5 Components of Search Marketing

Search engine marketing isn't only about setting the right bids on the keywords in your PPC campaign keyword bid management is just one part of the overall SEM campaign landscape. Learn what elements work together to make up the big picture in SEM.

In the natural world, an ecosystem is "a unit formed by the interaction of organisms with each other and the environment." Each of these organisms contributes to the continued health of the ecosystem - for example, a pond ecosystem consists of the pond water, fish, birds, algae, air, and other components.

You can think of search marketing campaigns as little marketing ecosystems. These "ecosystems" are actually made up of 5 core components, each interacting with each other and ultimately having a significant impact on the overall success of a keyword campaign. Much like an ecosystem in the natural world, if just one of these components is not working well, your campaign itself can decline.

The 5 core components of a paid search marketing campaign include keywords, bidding, budgeting, ad creatives, and landing page. Each component contributes in its own way to the overall performance of your search engine marketing campaign.

1. Well-chosen keywords help your site or product to appear at the times a potential customer is searching for terms that are relevant to your business.
2. Smart bids ensure that you aren't over-paying for paid search clicks that don't drive an acceptable return according to your goals.
3. Wise budget allocation allows you maximize efficiency: you spend marketing dollars on the most effective keywords or ad venues, and less on those that don't perform.
4. Higher-clickthru ad creatives drive the most customers to your Web site, to grow volume of visitors exposed to your offer.
5. The best-performing landing pages ensure that visitors who arrive at your page from paid search campaigns and view your product or service, have a higher chance of becoming customers or leads.

How do you make sure that your SEM campaign ecosystem's vital parts are working well? Here are some key tips to keep in mind as you build and optimize your campaign:

• Keywords. Choosing the right keywords is essential. Find and bid on relevant terms your target audience would use to find your product or site. And keep on refining your keyword list - adding more keywords that make sense to that audience so you can reach even more searchers, and filtering out unwanted and unrelated traffic through negative keywords.
• Bids. Bid smart on your keywords. Ensure that the keywords driving paying customers to your site are always shown to searchers by bidding at the right position. Conversely, bid lower on keywords creating high cost with little to no return.
• Budget Allocation. Spend your budget wisely. Allocate your budget carefully to the best-performing keywords or search advertising venues, and pull back budget from those that aren't driving buyers to your site.
• Ad Creatives. Make sure your ad text is compelling enough to get the searchers on those keywords to click on your ad vs. the ten other competitors advertising on the same keyword. Use clear, call-to-action language, and make sure your ad text is relevant to the keyword.
• Landing Pages. Once you get those searchers to click on the ad and visit your Web site's landing page, create a compelling experience where they will be most likely to take the action you want them to take on your site (like buy a product, subscribe to a newsletter, or download a whitepaper.) Use only one action per page, and make it easy for the visitor to figure out what to do. It's recommended to always test elements of a landing page to see which version performs best to drive conversions.

Using tools that help with each of these elements can help you to spend your time more wisely in your day-to-day management of your paid search efforts. Focus on getting these 5 components the best they can be to create a thriving search marketing ecosystem of your own!