The Importance of Search Engine Marketing

The first instinct most people have when they need something, whether it’s a pizza or a new app for their business, is to just type whatever they want into their browser’s search engine. Then a complex algorithm takes those keywords and turns them into search results, a list of websites that the seeker may be interested in. 

One of the most important factors that decides which link potential customers end up clicking on is simply how close to the top of the search results it appears. Almost 70% of people will end up clicking on one of the first five results of a search. Both pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) are methods of getting your company’s link higher up on that list. 

Clutch surveyed more than 500 people who had clicked on a paid search ad within the last month, asking them about their ad and search engine preferences, as well as the reasons that they decide to click on different types of links. The results can be used to help businesses spend their online advertising dollars as efficiently as possible. 


What is Search Engine Marketing?

The way that a search engine selects the results for any given set of keywords can be a confusing process, a function of how closely related its content is to the keywords, how popular a web page is, and even the searcher’s existing internet history. The factor that you can most easily control is the first one, the content of the pages on your site.

SEO is a method of search engine marketing that relies on tweaking the content of your site such that a search engine’s algorithms will more readily associate it with certain keywords that pertain to your business. This can mean changing the actual text on your site’s pages, as well as changing the meta-tags, file names, and using the keywords as anchor text elsewhere on your site.

Compared to other methods of advertising, SEO can take a little longer to be effective, but it has the advantage that SEO success is self perpetuating. The more people who click on your links, the more a search engine will associate them with your keywords, and the higher they will rise in the ranks.

One of the biggest challenges when trying to make the most of SEO is knowing which keywords to use. While the ones with the highest search volume seem like an obvious choice, it is sometimes wiser to aim for some of the less common keywords, as the competition for the most popular ones often makes it hard to stand out. 

Another factor to consider when selecting keywords to optimize your site for is the type of people you want to find your site. For example, pretend you’re trying to sell LED light bulbs online. Search terms like “Light bulb”, “LED”, and  “home lighting” are going to be a lot more common, but people searching with those terms are probably just getting an idea of the type of lighting they want for their home, and are unlikely to buy right away. 

On the other hand, someone searching for “color temperature”, “energy efficient bulb”, or “color changing LED” is probably a lot farther along in their decision process, and will be a lot more likely to actually buy your product. So while that second set of keywords is going to have a lower search volume, it will be easier to get to the top of those results pages, and the conversion rate from those clicks will be a lot higher.       

The Benefits of PPC Advertising

PPC or Pay-Per-Click, is another common way of getting more people to your site. With PPC you pay a search engine to push your website to the top of the results page for select keywords. As the name suggests, you only have to pay (usually around 1 to 2 dollars) when someone actually clicks on the link. 

PPC is actually a lot like SEO. While having a PPC campaign with a certain search engine is a great way to get your ad to the top, it’s still not a guarantee that it will be chosen every time someone searches for your chosen keywords. The popularity of your website and the relevance of the keywords to your content are both still important factors to whether the search algorithm chooses your site. 

Typically a company will maintain an ongoing PPC advertising campaign, making sure to constantly update the keywords they’re paying for, keeping the ones with the highest conversion rates, and dropping the ones that are bringing in people less likely to actually buy something. 

As with any marketing effort, PPC is only useful when the money that it brings in is more than the money you spend on it. So if you spend a dollar on every click for the keyword “light bulb” but people clicking on that ad only buy a one of your $10 LEDs 5% of the time, you’re going to be losing money, even if you’re attracting more customers overall. As with SEO, quality can often trump quantity. 

Why You Should Integrate SEM into Your Marketing Strategy 

Clutch’s survey asked more than 500 people about why they clicked on paid search ads. The results show some interesting variation in the way that people of different generations choose which search results to pursue. 

Baby boomers (ages 55 and up) are the most likely (38%) to click on a paid search ad because it mentions a familiar brand, and the least likely (13%) to worry about if that results is listed above the others. They know which brands they trust, and they aren’t afraid to scroll a bit to find them. 

The biggest factor in whether a user will click on a paid search ad is simply how relevant that ad is to query they typed into the search bar. 33% of people said that they clicked on a search ad because it directly answered their search. This statistic varies very little between age groups, and reinforces the importance of making sure that the keywords you’re paying for are as closely related to the content of your site as possible. People simply don’t want to click on results that aren’t relevant to their search, even if they do appear at the top of the page.

These results show how important it is to use both PPC and SEO in your search engine marketing strategy. Consumers differ in whether they decide to click on paid ads, which are usually labeled as such, or on unpaid ones (which can still be influenced by SEO.) 

A successful PPC campaign will raise awareness of your brand and bring new visitors to your site. The keywords you use can help shape your identity and give you valuable knowledge on what your customers are looking for. SEO can do much the same, but may require more careful management, with the knowledge that any payout is going to be in the long term.

Online advertising can be complicated. Search engine marketing requires constant work, researching trends, prices, and conversion rates to make sure that the keywords your choose, and the methods you use to promote them, are the best ones for your business. That’s why hiring a great marketing or web development company is often a good idea. Let the experts do the hard work of promoting your business, so you can get back to running it.