Search engine marketing (SEM) is a strategy for increasing a website’s visibility in search engine results. It’s a form of paid media, in which advertisers pay a search engine to display their ads.
SEM can be a good way to promote your business or nonprofit organization, but if you want to be effective at it, it pays to know the landscape. So let’s take a tour. We’ll focus on the Google Ads platform, but the information in this post is also applicable to other advertising networks.
There are many different types of SEM, but the most common one is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. A PPC program places your ad at or near the top of the search results by competing in an auction for a collection of keywords. We call it pay-per-click advertising because you only pay for your ad when someone clicks on it. For example, I’m currently running search ads on Google for keywords like “content marketing.” This effort has gotten me the second spot on the first search engine results page (SERP) for this keyword.
You can look at SEM as an extension of content marketing and SEO. Ranking through organic methods typically takes time and sustained effort, but few organizations can wait for long to see traffic and revenue. If you operate a small business in a highly competitive industry (like I do), paid SEM can be a great way to improve your search engine performance while waiting for SEO to bear fruit. In practice, however, it’s rarely a “first this, then that” situation. SEM and SEO are complementary, and many organizations use both methods throughout their life cycle.
Search Engine Market Share
When you buy search engine marketing, it pays to consider the size of the market you can address with your advertising spend.
Globally, Google outperforms all other search engines by a large margin, as the following Statista graph shows. Google is currently used to run 85.55 percent of all searches, followed by Bing (7.61 percent), Yahoo (2.85 percent), and Baidu (0.59 percent).
Find more statistics at Statista.
Because of its market share, most people focus their SEM efforts on Google, but running ads on the other networks can also be worthwhile if they can help you reach your audience. Bing is the default search engine on many Windows PCs, for example, and Windows is the most widely used operating system in corporate settings. If you are selling goods or services in a corporate market, it might pay to run ads on Bing, in addition to Google. With its smaller market share, Bing also charges a lot less than Google.
Paid Search Engine Marketing Advantages
Paid search engine marketing has many advantages.
- SEM is nimble and flexible. You can start and stop your campaigns whenever you want.
- SEM can help you achieve fast results. You can gain traffic and revenue in much less time than you would by organic methods alone.
- SEM provides many ways of targeting. You can target visitors by interests, search history, geographic location, commercial intent, and the devices they use. Just as you target visitors based on these factors, you can also exclude certain visitors, using the same factors. In addition to these methods, you can let search engines discover audiences you wouldn’t necessarily find by yourself.
- SEM lets you control ad placement. If you are running display ads on Google’s Display Network, you can manually select the sites on which you want to place your ads. Alternately, you can let Google make these selections, based on your keywords and topics.
- SEM lets you control your ad spend. You can set a budget for your ads by setting an average daily spend for your campaign. You can also specify the duration of your campaign.
- SEM lets you choose the best bid strategy for your advertising goals. You can manually set a maximum CPC for individual ad groups or keywords. Alternately, you can choose from a variety of automated bid strategies.
Search Engine Marketing Methods
PPC is the most common form of search engine advertising, but there are also others:
- Retargeting (also called remarketing) displays your ads only to people who have previously visited your website. My current campaign includes a retargeting component to ensure that visitors to my website will have some repeated exposure to my brand and message.
- Geotargeting lets advertisers specify the exact locations where they want their ads to run. Many use it to customize ad content for visitors according to their location. My ads are currently running in the province of Alberta, where I live.
- Mobile ads run only on mobile devices. They are often used to target consumers on the move or to serve ads optimized for display on mobile devices.
- Product listing ads (PLAs) show up when a user searches for a product on Google. Optimized for ecommerce, PLAs contain retail-friendly elements like images, reviews, ratings, and prices. They typically obtain better results for stores than text-only ads.
Components of a SEM Campaign
Google ads are part of a hierarchical structure.
A Google Ads account sits at the top of the hierarchy. The account is tied to a single email, and it is the container used for billing, reporting, and administration.
The next level of the hierarchy is occupied by ad campaigns. Many advertisers tie their campaigns to the structure of their website. Others tie it to their lineup of products or services, which is often identical to their site structure. If you sell skin care products, for example, you might create campaigns for cleansers, exfoliants, moisturizers, and serums.
You can organize your campaigns in many ways, however. For example, you can organize them by ad type, such as Search, Display, and Remarketing. You can also organize them geographically—for example, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, etc. There is no single correct organizational scheme. Choose the one that is right for you.
Each campaign contains one or more ad groups. Organize your campaigns so they contain a sensible and useful number of ad groups. One ad group is too few. Twenty ad groups might be too many. Again, there is no single correct organizational scheme. Choose the one that is right for you.
Ad groups contain ads, of course. Each ad group contains at least one ad, although advertisers are typically advised to include two or three ads in a group.
If we combine all elements of this hierarchy in a diagram, it will look like this:
But what do ads themselves contain? Well, that depends on the ad type.
Ad Types
There are several different types of ads—search ads, display ads, app promotion ads, video ads, and shopping ads. Each has a unique application.
Search Ads
Search ads are used to vault your content to a prominent position in search engine results. They are especially applicable for search terms signalling a strong commercial intent—that is, an intent to do business soon.
Search ads appear when the keyword specified for an ad matches the user’s search term. In practice, an ad’s appearance and its precise placement depend on a host of factors, including the keyword match type, bid, and targeting. Here’s an example of a search ad—my own ad for content marketing.
Search ads come in three separate types:
- Expanded text ads allow for three headlines and two descriptions, plus extensions such as additional links, phone numbers, or promotions.
