Before talking about what is Search Engine Marketing ( It is also called SEM) and how does it work, we must know what are search engines. Simply, search engines are engines that let you search for other websites, topics, information, etc…

You may have a fantastic website or might be offering a fantastic product or a service that offers tremendous value to the consumer from the website, but how is the consumer going to know about your website? That’s the role of search engines as it plays an important role as the facilitator. It will help visitors find your website and buy your product, thus you’re make money online.

What is search engine marketing and search engine optimization?

Whether you wanna make money online from selling a product or service, or if your site just displays information and ads, you need traffic from search engines. Research indicates that as much as 80% of web traffic to a website comes from a search engine. This means that if you are not doing search engine marketing, then you are potentially not reaching out to 80% of your web consumers.

So search engine marketing can be described as marketing a website on the search engines to enhance web visibility. Popular search engines include Google, Yahoo and MSN. While there are countless others, as much as 95% of search engine traffic comes from these 3 places.

How does search engine marketing work?

Google and Yahoo together account for 90% of Search Engines. You can apply search engine marketing on organic results, PPCGoogle, Yahoo and MSN. Actually, there are 2 ways in which you can market in all of them:

Organic results

The first is the organic results that appear when you type in a keyword and a result is displayed.

In the organic results, rankings matter greatly because most of the visitors do not go beyond page 2 or 3 in a result page.

Search engine marketing here involves ‘search engine optimization ‘ (SEO). Its objective is to try and improve the ranks of the website in the search engine for best results, the website should be ranked on page 1 of the results page when a visitor has typed in a targeted keyword for the business.

But the problem with SEO is that, there are countless websites competing for the same keywords, and the fact that there can be only 10 websites in page 1 means that the results are not guaranteed. Plus, it may take a long time to get results too. Search engines also change their algorithms from time to time and when this happens there is a major change in the ranks.

When this happens the business suddenly sees a huge drop in the web traffic and the search engine marketer has to start almost from scratch again.

PPC Ads

On the other hand, PPC or Pay Per Click is a way out of this. The biggest advantage in this is that you get results almost instantly.

Just open an account, research the keywords, create the advertisements, decide the cost per click, and you are ready to go.

The advertisements begin to appear in the paid column and when there is a click, you get traffic to your website. You need to pay the search engine per click, but the amount you pay varies depending on the keywords you have selected and also the position of the advertisement.

All major search engines have a PPC plan like there is Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and then there is MSN AdCenter. Search engine marketing also involves writing qualified articles on your website and submitting some articles to directories of other sites to get a link back to the website.

While this often also leads to a better search engine rank, but here the idea may be to generate more Internet traffic by making the readers of the articles click on the link and visit the website. Now, you know what is search engine marketing so make sure to involve it in your plan.

7 Tips to start with SEM

We live in the digital world more than the real one. We spend 75% of our day online on social media, Google and other servers. This makes SEM essential for any business to succeed. 

If you understand the importance of creating an online marketing approach that employs all marketing channels to achieve the goals, you must start SEM now.

Here are some tips to help put your legs on the SEM ground:

1. Choose a Search Engine Marketing Platform that fits your business

Before you decide which platform is the best place for marketing your business you should ask yourself some questions like:

• How old is your audience? 
• Where do they spend most of their reading time? ( social media, Google, magazines…) 

• Where do they look? for something before buying it? 
• Where do your competitors run their campaigns?
• What are your goals? 
• How much time and budget do you need to achieve it? 

The answers to these questions are the key to determining which is the right platform for you. 

If you are targeting old ones, you may choose Bing Ads over Google ads. 

If your audience reads magazines, it is better to forget about SEM and spend your money there. 

If your audience is Facebook addicted, think of running Facebook ads. 

You will find more ideas after analysing your answers. 

2. Start Small With Your SEM Strategy

Don’t throw all your budget on hundreds of campaigns in one day. 

You have to divide your budget into many parts and start with a limited number of campaigns for several days. Then you can analyse the result and do some optimizations to improve the performance. 

Running 3 campaigns only is enough so you can keep your eyes on them. and optimise them carefully. 

3. Start With Your Keyword Gems

As you know, keywords gems are found that are already bringing some traffic for you. It doesn’t matter whether it is low traffic, clicks or even page rank. 

Just open your Google Analytics queries section and get them out. 

Then, expand the keywords ideas and write content saying the same phrases. 

Let’s say one of your gems is “make money from home”.

You have to develop content about: 

• make money from home without investment
• make money from home for free
• make money from home for beginners

…and so on.

4. Make sure your ad is compatible with your landing page

Users hate to enter an ad saying something and end up on a landing page saying something else. Therefore, make sure that your ad says the same thing which your landing page says to avoid losing a visitor or paying for unwanted clicks. 

5. Landing Copy and Page Design must be perfect

Don’t ignore the importance of having a professional landing page as this is a strong factor for increasing or decreasing your conversion rates.

Make sure that the design and copy of your landing page fit the ads, clear and attractive. 

Check these effective landing page tips for the best design and copy. 

Your landing page must:

• Must be clear and tell your audience what they must do. 
• Call to action must be visible since they open the page and not at its end. 
• Make your content useful and readable without a lot of talking.
• Break your content using bullets and lists to avoid skimming your content. 
• Avoid any unnecessary images, ads, content and other distractions. 
• Make sure that the visitor can identify the call to action button and know how to move to the next step.
• If you are working on your website, make sure that your logo is visible and clear. 
• Add some testimonials to build trust. 

6. Use automation to make work easier

Whenever you find a way to automate your work, go for that. Automation helps you save some time and effort. 

A lot of things can be automated like sharing on social media, pausing ads when spending a certain budget, raising or lowering bids, etc… Available automation differs according to the tool and networks used. 

7. Review daily

Marketing is not something you do and leave it for a few days. You must perform every single day to avoid any problems in funds or tracking. You must always check your keywords and update your bids to stand among the competition.