SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING – Overview, Pros and Cons
- Search engine marketing’s greatest strength is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to put their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re ready to make a purchase
- According to HubSpot and Moz, the average person conducts between 3 and 4 searches every day
- Google processes 2 trillion searches a year. For every $1 that a business spends on Google Search and Ads, it makes $8 in profit (Source: 99FIRMS)
Search engine marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. With millions of businesses out there, it’s never been more important to advertise online, and search engine marketing is the most effective way to promote your products and grow your business.
Search engine marketing is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). Advertisers bid on keywords that users of services such as Google and Bing might enter when looking for certain products or services, which gives the advertiser the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.
These ads, often known by the term pay-per-click ads, come in a variety of formats. Some are small, text-based ads, whereas others, such as product listing ads (PLAs, also known as Shopping ads) are more visual, product-based advertisements that allow consumers to see important information at-a-glance, such as price and reviews.
Search engine marketing’s greatest strength is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to put their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re ready to make a purchase. No other advertising medium can do this, which is why search engine marketing is so effective and such an amazingly powerful way to grow your business.
Statistics
Around 93% of all web traffic is via a search engine (Source: Blue Opps). According to HubSpot and Moz, the average person conducts between 3 and 4 searches every day. This indicates that there’s still a massive amount of search growth opportunity, not just for Google but also for the second best search engines. On average, someone making a search uses about 3 words in their query. Interestingly, the difference in the number of words used in search queries by desktop and mobile users isn’t significant. Desktop users only have a slightly higher query length on average, with 16% of desktop users going for 6 words or more in their queries compared to 14% mobile users. Data also shows that 8% of all search queries are phrased as questions.
Similarly, it was found by SEO Tribunal that marketers that combine organic SEO and PPC ads see 25% more clicks and 27% greater profits when compared to results from just one technique. Even though search engine optimization stats show that SEO techniques tend to be more profitable than PPC, it seems that relying completely on just one of these is not as beneficial as using a combination of both. As PPC ads are displayed to those who will find them the most useful, combining your investment in both should get you notably better customer interaction.
Pros
A pay-per-click campaign can really help you reach out to a target audience. Depending on the size of your business, you can spend a particular amount of money on keywords that will attract Internet users to your ads. You only have to pay for advertisements that people click on. This is a great way of improving your online reach.
We can improve traffic to your website by investing in the right SEM tactics. The internet never sleeps. That means people can visit your site at any time, and you need to make them stay. SEM can really help improve page visits and overall ranking of a site.
Traditional marketing still cannot be done away with, but SEM offer exciting prospects. For example, online purchase of products/services can really help towards brand building and even make a fan base of satisfied customers. When you are on the first page of a search, your company will receive a large number of hits.
For local businesses, search engine marketing can do wonders. Over 70% of online users conduct local searches for information on a variety of products and services. If your company has a sound SEM strategy in place, then you could become the first choice of many in and around your area of business.
Cons
SEM is targeted marketing. That means you have to spend a lot of time trying to find the right combination of tactics. Once you settle on the right plan, daily updates need to be made so that your search engine ranking doesn’t take a beating. All businesses do not have so much time to spare for such a task.
SEM is usually outsourced because of time constraints or lack of skill. This means that a lot of money has to be spent in order to get proper results. Sometimes, the SEM companies might not be up to the mark and your resources could go down the drain. Small and medium sized businesses might not have the funds to spend on search engine marketing.
Last but not the least; unethical SEM tactics could have you struck off search engine indexes. This blacklisting could damage your online reputation once and for all.
