Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an immediate way to advertise your business online, and offers you much more control than traditional marketing methods.
Glasgow Web Design is a leading UK search engine marketing company with experience in many industry sectors. We offer a full range of Search Engine Marketing services, including managed Pay Per Click campaigns (eg Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing) to businesses in Scotland and throughout the UK. Call now to discuss your SEM campaign on 0141 424 3408.
What is SEM?
Search Engine Marketing is the paid placement of your website next to the natural listings on the results pages of search engines like Google. Paid advertising on search engines is sometimes called Pay Per Click (PPC) search marketing, since you only pay when a potential customer clicks on your advert and visits your site.
Two of the most popular search engine marketing services are Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google AdWords is Google's main source of revenue, since they do not charge for inclusion in their main index. Yahoo! Search Marketing, formerly known as Overture, is the second most important SEM service, and although it provides less traffic than Google should not be discounted.
Search Engine Marketing Is Fast
Search Engine Marketing produces results very quickly, and you can start and stop your SEM campaign any time you choose. This makes SEM a good short-term measure to launch a new site, to boost the number of visitors to a site when business is slow, or to promote seasonal product lines.
Search Engine Marketing Guarantees Results
Search Engine Marketing guarantees you a certain amount of traffic to your website, as long as you outbid your competitors. If you place a well-written advert at the top of the results page for a popular search phrase, then you will get very good exposure resulting in a steady stream of traffic. As long as your site effectively converts visitors into sales then this can be a very effective strategy.
Search Engine Marketing Is Transparent
Search Engine Marketing lets you track visitors to your site, so you can be very sure of the return on your investment. SEM allows you to test the conversion rate of different sales pages on your website, profile what time of day people typically search for your keywords, show which one of your unique selling points appeals the most to potential customers, and much more.
Search Engine Marketing Helps SEO
Finally, because of the low set-up costs involved, search engine marketing is a good way of testing keywords that you are thinking of using for a full Search Engine Optimisation campaign.
There can be a huge difference between your website's conversion rate for different search phrases. For example, your website might convert 1% of visitors searching for "mortgage deals", but nearer 10% of visitors searching for "bad credit mortgage deals". This sort of information can be very useful when planning your SEO campaign.
Search Engine Marketing Company
Search Engine Marketing can be carried out directly through the search engine itself, so why would you use a professional search engine marketing company? The main benefit of using a search engine marketing company UK clients value is that we will help you get the most out of your PPC budget, making sure that your pay per click spend results in extra sales.
Large PPC campaigns can be time-consuming, so you can free up time by outsourcing PPC management to a dedicated search engine marketing company. There are also a number of traps and pitfalls that a reputable search engine marketing firm will guide you past, particularly when first setting up your campaign and trying to interpret the search data.
Search Engine Marketing Consultants
Search Engine Marketing Consultants can provide training to allow you to manage your own UK SEM campaign. Instead of using our managed search engine marketing service, our search engine marketing specialists can provide you with the necessary skills and knowledge to get the most out of your pay per click advertising campaign.
SEM vs SEO
Buying sponsored listings on search engine results pages is very different to using SEO techniques to achieve a high rank in the main results. Paid adverts can appear within minutes of launching an advertising campaign, and you can stop them just as quickly. Because these adverts appear only on the results pages for specific search terms they can target precisely the right audience, unlike traditional marketing channels like radio and television advertising.
Search Engine Optimisation takes a lot more time, but will generate significantly more visitors, result in more conversions, and the benefits will last for much longer. Google clearly separates sponsored listings from the natural results, and it has been shown that people are less likely to trust paid listings than results found high in the organic listings.
SEM UK
When starting SEM UK businesses must bear in mind the UK-specific features of Google's SEM system. For example, making sure that the keywords you bid on will be shown to customers searching from within the UK, rather than globally. And making sure that the spelling of search terms is UK English rather than American English, since this can dramatically change the size of audience you will reach, as well as your running costs. A reputable UK SEM firm will advise you on all of the UK-specific SEM issues that will affect your campaign.
Search Engine Marketing UK
Glasgow Web Design provide search engine marketing Scotland wide, and throughout the UK and Ireland. If you are thinking of running a search engine marketing campaign in the UK, please contact us on 0141 424 3408 now for your free, no-obligation quote.
