Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of internet marketing that seeks to increase a web page’s visibility through paid listings. If you have ever seen the ads on the right column of Google or ads in Yahoo’s Search result then you have seen the result of Search Engine Marketing. Search Engine Marketing is a completely different beast than Social Media Marketing. A company can buy either the top search rankings, or they may choose to focus on a system like Google AdWords.
That said, a campaign isn’t as simple as saying “hey, I have a band, I want to buy space under MP3″ – in fact this would be a very bad idea. The way Search Engine Marketing works, every click drains a bank account and some clicks like “Arizona DUI Lawyer” or “Student Loans Consolidation” have been known to top $60 a click. Most businesses simply can’t afford this so part of the process of Search Engine Marketing is knowing what keywords to buy, how specific to make them, and what negative keywords to use. For example, often times a company will exclude showing a paid link to anyone who puts the word “free” or “cheap” in their search as a way of only advertising to qualified individuals. There are many different types of Search Engine Marketing tactics that can increase a companies overall marketing reach.
Search Engine Marketing: Special Sauce?
We did just say there was no special sauce? Right? Well that’s organic SEO… in Search Engine Marketing there is definitely a special sauce and it tastes like “What do you mean I just spent $650 in 12 minutes and I’m out of money?” – you probably want to avoid this scenario as much as we do.
The Vegas line on the odds reads a bit like this: If you make a mistake in Search Engine Optimization, it’ll cost you a few days or at most a few weeks to creep back up in the rankings. If you make a mistake in Search Engine Marketing, it could cost you your entire Google AdWords budget for Q1 2012 by the eleventh of January. Yes, scary.
Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click Consulting
Pay Per Click (PPC) search marketing is the most popular form of Internet Marketing on the web. In part, this is because the search engines make money on it and thus give PPC a lot of weight. On the other hand, it is also the easiest form of internet marketing to understand and quantify. PPC is a lot like putting gas in your car. You fill an account with money, you feed it a set of search terms, and clicking customers make the money go into Google’s pocket. In exchange, you get less than three seconds to convince a customer that your site is where they want to be.
Come to think of it, this sort of illustrates why PPC isn’t as simple as it seems.
In PPC a company needs to consider not only why people are clicking on their site but whether or not those clicks are of a high enough quality to justify the expense of obtaining them. After the click, the page they land on has to instantly make sense or Google gets your money and you get the “back” button. Nobody likes the back button and you shouldn’t either. Let us plan your next Search Engine Marketing campaign.
It would logically follow that Mojo Creator has a few thoughts on how to optimize this process.
A short list of Search Engine Marketing services included in PPC implementation follow:
- Keyword selection strategy
- Tuning with negative keywords
- Geo-targeting
- ROI strategy & tracking
- Google Analytics setup
- Competitor tracking and analysis
- Monthly reporting
Contact us today and we will design your Search Engine Marketing strategy!
