by Emily Caddell | Director of Marketing
Paid Search Advertising, dominated by Google, is one of the most effective online marketing strategies available for businesses that want to reach potential customers who are searching for their products and services. Google handles more than FIVE BILLION searches each day and many of those searches are from people looking for products and services.
What exactly is Paid Search Advertising?
Paid Search Advertising, also called SEM (Search Engine Marketing), is when businesses pay search engines to place their ads within the search results for searches related to their products and services.
For example, when you google the word “dentist,” you’ll likely see ads for local dentists in the top of search results page. Google only charges the dentists when someone clicks on their ad, which is why they are also called PPC (Pay Per Click) ads. Clicks on ads lead to the businesses website.
How does Paid Search Advertising work?
Basically an advertiser decides on the words and phrases people would likely google if they are looking for their type of business. These words and phrases are called “keywords.” Then the business decides the maximum amount they they are willing to “bid” for each click on their ads. Each keyword has its own maximum bid.
When a person searches for a keyword, the search engine analyzes the maximum bids from all the businesses that have that keyword and then uses a combination of top bidders and other factors to decide which ads show up and the order in the search results they show up.
Keyword prices vary widely. For example, keywords related to dentists may average $5./click while keywords related to personal injury law may cost as much as $75./click. The actual price is set by auction. A personal injury attorney may be willing to pay $2,000 to get one new case so they are willing to pay such a high amount per click, while a dentist may only be willing to pay $200 or less for a new patient which is why their keywords cost so much less.
What are the basic settings of a Paid Search Advertising campaign?
There are numerous campaign settings that can impact Paid Search Advertising results. The following are the most important settings:
Targeted Location – The specific geographic location a campaign is targeting. Campaigns can be targeted by Country, State, County, City and even Zip Code. Generally advertisers will target users within the targeted location. Advertisers may also exclude geographic locations.
Daily Budget – The total amount of money the advertiser is willing to spend on clicks each day.
Ad Schedule – The time of day and day of week the advertisers wants their ads to appear. For example, some businesses that are closed on weekends choose not to advertise on weekends.
Keywords – As mentioned earlier, keywords are words and phrases that the advertiser selects based on the relation to their business. If someone is searching for their type of business, what are the words and phrases they are likely to be searching for?
Ad Groups – Ad Groups are a collection of related keywords and ads related to those keywords. For example, a dentist may have an Ad Group related to Cosmetic Dentistry. All the keywords in this Ad Group would be related to that topic so they might have “cosmetic dentist,” “cosmetic dentistry,” “cosmetic dentist near me,” and “best cosmetic dentist near me” as keywords. The related ads would then feature the words “Cosmetic Dentist” in the headline, for example, “Top-Rated Cosmetic Dentist.”
These are the basics of Paid Search Advertising. Want to learn more?
Contact bizmktg.com if you would like to learn how you can use Paid Search Advertising to grow your particular business. (800) 808-0249.
