In today’s competitive marketplace, it’s never been more important to promote and grow your business.
The process starts with building a website – but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are almost two billion live websites on the internet – a decent percentage of which are your potential competitors. How can your business make sure it’s getting found by the right people, in the right place and for the right reasons? To do this, you need to prioritise Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in your digital marketing strategy to increase and improve your searchability and web presence. So, what exactly is SEM and how does it work?
An Overview of SEM
Implementing SEM into your digital marketing strategy is a great way to meet consumer’s needs and to increase your company’s reach. A large portion of new visitors finds websites through performing search queries on a search engine.
SEM is an online marketing practice that businesses use to appear on Search Engine Results Pages and as ads on those pages. When searching for a product or service on search engines like Google, searchers see a list of links to websites as results as well as advertised content on the top of the page. To get your site ranking well in search engine results, you need to use an unpaid form of SEM called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). To create adverts, you’ll use a paid form of SEM called PPC or Pay Per Click Advertising.
SEO
SEO covers a series of actions one needs to undertake frequently to ensure a website ranks well in search engines for organic searches. Search engines want to give customers what they want, and your ranking will depend on how good you can meet this need. SEO can involve technical elements such as making sure your website is easy to index and crawl by search engine robots, as well as making sure your website loads quickly. It can also involve optimising its content with the right keywords and making sure you’re offering customers something of value in response to their query or question.
PPC
PPC advertising can include small text-based ads, visual shopping ads and product-based ads that highlight information such as pricing and reviews, or advertise a sale. Here, you place a bid for a particular keyword and depending on how competitive it is; you pay a larger or smaller fee. For this, you’ll need to set a budget, and it will only charge you when someone clicks on the ad. PPC targets interested customers who are ready to make a purchase online or at a retail outlet and are not looking for general information.
Which To Choose?
When it comes to SEM, SEO and PPC advertising are meant to go hand in hand. The former is a more cost effective, long term effort that will eventually improve a website’s rankings and keep it there. On the other side, PPC will drive short term campaigns, resulting in an immediate boost to your sales figures and leads generated.
A business owner should understand that meeting a consumer at the right time, with the right message when they search for products and services is an excellent opportunity to nurture them as prospective customers. Through SEO and PPC, you can reach consumers in real-time, giving them what they want without intruding or interrupting their tasks.
Businesses who do well online are those who put SEM front and centre. It’s understandably challenging to undertake by yourself, which is why you should enlist the services of a business that specialises in it. For more on SEM and how to best implement it into your digital marketing strategy, get in touch with the experts at Big Rock Graphics today.
