Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of digital marketing which is concerned with increasing your website’s rank on search engines. SEM techniques are either organic or paid; however, contemporary use of the term mainly refers to the paid methods. Some of the methods used for SEM include AdWords, pay-per-click (PPC), paid search, cost-per-click (CPC), etc.

SEM can act as a major player when it comes to increasing the website’s visibility and attracting more customers. Deciding an effective SEM strategy specific to your business needs based on thousands of keywords can be a difficult task.

When you opt for SEM, you are not only investing money but time as well. Hence, it is important that the SEM strategy you choose should be the one which shows results.

For you to choose the best strategies, we have compiled 10 great SEM tips that are shared by top SEM experts:

Schema Markup

According to Niel Patel, an industry analyst and a prominent SEM blogger, using schema markup will make your search results more clickable. In 2014, he was named one of the top 10 digital marketing experts by Forbes.

Schema Markup describes the content of your website while telling you how to display it to the search engines. In simpler words, it is like the h3 tag that lets the browser know that you want the text to appear in a specific manner. Schema Markup lets the search engines know which information to use as a merit and how to use it.

Ad Copy

According to Barney Garcia, paid media marketing manager of Vertical Response, an ad copy should set you apart from the competition. When someone makes a search, dozens of ads appear on the search result page. For you to stand apart from the competition, it is important that you add something that no one else is offering be it free quotes, free shipment, same-day service, etc.

White-Hot Keyword Data

In an interview conducted by the Haggerston Times, Adthena’s Ian O’Rourke, (an SEM expert) discussed the importance of having useful insights not only about your performance, but also regarding your competitor’s performance in search engine result pages (SERPs).

For the purpose of getting insights regarding the performances, highly effective software is required; otherwise, you are blind to what is happening in the market. Such ignorance can affect the presence of your company in the market. From the search metrics you get from such software, not only are you given information regarding performances of both you and your competition but are also given information on the flow of traffic, time of bid submission of companies, who bids of which keywords, etc.

Organic Links

Creator of Gryffin media, international speaker and an experienced blogger Marcela De Vivo saved a website purge myriads of spam backlinks. She learned it in the long haul that Google’s algorithms like penguin, panda, etc. remove your website wholly if it contains non-contextual or spam back-links.

Google contains a tool named disavow which helps you to renounce spam back-links rather than discarding them completely. Now that your website is free from unwanted links, you can put in relevant back-links which can help you improve your digital marketing campaigns, SEO, and paid advertising (SEM) on your website.

Landing Pages

You might think that the ad copies should transfer your customer to the home page so that they can navigate to any place they want. However, experts disagree and recommend that you should always direct your ad to the landing page so that the person can be transferred to the exact item the ad was offering.

Not only should the content and URL of your landing page be relevant but they should also contain the specific keyword.

Click-to-Call for Mobile PPC Ads

According to the founder and CTO of Word stream, Larry Kim, click-to-call gives better conversions in the smart phone domain. When potential customers have their phones in their hands, it is obvious that a click-to-call button should directly contact them to one of your representatives rather than linking the clicks to your landing page.

In this fast paced market, a person calling your representative is roughly worth three times than a person who takes time to fill out your form and wait for the company representative to contact him/her. Because may be the time to hit hard will been missed.

Leverage holiday traffic

It is a good idea to optimize one’s PPC digital marketing campaigns according to the varying traffic in different holidays. According to Matt Lawson, director of performance ads marketing; one should set PPC parameters such as bids each day. Know the days from last year when your campaigns showed incredible performance and channel all of your tools towards your company’s strengths.

A/B test your ad

A/B testing is crucial for the success of your SEM campaign. You should not settle for a single ad copy but should try out multiple ad copies. With two versions of an ad, one can find out what call to action or what language gave the best response. With the A/B testing method you can easily optimize your ad to suit what gets the most user interaction.

Negative Keywords

According to experts, negative keywords are as important as normal keywords. Keywords are words that you select for your ad i.e. the words people choose to search when they seek products or services that you offer.

On the other hand, negative keywords are words that users can use to keep your ad from showing up. Negative keywords can be keywords of services you do not offer, products that you do not sell, etc. Therefore, when using negative keywords you are keeping irrelevant people to reach your ad making it more likely for people who would click to reach your ad.

Tracked Phone Numbers

Another thing that SEM experts suggest is the importance of tracked phone numbers. The idea is that you use a different number for each of your ad campaigns although it ultimately transfers the customer to your main number. However, when using tracked phone numbers, you know which client came by clicking which campaign making it easier for you to know the campaign that got the best response.