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Amol Ghemud Published: August 14, 2018
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Search Engine Marketing, or Search Marketing as we call it, is about buying traffic for your website. It is about getting into search listing of most used search engines.
Pay-per- click (PPC) or cost-per- click (CPC) will keep coming to you now and then, when you mention SEM even in a whisper.
Let me tell you an open secret – SEM is not only about CPCs and PPCs. It is further and deeper than that.
Another important point that is often missed is the connection of SEO & SEM. Though they are well connected and one can’t survive without the other, SEO is more about earning traffic than buying it.
SEM is not an easily chewable candy. It is, in fact, the process that goes in for making that candy and selling it, too! When it is about SEM, ROI can be reframed as ROAS (return on advertising spend), a marketing metric that calculates if you are really earning from advertising or not and the necessary steps that follow.
While you are spending on SEM in great volumes, you need to be aware of these SEM game rules of the present and future to make sure your ROAS is delightful.
Ask yourself the questions regarding the points we are discussing here.
Do you utilize the power of Google?
1. Adwords
Google is a sure shot winner of the online business game. Adwords is an amazing platform to get your ads published, seen & valued via Google. It is based on the outcomes, so you pay only after you get results. Like every other product/service from Google, this too, comes with guidelines and tutorials.
Keyword Planner Tool
You get historical statistics of your search; can choose competitive bids & budgets and a lot more by searching for keywords and search ideas.
Keyword Insertion
It helps you with getting related and relevant searches for your ad. It helps you update automatically. Related keywords get the user to your ad and you don’t need to worry about someone not inserting the exact expected keywords (which is anyway not completely possible).
Ad Delivery
You may use a standard delivery option that spans for the whole day or if you can have a larger budget, accelerated delivery can help to handle the pace of your campaign.
Smart Goals
This is how Google explains Smart Goals – It uses machine learning to examine dozens of signals about your website visits to determine which of those are most likely to result in a conversion.
Each visit is assigned a score, with the ‘best’ visits being translated into Smart Goals.
Third Party reviews
Adding third party reviews to your ads appeals customers and creates interest in them to click on your ad. A positive review, accolade or award can create magic for you.
Enhanced CPC
This strategy raises your bids in saleable situations and reduces in less selling ones. It combines manual bidding with smart one. It helps maximize conversions for your CPC.
Adwords reporting
You can customize your statistics table from your Adwords account. The reports can be run at specific intervals and scheduled to be mailed to your account. The reports carry specific performance data for your Adwords campaign.
2. Adsense
This helps you put the right ads on your website. Adsense, too, comes with a complete guide to help you make the best use of it. It is simple to use and is free. Google has obviously taken care of latest trends of the Digital Marketing World.
3. AMP
Google’s contribution to this project is worthwhile. Know more about Accelerated Mobile Pages Project and how they are useful for the future of your SEM and SEO.
Do you underestimate Bing? Don’t!
Bing has a huge network and millions of dedicated users. So, your SEM has to go beyond Google and cover more areas for a wider spread. Bing is gaining importance and setting up new standards to survive and ace the Digital Marketing game. Bing, as it claims, is mobile, global and local.
Are you making proper use of the resource called SERPs?
SERPs is providing you with the necessary resources that help you find if your SEM strategies are working fine or not. Their real life case studies, blog articles and help desk become a guide to your SEM.
Are you updated with the current trends that will rule SEM in the near future? Most of them are already happening. SEM is no more limited to just the conventional search marketing strategies. It is now more about staying up with the recent trends in the Digital Marketing world.
Experience based marketing
SEM strategies are growing based on marketing based on previous search behaviors of customers, their preferred searches, buying patterns, time spent on the data, etc. This will help choose the right tools and strategies for SEM.
App advertising
App based advertising is taking on the buzz. Amazon started it a long ago, others are following suit. You can focus your Ads to work on mobile devices.
Social Media Marketing
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, you can use every platform to reach out to people.
Browser in apps
Be it Facebook or Pinterest, user doesn’t need to open the browser on his/her mobile device, they simply can stay on the app by and read from the app’s own browser. This is time saving and the user remembers you for the time & efforts saved along with your quality content.
