Search engine marketing (SEM) encompasses a wide range of marketing activities related to your online presence in the search engines, including ads and content on other websites.
Regardless of what type of blog you run – whether you’re selling products, services, or just posting content – these SEM tips will help you get better results.
1. Optimize your PPC ad campaigns
Are you running paid ads on Google or other platforms? If so, make sure you take the time to optimize your campaigns. For example, focus on lowering your cost per click (CPC) to get the most out of your ads for as little cost as possible.
You might be paying more than necessary for your clicks. For instance, with a broad target market, you’ll pay more for popular keywords. However, with a narrow market, you’ll pay less for clicks and you’ll be targeting a more niche audience.
Run your PPC ads on multiple platforms
Another way to optimize your PPC ad campaigns is to make sure you run ads on multiple platforms. Google is likely your go-to search engine for running PPC ads. That’s great, because Google owns the lion’s share of searches. However, don’t forget to run PPC ads on other platforms like Bing, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
2. Perform SEO on a regular basis
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an ongoing responsibility when you’re serious about ranking your web pages in the search engines. SEO is the primary component in search engine marketing, and should remain an ongoing priority.
Some of the basic SEO components you’ll need to perform on a regular basis include:
· On-page optimization
It’s worth continually working on your web page content to ensure you include all the right keywords, phrases, and the relevant context that tells search engines what your page is about.
· Link building
You can’t have SEO without an inbound link building campaign. Search engines have always ranked web pages according to the number of backlinks they have, but quality matters first. Make sure you have an ongoing link building campaign to acquire backlinks from quality websites and domains with high authority.
· Generate targeted traffic
Traffic is important, but it’s only useful when your visitors are interested in your content. Focus on generating traffic from sources that are relevant to your products and services.
· Tracking
Always track your efforts so you can see where you are in relation to your goals. For example, what is your conversion rate? If you’re generating an enormous amount of traffic, but not many conversions, that data means you need to narrow down how you target your traffic.
These are just some of the ongoing SEO tasks you need to perform. There are also some important technical tasks that you can learn about from SearchEngineLand.
3. Revisit market research periodically
When was the last time you looked into your target market? If it’s been a while, or you haven’t gone deep, it’s time to look deeper into your market.
Knowing as much as possible about your target market will help you more than you might realize. If your target market is too broad, it will be hard to reach them with convincing marketing messages. On the contrary, when your market is narrow, you can craft messages that appeal to specific, relatable things.
For instance, if you sell socks, you might think your target market is “everyone,” but when you narrow your target to runners, you can market your socks as being strong enough to withstand the intensity of being worn in a marathon.
4. Get professional help with keyword research
Unless you’re an experienced marketer, doing your own keyword research isn’t easy. And if you haven’t done keyword research yet, you’ll want to do it sooner than later. Guessing at keywords isn’t a good strategy, and you need access to industry-leading tools to do keyword research correctly.
Hire a professional marketing agency to do your keyword research. Proper keyword research is the foundation of your entire digital marketing strategy, in terms of SEO and PPC ads. If you get the keywords wrong, you’ll generate the wrong traffic, and you’ll miss out on conversions.
Strengthen your search engine marketing today
No matter how well your blog is doing, you could probably use some improvement. Whether you’re looking to expand your readership, sell products, or build your brand identity, your success will depend on your SEM efforts. The sooner you focus on SEM, the sooner you’ll start seeing big results.
Article Submitted By Community Writer
