Outstanding Principles to Amplify Your Search Engine Advertising
What is search engine advertising? In order for us to understand what search engine advertising is, we have to understand what a search engine is.
This is a program that is created to send out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible on the web.
Another program which is called an indexer reads these documents and creates an index based on the words that are contained in each document.
Each search engine uses its own algorithm to create its own index so that only the most relevant results are shown on the result page of the search engine for each search query.
Other than the organic or natural search engine results which are generated based on the relevancy algorithm, there is another set of results that may appear with a particular search query.
This is a concept referred to as search engine advertising or PPC advertising.
How Does Search Engine Advertising Work?
Users usually start their search on the search engine if they are looking for something and don’t know where to get it yet.
Google will usually display two types of search results based on the search query. These are organic results and sponsored results.
The sponsored results are usually placed above and below the organic results with a maximum of 7 ads for every search result page.
These ads are usually set apart by a green or yellow label with “Ad” before the URL. Google may also display Google shopping results together with the text ads.
These shopping results do not have any text just a product image, price, seller, and title.
All sponsored results are linked to specific keywords of the users and thus can only be displayed when these keywords are entered in the search bar.
The amount you spend on advertising can be adjusted due to a variety of factors. You have the choice of determining how far your advert reach will be, will it be regionally or nationwide?
The price for these ads is calculated using the number of clicks that the advert attracts. The more you spend on your advert the better position of its placement will be in a given search result.
This type of advertising can be very useful for those websites that are not yet well known or if there is a lot of competition for the search term being used.
Tips For A More Effective Search Engine Advertising
The following tips will go a long way in increasing the effectiveness of your PPC campaign and also help you to keep your budget on track.
Show When It Counts
You can adjust your campaign to put into account user peak hours. You should set your adverts to only be displayed only during the times when your target audience usually conducts a search for your products.
You can do this setting on your Google edit campaign settings under the option called Ad scheduling. This option allows you to automatically turn your campaign off and on at specific times.
Choose Keywords Carefully
There are various tools that you can use to help you find specific keywords or phrases that your audiences are using. One good tool to use is Google’s keyword tool which is actually free.
All that you are required to do is to type in the term you want ant the tool will instantly give you the variations that people have searched for, a rough number of the total searches, the advertising competition related to those terms and if you add the option of max CPC, an estimate of the position and cost for each of them.
Select Longer Tail Terms
A very useful aspect of the Google keyword tool is the fact that it can assist you in finding longer tail terms.
These long tailed terms are the ones that appeal the most to users who are searching for specific items.
If you are working with a limited budget then you should opt to use longer tailed terms as opposed to generic terms so as to attract traffic from people who are doing very specific searches.
This will be cheaper for you and also the traffic you attract will be of a higher quality as these people know exactly what they are looking for.
Think Seasonal
There are some products that will be more popular during certain times of the year due to holidays, major events or weather.
If you sell seasonal product then you should greatly consider increasing your spend on search engine advertising for the months leading to these times of high demand so as to reap from the extra traffic.
If keywords are not a part of your core business then you can wait until the excitement decreases which will also reduce the bid price.
Ad Copy Is Key
Your Ad copy will go a long way in setting you apart from your competitors.
When you add the keyword that people search for in your Ad copy you ensure the Ad’s relevancy in the eyes of both users and Google though it is not really as effective as it was before because it has been overused.
You should instead use language that is distinctive and even quirky so as to grab the attention of the users.
You should also ensure that you include a major CTA and if you have a unique proposition or a new offer you should ensure you mention it in your Ad copy.
Back it Up
Never think of your promotions as separate entities whether they are online or offline promotions.
Ensure that if people typed in the latest slogan of your latest marketing campaign into the search engine they would get a recognizable CPC ad for your site that would take them to your site for more information.
The thing that most people remember about an advert is the company’s name thus it is important to ensure that your ads will appear when people search for your business by mail.
Go Local VS International
If your business is international you may need to set up your campaigns on country to country basis.
Ensure that you tailor the keywords to the various languages, product variations and time-zones in the countries you do business in. it is important to establish the capability of your business because if you are only capable of delivering locally then you don’t need to display an ad campaign to the whole world.
Google is amazing in the sense that it allows you to target your ad campaigns to a state or town or specific geographical location of your choice.
Use Search Engine Advertising Management Tools
There are two other major tools apart from Google’s keyword tool that can be very helpful when it comes to search engine advertising.
The first tool is AdWords editor and the other is Google’s search query performance reports.
The AdWords editor allows you total control over multiple or even large campaigns where you can multiple changes to these campaigns.
The search query performance reports tell you the number of people who are searching for your ads.
You can use this information to adapt both the content on your site and CPC words for your SEO.