Video Streams
Live stream videos related to your product. You may host a specialized cooking plan for weight management. This will create an interest among people and you may get conversions.
Visual Communication
Users jump from one site to another just because the latter didn’t ask them to read a long technical article? For example, Infographics are simplifying knowledge and technically complex things. They are attractive, informative and not boring at all!
Interactive Ads
No need to go to myntra’s app/website to know what is Deepika’s All About You featuring this week. Or the user can just let the deodorant commercial play on the page he/she is reading an article on. The magic of interactive advertising! No one will forget what he/she saw and heard and keep coming back.
Local Search
Customers are getting more engaged in searching for local eateries, movie theaters, bookstores or even shopping malls. Local is becoming the new global.
SEM isn’t something to be rushed into. It is a process to be carried out with utmost patience and dedication. Once you get into the flow of search marketing, your ROAS and ROI will make you happier day by day. Don’t forget to keep track on your performance every now and then.
Search Engine Marketing is a comprehensive process for generating profitable traffic, not just a mechanism for buying clicks. Viewing SEM through the lens of Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is vital because it connects advertising expenses directly to revenue, transforming campaigns from a cost center into a measurable growth driver. A successful SEM strategy focuses on acquiring high-value actions, not just high volumes of visitors.
This is achieved by integrating several key components:
Advanced Bidding: Employing strategies like Enhanced CPC within Google AdWords allows the system to automatically adjust bids for clicks that are more likely to convert, maximizing your budget's efficiency.
Hyper-Relevant Targeting: Using features like Dynamic Keyword Insertion ensures your ad copy matches user intent precisely, improving click-through rates and Quality Scores.
Continuous Measurement: Setting up customized AdWords reporting provides clear data on which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords are delivering positive ROAS, enabling informed optimization.
Understanding this strategic framework is the first step toward building a truly profitable advertising presence.
The core connection between SEM and SEO is their shared reliance on keywords and user intent to capture visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). While SEM buys immediate placement through ads and SEO earns organic rankings over time, they inform and strengthen one another. A truly effective search strategy uses insights from one to fuel the other for a dominant SERP presence.
A tool like the Google Keyword Planner is the bridge between them.
For SEM: It provides data on keyword search volume, competition, and suggested bids, which is essential for structuring AdWords campaigns and estimating budgets to achieve a target ROAS.
For SEO: The same keyword data helps prioritize content creation, revealing what topics your audience is searching for and allowing you to build organic authority around valuable terms.
Integrated Strategy: You can use paid SEM campaigns to quickly test the conversion potential of keywords before investing long-term SEO resources into ranking for them organically.
This symbiotic relationship ensures your marketing efforts are aligned with proven user demand.
Overlooking Bing in your SEM strategy is a missed opportunity to reach a large, dedicated, and often less competitive user base. While Google has a larger market share, Bing provides access to millions of users at a potentially lower cost, directly improving your overall campaign ROAS. Diversifying your ad spend across platforms creates a more resilient and cost-effective marketing mix.
The Bing network offers several distinct benefits:
Lower Competition: Fewer advertisers on Bing often translates to lower Cost-Per-Click (CPC) rates compared to Google AdWords, allowing your budget to go further and acquire customers more cheaply.
Different Demographics:Bing users often skew slightly older and have higher household incomes, which can be a highly valuable audience for certain products and services.
Expansive Network: Ads on Bing also appear on partner sites like Yahoo and AOL, extending your reach beyond a single search engine and capturing a wider segment of the market.
Integrating Bing is a simple way to expand your reach and find new pockets of growth.
Choosing between standard and accelerated ad delivery in Google AdWords depends entirely on your campaign goals and budget constraints. Standard delivery paces your ad spend evenly throughout the day to avoid premature budget exhaustion, while accelerated delivery shows your ads as quickly as possible. The right choice hinges on whether you prioritize sustained visibility or immediate market saturation.
Consider these factors when making your decision:
Budget Size: If you have a limited daily budget, standard delivery is the safer option. It ensures your ads remain visible to potential customers from morning to night, capturing users across different time zones or search periods.
