Session 21: Search Engine Marketing

In session 21 of A Marketing Podcast we’re on to Part 2 of How to advertise your business online. We’re going to focus on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in today’s session. From setup to configuration and management. I had the pleasure of having a friend of mine, Troy Meier, on the show to help explain everything about SEM. Enjoy!

Session 20: How to advertise your business online

This session is the first of a 6 part series on how to advertise your business online. I’m going to walk you through a few things to make sure you’re getting the most out of your advertising spend.

Search Engines to Use

For entry level search engine marketers, and those working with tight budgets, it simply makes no sense to spend time and money on advertising on any other search engine the Google.

As such in today’s session we’re going to focus on setting up Search Engine Marketing (SEM) through Google AdWords platform.

Setting up an Adwords Account

* Head on over to google.com/adwords

* Click the “Get started button and follow the prompts. If you hvae a google account already using that account will make the process shorter and link your new AdWords account to you google account.

Creating your campaign

Find the + Campaign button and you will be forwarded to the setup screen. Which asks some basic configuration questions, and forwards you into the keyword research tool.

Keyword Research

Google provide a handy keyword research tool that draws information from your website and you campaign targeting to develop a set of AdGroups that contain keywords. To get started the auto selected keywords will be just fine.

However, as you perform more search engine marketing, you’ll want to spend time developing your keyword research to optimize your spend and targeting.

You may want to choose only a couple AdGroups suggested by google to being with as well. Verse creating all the suggested AdGroups.

AdGroup setup & theories on dividing keywords into AdGroups

As mentioned Google does a good job of creating AdGroups for you from the keywords found. The next step in setting up your AdGroups is writing the copy, or ad, for each group.

Ads a restricted to 3 fields, each of which has a specific character count(size).

* Title (25 Characters)

* Description 1 (35 Characters)

* Description 2 (35 Characters)

* Display URL (can be different than the actual URL the user will arrive at. But must be of the same base domain)

Things to consider in writing your ads

Start with a strong headline, try to use a search term in your AdGroups keywords in the heading. And your heading must fit within 25 Characters.

Then you hvae two lines of 35 characters each. Remember these lines may be shown as one in certain ads, so keep that in mind. You may want to add some punctuation.

Bidding

In the initial setup Google asks for a bid. This bid is applied to all your AdGroups and Keywords.

However you can adjust your bids on all three levels, those being:

* Campaign

* AdGroup

* Keyword

More often than not you will be adjusting your bids upwards to catch placement on more competitive keywords. Due to Google reverse dutch auction, you won’t spend more than the bidder in second place.

Our example was if you’re bidding $5 on a term and the second place bidder is bidding $1.25, you will win the bid and be charged $1.26.

More on Google Auction

Billing and how Google charges

Google essentially forward a credit for your advertising. Of which starts at $150. This means that once you hit the $150 threshold you will receive an invoice and the payment will be charged ...