- Responsive search ads allow for 14 headlines and five descriptions. Google uses machine learning to optimize its combinations of headlines and descriptions.
- Dynamic search ads create the ad copy automatically, using content from your website. They are quick to set up and ensure good alignment between your ad keywords and site content. One drawback is that you have little control over the actual wording of your ads.
Display Ads
Display ads are used to generate brand awareness. They contain images and appear on websites belonging to the Google Display Network. Sometimes they also appear in Gmail accounts, videos, or apps.
Here’s one of my display ads:
Display ads are often used in retargeting (or remarketing), a technique in which advertisers show their ads to people who have previously visited their websites in the hope of encouraging return visits. They are also used to attract new visitors, using Google’s Similar Audiences feature, which targets users with web behavior like your previous visitors. However, you should treat visitors and first-time visitors as distinct audiences and develop separate messaging for each.
App Promotion Ads
App promotion ads promote app downloads. They run primarily on mobile devices, but can also appear on the Google Display Network, YouTube, Google Play, and Google Discover.
Video Ads
Video ads appear on YouTube, a search engine for video content and a Google property. According to GMI, more than two billion users visit it at least once a month, including 210 million in the U.S. alone. The ads appear before, during, and after YouTube videos. Here’s an ad for DMS shopHERE that appeared when I searched for copywriting videos on YouTube.
Video ads allow for all the usual demographic targeting based on age, gender, and interests. Users can skip past the ads after a 5 second timer, but even that 5 second interval leaves enough time to insert the critical parts of your message.
Shopping Ads
Shopping ads show merchandise with a product image, title, price, and a link to the ecommerce store. The information comes from your Google Merchant Center, and the ads will run on Google Shopping and search partner sites.
Showcase shopping ads group a collection of products together, allowing potential customers to browse.
Budget
You can set a budget for individual campaigns in your ad account, or you can share a budget across multiple campaigns. When you share a budget, Google will automatically reallocate a surplus in one campaign to increase performance in another.
The budget figure you set represents an average daily spend. Google or another ad network may overspend one day and underspend the next, but on a monthly basis, the ad network will charge exactly according to the budget you specify.
The key question any advertiser faces is how to get their ads to appear in the best possible position, at the lowest possible price. Bid strategy is a factor in determining those results. So is keyword selection. We’ll cover those topics next.
The key question any advertiser faces is how to get their ads to appear in the best possible position, at the lowest possible price. Bid strategy is a factor in determining those results. So is keyword selection. We’ll cover those topics next.
Search Engine Marketing Bid Strategies
A bid strategy is an instruction from you to Google or Bing, telling the network how to spend your money. You can choose from several automated strategies, or you can set your ad bids manually.
There are automated strategies to maximize clicks, visibility in search results, conversions, or conversion value.
For Google search campaigns, a subset of automated bidding strategies called Smart Bidding provides even more options. You can choose a Smart Bidding strategy to target a cost per action (CPA), return on advertising spend (ROAS), maximize conversions, or maximize conversion value.
If you specify bids manually, you can set a maximum bid for an ad group or individual keywords.
Many organizations combine manual and automated bid strategies in a campaign. It’s not uncommon to set up a campaign with an automated bid strategy to let Google acquire data. Once the campaign has acquired enough conversions, the advertiser can switch to a manual strategy to gain additional control over their ad spend.
Keyword Selection
Keywords lie at the heart of advertising success. Google, Bing, and other ad networks match your keywords to search queries, and this matching process determines which advertiser’s ads will appear in the search results.
Keywords can be single words, but it’s more typical (and effective) to use phrases, which advertisers select according to their search volume, auction cost, commercial intent, and other factors.
An ad is triggered when a user’s search query matches the keyword selected for the ad, but it’s not necessarily an exact, literal match. For each keyword you specify, you can select one of four match types.
Broach Match
Broad match triggers an ad when its keyword is related to the user’s search query. In a broad match, the search engine will consider factors such as the user’s recent search activities, the contents of a landing page, and advertiser’s intent, as signified by other keywords in an ad group. Google provides the example of the keyword low-carb diet plan, which could trigger ads for carb-free foods, low-carb diets, low calorie recipes and Mediterranean diet books.
Broad match is the default match type. It’s a good strategy for showing your ad to a larger and wider variety of users, but it can increase your ad spend.
Phrase Match
Phrase match triggers an ad when its keyword’s meaning matches the user’s search query. For example, the keyword tennis shoes would trigger ads for shoes for tennis, buy tennis shoes on sale, and red tennis shoes.
Exact Match
Exact match triggers an ad when its keyword has the same meaning or intent as a user’s search query. For example, shoes for men would trigger ads for shoes men, men shoes, men shoe, or shoes for a man.
It’s also possible to specify negative matches, which prevent your ads from showing on the specified terms. For example, if you are advertising hiking boots, you could use a negative keyword to prevent your ad from showing on a search for cowboy boots.
Search Engine Marketing for Small Businesses
If you operate a small business, you probably need to advertise. You probably also need to manage your ad spend carefully. Search engine marketing allows you to do these two things, and more. You can target your audience carefully, control your ad placement, and stop and start your ad campaigns as needed. SEM is a vital tool in any small business marketer’s toolkit.
Google Ads Grants for Nonprofit Organizations
If you operate a nonprofit organization, the world’s most popular search engine has good news for you. Google Ad Grants provides $10,000 per month to qualifying nonprofits that meet the following conditions:
- Your nonprofit must be registered as a charitable organization.
- It cannot be a governmental entity or organization, a hospital or health care organization, or a school, academic institution or university.
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