How Search Engine Marketing Works

Posted by Shashank Pathak
12
May 12, 2013
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Each type of listing -- organic and paid -- has a type of marketing approach associated with it.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves building new websites, or changing existing websites, so that they rank highly in a search engine's organic listings when users search on terms that are related to the site's content. To learn about SEO for Google organic search results, visit Google's Webmaster Central site.
Search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process of promoting and marketing a website through paid listings (advertisements) on search engines.
 
In order to create an ad for a given search engine, you need to create an account with the advertising product or branch of that search engine. For Google, this product is AdWords. After creating an account, you then create your ad and enter a list of user search queries -- called "keywords" -- that can trigger your ad to be shown.

Ads on most search engines operate on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning that you pay only when a user clicks your ad, and not for the ad impression (the instance in which the ad appears on the page). The other common pricing model in online advertising is cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), in which you pay per impression, not for any clicks on your ad.

Site owners often choose to advertise their site instead of, or in addition to, optimizing their site for placement in the organic search results. Although it's necessary to pay for the clicks your ads receive, advertising allows you to be proactive about when and where a listing for your site appears. Creating an AdWords account takes minutes, and ads can run almost immediately in response to keywords that you choose.
 
How Online Advertising Works
 
Although SEM refers to placing ads just on search engines, online advertising as a whole is much broader. The possibilities of online advertising include placing ads on nearly any type of website or page a user might browse, such as news, blogs, reviews, entertainment, online magazines, and marketplaces. In AdWords, these other sites make up the Google Display Network.

Ads on the Google Display Network can be in a number of formats, such as basic text ads, graphical image ads in a variety of sizes, audio streams, or interactive and video ads. You can also choose many different targeting options for your ads: whether defining the user's device (a computer or a mobile phone) you'd like your ad to show on, or specifying the user's location, language, or demographic.

Online advertising offers so many options that it's useful to define your advertising goals before beginning. This can help you determine where to place ads (search engines, Display Network pages, or both) and what format of ads to place, and also help guide your budgeting decisions.
 
Direct Response vs. Branding in Online Advertising
 
Online advertising goals generally fall into one of two categories: direct response or branding.
 
Direct response

If your goal is direct response, you'd like a user to perform an action after clicking through your ad to your website: make a purchase, sign up to a newsletter, or request a quote, for instance. The completion of your desired action by the user is called a conversion.
 
To manage your online advertising strategy and costs, it's useful to define a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) that you'd like to achieve per conversion. You'll then be able to monitor the performance of your ads to ensure that they're meeting your CPA goals.

Branding.

If your advertising goal is branding, your main reason for advertising online is to raise awareness and visibility of your product, service, or cause. To achieve this, you'll want to aim to place your ads in front of as many people as possible within your target audience.
 
Use cases

Although just about anyone could use online advertising for any reason, here are some of the best use cases:

1. An online retailer without a physical store location:

Use online advertising to drive traffic to your website. Show ads both in response to relevant keywords on search engines and on Display Network webpages that your target customers would be likely to visit
.
2. A small business that cannot afford expensive, traditional advertising methods:
 
Use online advertising to narrowly target your ads to a particular audience, and to closely control your costs and track your return on investment (ROI).

3. A large business that would like to build brand awareness:
 
Show image ads or multimedia ads on Display Network webpages that your target audience is likely to spend time on.

Shashank Pathak
Freelancer SEO
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