SEM can be defined essentially in two ways; either it is a term that combines paid search, SEO, paid inclusions and contextual advertisements, or it is totally separate from SEO and covers paid inclusions, advertising and search only. Regardless of how you want to define SEM, there is one thing that really matters most and that is what basic steps you take to search-optimize your website.
Fix the Little Things
Although you could spend countless months on your website trying to optimize it for SEM, an important step you should do first is to fix the little things on it. You can use tools like Website Grader to brush up on things like your title tag keywords, meta tags, etc. and move forward from there.
Test Your Landing Page and PPC Strategies
Pay Per Click or PPC advertising is a huge factor in search engine marketing. When you have your advertisements in search engines, you will receive targeted traffic to your site. Even if you implement effective organic search marketing and SEO, paid ads still help. Keep in mind, however, that simply having paid ads out there is not enough. You have to be able to convert your visitors into paying customers.
Testing your ads and keywords is a good idea. This will help you determine which ads drive more traffic to your site and allow you to keep track of the statistics. You should also track what the visitors do while on your website. Tools such as Google Analytics will help with this and will help you determine if your visitors are staying on your pages or bouncing away.
Social Media Advertising
This type of advertising is very useful. Most of the popular social sites like Facebook, for example, offer you a number of specifications to see who is viewing your advertisements. By having pinpointed targeting like this, it allows you to market your business based on interests, demographics and other criteria. For instance, if you sell designer handbags, you can craft your ads to only be displayed to women in certain locations, of certain ages and with certain interests. You can also use images in your ads which help to build brand awareness and showcase your products.
In addition, you can take advantage of social media remarketing as well. This is where you can have your ads appear on the Facebook pages of visitors who have already visited your website. This helps to keep your site in front of them without being intrusive.
Ad Extensions
You can take out ad extensions for including extra information in your advertisements. This is particularly important if you plan on only running an ad for a limited time. This will allow you to pack as much as you can in your ad about your business which will make a world of difference. There is a wide range of ad extensions offered by Google that can be helpful such as click-to-call links, reviews, sitelinks of different pages and location information. By providing your visitors with as much information about your business as you can, you provide more options for your viewers to see things they might have interest in and ultimately offer you a better chance of making conversions.
Day/Geographic Parting
One particular way to compete with the bigger brand names and businesses is through localization. If you are targeting a specific area or are a mom and pop shop, you can restrict and refine your geographic targeting. This means, if you are serving only your city and state, you don’t need to appear for country-wide keywords. Also, you can take advantage of day parting where you can set your advertisements to run at specific times of the day. This allows you to run your ads when you feel you will get the most conversions and still remain competitive. Again, companies such as majesticsem.com can help with this.
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