in a relatively short time, you will not instantly get a good return on your investment. I will explain the reason in the next section.

Conversion rate

Let’s say you own an e-commerce store that receives about 400 visitors every month. Out of these, only about 50 get to make any purchase from the store. The conversion rate in this case is just 2%. To put it simply, the conversion rate is the number of visitors who made a purchase, subscribed to use your product, or become a member of your channel (depending on the type of business you’re into). 

The whole essence of SEO or SEM marketing strategies is to drive conversion and one would be led to believe that higher traffic means a higher conversion rate. If you go by this presumption, then you’re likely going to opt for SEM. But on average, SEO tends to have a higher conversion rate than SEM. 

Who should use SEM?

Small business owners stand to benefit the most from SEM marketing. This is not to say that established companies can’t make use of it, of course, they do. But most established businesses already have a significant amount of organic traffic and so they are always at the top of the SERP for their niche keywords. 

On the other hand, small businesses, are not well known, and the fastest way they can level the playing field in the shortest possible time is through paid advertisement or SEM marketing. Also, because you only get to pay when a potential customer clicks on your ad, SEM is relatively cost-efficient if you have a budget set aside for advertisement. 

Also Read: Social media growth hacks you should be using for your startup

Conclusion

Search engine marketing is not a new marketing strategy, it has been in existence for quite some time and is being used by both individuals and companies alike. But as we all know, the internet keeps evolving, so we must stay up to date if we have to maintain our competitive edge. In this article, I have elucidated the need for search engine marketing, and how it works. Look out for our next article on the 10 Best Tools for SEM marketing in 2023.