Buzz
1. Direct Customer Acquisition with SEM
SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing, refers to Internet marketing activities, including PPC, targeted advertising, and even SEO.
However, nowadays SEO is no longer classified under SEM as it encompasses a much broader field. Essentially, SEM encompasses any paid marketing strategy we can use to directly attract customers on the Internet. That's why this term is succinctly referred to as 'paid traffic.'
The primary advantage of SEM is immediate results. When bidding for a position on SERP, your website or any website you're advertising will start receiving traffic. However, if the budget or campaign reaches its limit, the traffic will also cease.
1.1 Implementing SEM
Keyword Research is the Key
When marketing a product online, it's not just about selling. Many e-commerce businesses fail because they approach marketing with a sales-centric mindset.
To sell products online, you must first address your potential customers' needs.
Approach marketing strategies from this perspective, and you'll see an increase in traffic. Put yourself in the shoes of potential customers, if they were searching for your product, what keywords would they use?
Target keywords related to your product, including long-tail keywords (useful for voice search) and synonyms of keywords.
Optimizing Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
Pay-Per-Click or PPC is the 'key' to every SEM campaign. PPC simply involves paying for ads on SERP related to your keywords. When users search for something related to your keywords, they'll see your ads on the search results page and click on them.
Essentially, this is the role of PPC and SEM - highly targeted campaigns. This will lead to higher ROI as most curious users will click on your link.
So how do you ensure that users click on your ads? The answer is to optimize every small detail in the campaign, increasing attractiveness to the target audience.
Create Ad Copies
Creating ad copies is a crucial step, as it not only attracts your potential customers but also determines your ad position on SERP.
PPC in SEM campaigns can be likened to a lottery, those who know how to apply the formulas rank higher on SERP. Whenever someone places a search query on Google, the Google AdWords algorithm delves into groups of bidders (like you) and selects the best group to display in the ad section on the search results page.
The criteria for selecting the best group, individuals are based on keyword relevance, the maximum amount they are willing to bid for that keyword, landing page quality, ad quality, and other factors.
Essentially, if your ads are of poor quality, the chances of ranking at the top positions will be very low.
Geo-Targeting (Determining the geographic location of visitors)
Geo-Targeting (or determining the geographical location of visitors) simply means targeting potential customers based on their geographic location. This can be done by adding your geographical location to your content or by using geographic location settings in advertising. For location-based businesses, this is crucial as it helps them save money on irrelevant clicks.
Utilize Tools to Grade SEM Campaigns
It's important to note that you're paying for ad placement, so it's crucial to refine your campaign before advertising online. One of the simplest ways to do this is by using tools like WordStream's AdWords Performance Grader. The tool provides an overview of what you need to improve and what you've already done to run effective PPC campaigns.
Here are 5 best practices for implementing SEM to improve and increase traffic. However, maintaining traffic on SEM can be costly and time-consuming. This is when we turn to SEO.
2. SEO - Long-Term Strategy
If you work in web or marketing, you've likely heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the method of improving your website's visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERP).
The biggest difference between SEM and SEO is that SEM requires payment to increase traffic, while SEO is free. SEO involves making your website and its content relevant so that Google sees it as valuable to searchers.
Unlike SEM, SEO doesn't deliver immediate results. In fact, seeing the results of an SEO campaign requires time, but in return, this campaign provides us with 'lifetime' free traffic. So, if you want to build a long-term campaign, you can invest in an SEO campaign.
However, not every SEO campaign yields the same results. To ensure your efforts and investment pay off, refer to the content below to learn the practical steps of SEO practice.
2.1 SEO Practice
Content is King
Content is considered the backbone of web pages on the Internet. In fact, approximately 1,440 posts are published every minute. With such a large amount of content being created, making your content 'stand out' and unique can be challenging, especially if you're 'recreating' content that others have already done.
That's why you need to create unique and 'out-of-the-box' content. To make your content valuable, it must meet the following requirements:
- Relevant Content: by researching keywords and content related to your target audience.
- Riding the Right Trends: seize trends and create content relevant to those trends.
- Useful Content: provide useful content that users are searching for, avoiding dull and empty content.
Website Quality is the 'Queen'
If content is king, then website quality is the queen. Simply dress your website in a beautiful outfit to attract viewers and search engines. To achieve this, we must optimize the website:
- Faster loading speed.
- Relevant links: internal, external, and backlinks.
- Mobile-friendly.
- Good metadata and titles.
- Voice search ready.
Keep Up with Google Algorithm Changes
Google constantly updates its algorithms, so this can cause unwarranted disruptions, where some top websites may 'disappear' from SERP unexpectedly, such as Google Fred. That's why you always need to keep up with algorithm changes or at least have an SEO team that can handle these aspects.
3. SEM vs. SEO, which one to choose?
The question arises between SEM and SEO, which one to choose? Honestly, SEO and SEM work hand in hand, supporting each other. Although if a SEM campaign is successful, you don't need to worry about SEO, but SEM alone cannot propel your business far and steady. Similarly, you can run an SEO campaign without investing in SEM, but this strategy requires a lot of time, sometimes a successful SEO campaign may still lag behind competitors.
This article by Mytour has just answered your question about SEM vs. SEO, which one to choose? Basically, SEO and SEM work, supporting each other. So by running these two campaigns, it will help elevate your business to new heights. Additionally, you can learn more about Technical SEO 2019 here.
