SEO and SEM

Do you think in spite of having a great design, your website lacks visitors? If yes, then it’s time to do a little exercise.

Jot down your primary keywords (words you think people will use to find your business online. For e.g. low cal energy drink). Open Google and type in the keyword and hit on search. You will see the search results displayed. Does your business show up on the first page? No? Second page? No? (People usually never go past the first page). This means your brand/business is not visible to anyone else.  But the good news is, there are two techniques that can help improve your online visibility and they are Search engine optimization (SEO) and Search engine marketing (SEM).

What is SEO?
The process of SEO involves increasing a website’s visibility and traffic. Search engines, like Google and Bing, automatically scan the web looking for content that will be most useful for a person looking for information on the web. So when a person keys in a particular keyword, the search engine displays web pages that match the key word and search criteria. To get SEO right, focus should be on writing quality content with the right keyword and designing and building the website as per SEO standards.

What is SEM?
Commonly known as paid advertising, SEM is the process of buying your website visibility.
For instance, you bid and pay for keywords, you think people will use to see your ads. This way you can pay for top listing of your website on search engines.

Which one to use?
Businesses are often confused about which technique to use. While SEO strategies are long term in terms of implementation and results, the results will compound over time. SEM involves investment of time and money but can help you nail the keywords that are most effective for your SEO strategies and can help increase visits to your website through the well displayed ads.

For any technique to work, having an impressive website where you can route target visitors is most important.

All you need to know about Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click is an internet advertising model which aims at directing traffic to websites or custom landing pages. A form of search engine marketing, pay per click involves displaying ads on top or on the right side of search engine results and are generally termed as sponsored listings.

As the name suggest, payment is made on the basis of the number of clicks the displayed advertisement gets. Pay per click is dependent on keyword selection, the budget set, search engine, ad creation and so on. Advertisers usually bid on the keywords that is their primary target. The more they bid, higher is the chance of the ad appearing among the listings.

Benefits of PPC

1.    Quick results - Your ad will be displayed as soon as your campaign goes live giving you immediate results and traffic.

2.    Budget - You can set budget for your campaigns thereby controlling your overall marketing budget.

3.    Target audience - PPC allows you to create campaigns targeting specific market in a particular location or country.

4.    Ad schedule - You can schedule your PPC campaign as per the day or hour you deem fit.

5.    Measurable - You can monitor and measure the success of your campaigns giving you the liberty to tweak your ad campaigns as often as required.

Since advertisers have to pay for the number of clicks their ad gets, it is important to make sure that the ad campaign is successful in diverting traffic to the website. Here are some pointers on how you can ensure a successful PPC campaign.

1.    Use keywords that is relevant to your business and has high ranking on search engines.

2.    Use keywords that are pertinent to the website or landing page the visitors will be diverted to.  People will expect to be taken to a page that is relevant to the keywords given in the ad.

3.    Pause your ad campaign on days you cannot monitor it or days you think the ad shouldn’t run. This way you won’t end up spending on running the campaigns on irrelevant days.

4.    Read the terms and conditions before starting an ad campaign.

5.    Plan you ad campaign and focus on your target market. Narrow down your target market by location and demographics.

6.    Strike out any keywords (negative) to avoid your ad being displayed to users of these keywords. For example, you don’t want your ad on residential real estate being displayed to people who search for yachts.

7.    Make your ad attractive to prompt people to click on your ad. Include special offers and incentives to stand out from your competitor’s ad. 

8.    Test your keywords and ad to make sure you have an impressive ad campaign. Keep tweaking your ad by monitoring your analytics regularly.

9.    Monitor the performance of your ad, click through rates and conversions. See which ad worked and which didn’t.

Due to highly effective results, PPC advertising is considered as one of most fast and effective way to drive traffic to your website. To know more about how PPC can help your business, email us at support@newplans.com