If you build it, you may still need Google AdWord
Jennifer Mesenbrik
Does this look familiar? These are the ads that pops up when I search for AC cleaning. This is the gist of what search engine marketing is where companies promote/ optimise their websites in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing to show their webpage first when users search for certain words.
But what is a search engine exactly and what does it do?
Search engine searches for information on the world wide web. It has 3 components, crawler, index, and query processor. It also uses Ranking algorithm such as location & frequency of keywords on page, HTML title tag, content, quality of relevance, number of other sites linking to page and number of click-throughs generated by searches
We ALL know Google is the biggest search engine, but by how much? 92.7%
Marketing in Search Engines (SEM) is basically promoting organisation through Search Engines a.k.a Google to display your result on its first page and making it look clickworthy, either by optimising or paying. Two techniques are SEO or Paid search marketing (Pay-Per Click/ Sponsored listings)
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
It is an approach, structured to show a company/ products in search engine’s first page natural results listings through selected keywords or phrases. So how to achieve success in SEO to direct traffic to your webpage? Here’s the 7 steps to SEO Success
- Goals – Define it
- Keywords
- On Page SEO – Speak Google
- Content Marketing – Quality content for Google & Humans
- Off page SEO – Use Social media, Go local, build links
- Metrics – Measure + Learn from results
- Learn – Never stop learning!
With many SEO approaches such as Search Engine Submission, Index Inclusion, Key Phrase Analysis, On-Page optimisation, basically the things you do to improve Page Rank, These two are the two different strategies used for SEO.
White Hat
Basically high quality links. Quality content, appropriate titles + meta data, Keyword research, use keywords across all elements of the pages, Social media links
Black Hat
Buy em, no need to care about quality. Black Hat has hidden content, Meta keyword stuffing, Doorway pages/ redirection, and link farming
Nowadays, black hat strategies are dying as it is now mostly filtered by Google and White Hat strategies are promoted as it IS what customers want and it is valuable.
Paid Search Marketing (PPC)
It is a relevant text ad linking to company page as displayed on the SERP’s to usr’s search. With a fee per click. For PPC, highest bid with highest quality score wins
Analytics
We can’t not talk about analytics as it is used to assess + improve e-marketing contribution to a business. Successful analytics require top management support, IT support, data and analytics skill. It is needed to do A/B testing in optimising the website organically. It needs to test call to action buttons, headlines, Marketing mix offers to see which attracts the customer the best.
Social Media
Facebook page Insights and Instagram insights are helpful to businesses as it can show which posts shows the most engagement and Reach is also shown. What matters in social media is Growth & Management metrics, Content Strategy Metrics, and Audience Quality Metrics.
Opinion
SEM is very technical and requires a bit of understanding on online tools and its languages but the concept itself is easy to grasp. As long as you put your content in favour of Google, your link is shown in the first page. If you can’t do that but got money, then just do PPC! Leverage social media to improve your websites/ products to generate more clicks and keep on improving and learning through understanding the analytics and give people what they want.
Which techniques can optimise your SEM the most?
Personally, social media as for many people nowadays their news, chatting and sharing happens within their social media. It will be easier for your potential customers to share your links through it and it will naturally generate growth.
digital diary 
I found some of the theories or tools that i have never heard before such as white hat and black hat so it was nice of you to talk about these things to help readers gain knowledge and insight about mobile marketing. Since it may be a new concept for some of the readers including me, can you give examples in real life of some companies that may have used these strategies? Readers may understand more when there are examples that they can relate to. Thank you for answering my question.
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Thanks for the great post, Sabrina! I agree that social media could bring a big impact to the business. I have a question about SEO, so in your opinion, do you think White Hat strategy is more beneficial to use for the business?
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Thank you Aveline!
I do believe so because doing Black Hat can generate backlash for businesses and tarnish their brand image so for me I prefer companies who use White hat Strategies!
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Hey very fascinating blog! Did you find that the sponsored ads are still at the top of the organic search results? I wondered what if there’s a stage where paying ads are overwhelming and too many that it’s going to be impossible for us to even look for organic SEO results anymore? would you agree with me, do you? 😉 🙂
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Thank you aldon! I believe that search engines will stay true to their purpose despite looking for profits like Google Ads to keep up their credibility with their loyal consumers. If google keeps on selling, consumers may get too irritated and go to alternative search engine!
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I think it really helps a business out when they are able to be the first thing that shows up in a google search. Thanks for sharing all these info btw!
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Search results are so important,e especially for a university student like me. We tend to find various irrelevant ads lying around in our search results all the time. I feel like it is important for google and other search engines to limit their PPC ads per search result. What do you think?
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I believe google is optimising and puts limit for PPC per page as it will affect their credibility as a search engine. Would you still want to use google If their entire page is just PPC? I certainly won’t!
Warmest Regards,
Sabrina
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Would you say the quickest and easiest way to drive traffic to my website will involve cost?
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Thanks for your blog post, I also feel the search results are very important for consumers to approach to the brand. SEM would help many companies to raise its brand awareness!
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