Campaign Urgency: For time-sensitive promotions, product launches, or events where capturing attention early is critical, accelerated delivery is more effective, provided you have a large enough budget to sustain it.
Impression Share: If your goal is to dominate the ad space for specific keywords and you are not budget-limited, accelerated delivery can help you capture the maximum possible impression share early in the day.
Monitoring your campaign's performance and ROAS will reveal which pacing method works best for your specific goals.
Integrating positive third-party reviews and awards directly into Google AdWords ads is a highly effective tactic for boosting credibility and click-through rates. This strategy leverages social proof at the first point of contact, immediately signaling to users that your business is trustworthy and valued by others. It transforms a standard text ad into a compelling endorsement, helping you stand out on a crowded SERP.
This approach is powerful for several evidence-based reasons:
Builds Instant Trust: A positive rating or accolade from a recognized source acts as a powerful signal of quality, reducing a potential customer's hesitation to click.
Increases Ad Relevance: For users evaluating multiple options, an ad with a strong review is perceived as more relevant and helpful, leading to higher engagement.
Improves ROAS: Higher click-through rates from trusted ads can lead to better Quality Scores, which in turn can lower your Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and improve your overall Return on Ad Spend.
This demonstrates that in search marketing, building trust is just as important as bidding on the right keywords.
Google's Smart Goals uses machine learning to bridge a critical gap for advertisers who lack dedicated conversion tracking, making data-driven optimization accessible to everyone. The system analyzes dozens of signals from your website's traffic to identify the most engaged visitors who are most likely to convert. This provides an automated way to optimize for quality traffic, even without a complex analytics setup.
Here is how the machine learning model works:
Signal Analysis: It examines anonymous data from thousands of websites using Google Analytics that have opted to share aggregated conversion data.
Engagement Scoring: The model evaluates signals for each visit to your site, such as session duration, pages per session, location, and device, and assigns an engagement score.
Goal Identification: The top percentage of visits—the "best" ones—are designated as Smart Goals, creating a benchmark for high-quality traffic.
Campaign Optimization: You can then use these Smart Goals in AdWords to inform bidding strategies like Enhanced CPC, focusing your spend on attracting more similarly engaged visitors.
This feature exemplifies how AI is making sophisticated campaign management and improved ROAS possible for all businesses.
Enhanced CPC (eCPC) is an ideal bidding strategy for an e-commerce business seeking to maximize sales while retaining some control over bids. It works by taking your manual CPC bids and allowing Google's algorithm to automatically adjust them up or down for clicks it deems more or less likely to lead to a conversion. This hybrid approach combines your strategic input with the power of machine learning for better ROAS.
Here is how you can implement it:
Enable Conversion Tracking: Before using eCPC, ensure you have accurate conversion tracking set up for purchases or key actions on your website. This provides the data the algorithm needs to learn.
Navigate to Campaign Settings: Select the specific AdWords campaign you want to modify and go to its 'Settings' tab.
Select Bidding Strategy: Under the 'Bidding' section, choose 'Manual CPC' as your base strategy. This is a prerequisite for enabling the enhancement.
Activate Enhanced CPC: Check the box that says 'Enable Enhanced CPC'. This tells Google it can now adjust your manually set bids.
Set Manual Bids: Continue to set your maximum CPC bids at the ad group or keyword level. The algorithm will use these as a baseline for its adjustments.
By following these steps, you can start optimizing for conversions more effectively.
The rise of mobile-first browsing has made landing page speed a critical factor in SEM success, directly impacting both user experience and campaign profitability. Slow-loading pages lead to high bounce rates, meaning you are paying for clicks from users who never even see your offer. Optimizing for speed with technologies like Google's AMP is no longer a recommendation, but a necessity for protecting your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
The implications for your SEM strategy are significant:
Ad Quality Score:Google AdWords includes landing page experience as a key component of Quality Score. A slow, non-mobile-friendly page will lower your score, increasing your Cost-Per-Click (CPC).
Conversion Rates: Mobile users expect instant results. Delays of even one or two seconds can cause conversion rates to plummet, wasting your ad spend on traffic that does not convert.
