SEM - Search Engine Marketing
You have now created a website and you are finding ways to boost your page Rank, but you need sales NOW not in 6 months. The best way to do that is with Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Some people call this search advertising, or AdWords, end of the day it's all the same thing. The idea behind SEM is to buy your way to the top of search results based on keywords people search for. You might remember in my previous post that Google ignores keywords on your site when it comes to SEO, they just moved them to a paid format with SEM. Rather than just listing a bunch of different keywords for free within your site's code, you now have to buy your keywords that people are searching. SEM campaigns are based on clicks, not by views, so you only pay for your ad if someone clicks on it.
How SEM Works
Google uses (I would think others do the same) a bidding process to Determine how much you pay and then they determine how useful or relevant your landing page is. Google actually looks at 5 different bullet points before they determine if they should even show your ad to a searcher.
- Bid Amount (How much money you want to invest in a single keyword)
- Expected Click Through Rate (Google determines this by past keyword success)
- Landing Page Experience (A website that shows relevant and original content, easy to navigate, and transparent about what you do. This can be a custom built page just for the ad, the recommended method, or directly to your website.
- Ad Relevance (Does your ad, and subsequent web pages answer the question the Google user searched for)
- Ad Format (You can create different types of ads and Google looks at them all differently and will cater to the ones that deliver the most/best information)
Google looks at all of that and then gives you an Ad Rank. Depending on how well you scWhenore depends on how often and where you will place in a Google search. Google then breaks done these 5 things into 3 sections.
- Section 1
- Bid Amount
- Section 2
- Expected Click Through Rate
- Landing Page Experience
- Ad Relevance
- Section 3
- Ad Format
How It's All Put Together
We will look at the following example. I got this example straight from Google's explanation of how this whole thing works.
| Bid Amount | Quality | Format Impact | Ad Rank | |
| Business 1 | $4 | Low | No Formats | 5 |
| Business 2 | $3 | High | Low | 15 |
| Business 3 | $2 | High | High | 20 |
| Business 4 | $1 | Medium | Medium | 8 |
These ranks are what determine where on the page your ads will be placed or if they will be placed at all. As you can see the person bidding the most has the lowest score, so let's say they only show 3 ads, they will just not show that person, despite him paying the most for it. While the person only paying $2 gets pumped up into first place ahead of the guy who paid $3. Now just because you bid this amount does not mean you pay that amount. Google only charges you the minimum needed to be above your competition without going over your initial bid. You can improve your rank by making a better ad that can answer users questions and by adding ad formats. When you increase your rank you can also drive down the price you actually pay for your ad. Ad quality impacts price.
Summary
Now that I melted your brain for a little bit, you can summarize it like this. SEO is earning your way to the top and can take months before an impact is made. SEM is paying your way to the top, to an extent, you still need to deliver a better ad than your competitors. You cannot boost your SEO results with SEM, the two of them are not related at all despite being listed in the same area.
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Midweek Marketing: SEM
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This post first appeared on Greg Guertin Jr - Marketing Guru Here To Help, please read the originial post: here