User Expectations: As users become accustomed to fast experiences on platforms like Google, their patience for slow websites decreases, making a speedy mobile page a competitive differentiator.
Failing to adapt to these mobile-centric trends means you are actively damaging your campaign's performance and profitability.
Mismatched ad copy is a frequent cause of poor SEM results, but Google AdWords' Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) offers a direct and powerful solution. This feature automatically updates your ad text to include the specific keyword that triggered the ad, creating a highly relevant message for each user. This solves the relevance problem by precisely mirroring the user's language and intent in your ad.
Here is how DKI improves campaign performance and ROAS:
Boosts Click-Through Rate (CTR): When users see their exact search term in an ad headline, it grabs their attention and signals that the ad is directly relevant to their needs, making them more likely to click.
Improves Quality Score: Ad relevance is a major component of Quality Score. By using DKI to create more relevant ads, you can improve your score, which often leads to lower CPCs and better ad positions.
Streamlines Campaign Management: Instead of creating dozens of unique ads for slight keyword variations, you can use one ad with DKI to cover an entire ad group, saving significant time and effort.
By ensuring a tight match between query and ad, DKI helps you avoid wasted spend and attract more qualified traffic.
Failing to systematically track performance makes it impossible to optimize campaigns or justify ad spend, a common pitfall for advertisers. Google AdWords reporting tools solve this by providing customizable, automated reports that deliver specific performance data directly to your inbox. This creates a consistent feedback loop, transforming raw data into actionable insights for proving and improving your ROAS.
Here is how to set up an effective reporting system:
Define Key Metrics: In your AdWords account, navigate to the 'Reports' section and create a new report. Focus on essential metrics like Clicks, Impressions, CTR, CPC, Conversions, Cost-per-Conversion, and ROAS.
Customize Your View: Drag and drop dimensions like 'Campaign', 'Ad Group', or 'Keyword' to segment your data and understand performance at a granular level.
Schedule Regular Emails: Use the scheduling feature to have these reports automatically generated and emailed to you and other stakeholders on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
This disciplined approach to reporting removes guesswork and provides the concrete evidence needed to manage your SEM strategy effectively.
While Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) both measure profitability, ROAS is a more direct and specific metric for evaluating advertising effectiveness. ROI considers total business costs, whereas ROAS focuses exclusively on the gross revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. This distinction is critical because it isolates the performance of your Google or Bing ads from other business expenses.
Focusing on ROAS allows for more precise campaign optimization:
Direct Attribution: ROAS calculates (Total Revenue from Ads / Total Ad Cost), providing a clear measure of how well a specific campaign is performing. An ROAS of 4:1 means you are earning $4 for every $1 spent.
Granular Analysis: You can calculate ROAS at the campaign, ad group, or even keyword level, helping you identify what is working and where to allocate more budget.
Tactical Decision-Making: A marketer can use ROAS to make quick decisions, like pausing low-performing ads or increasing bids on high-performing ones, without needing to factor in overhead costs like salaries or rent.
ROAS is the essential metric for any advertiser focused on driving profitable growth directly from their SEM efforts.
Google AdSense is a monetization tool that allows publishers to earn revenue by displaying targeted ads on their website, making it a perfect complement to an SEM strategy. While your AdWords campaigns focus on buying traffic to promote your own products, AdSense creates an additional revenue stream from that same traffic. It effectively allows you to earn money from visitors who may not have converted on your primary offer.
Here is how AdSense complements an SEM campaign:
Monetizes All Traffic: Your SEM campaign drives visitors to your site. Even if they do not purchase your product, you can still generate revenue when they click on an AdSense ad displayed on your page.
Improves Overall ROAS: The revenue earned from AdSense can help offset the cost of your AdWords campaigns, thereby improving the overall profitability and Return on Ad Spend of your marketing efforts.
Leverages High-Quality Content: If your SEM strategy directs users to valuable blog posts or resource pages, AdSense allows you to monetize that informational content, which typically has lower direct conversion rates.
By integrating AdSense, you create a more robust digital ecosystem where every visitor has the potential to generate value.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
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