See these links? They’re the result of a Google search for “Times Square Vacations”. The three at the top, the red border is something I added to highlight them, are paid search results. That means someone paid to have their link put there. Why would they do that? To drive traffic to their site of course. Paid search is what feeds the Google machine. It refers to all the billions of dollars that companies pay Google (and other search engines I suppose, but Google is the biggest game in town) to have their stuff shown at the top of the page and it’s usually referred to as Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM vs. SEO
SEO, which I talked about a couple of days ago, is all about getting your link to the top of the organic results. Organic results are the things that come after the paid search. In this case, the two links not highlighted in red. SEO isn’t something you pay for, unless your doing something unscrupulous, and it’s certainly not something you pay Google for. However, SEO and SEM are similar in that, in both cases you’re trying trying to get your link to the top of the results where it will be noticed and clicked on by people.
Key Words Matter
Note that, just like with SEO, SEM is also key word specific. That is, you’re not paying Google to place your link at the top regardless of what people are searching for. No, you’re specifically asking Google to put your paid link up there for specific key words that you’re interested. And this is where things start getting complicated.
What’s The Right Keyword For Me?
Let’s take Diamonds or Dogs as an example. It’s a gift site, so I should be paying Google to place my ad when people search for “gifts”, right? Wrong, for two reasons.
- Gifts is a very generic term. Are people looking to buy gifts? Are they looking to get gift ideas? Are they looking for the tax laws on accepting gifts? Are they looking for the webster’s definition of the word? Some of these are people I want on my site and some are not.
- Gifts is a very popular term. I’m a small site. I don’t have a large budget to compete with, and competition is exactly what Google makes people go through for these words. Multiple people want to have their links displayed and the highest bidder is the one who wins. Since I doubt I can compete with the ad budgets of the large sites, it doesn’t make much sense for me to bid on a very popular term like this.
Note, Pay For Play
The nice thing about SEM is that you don’t pay unless your ad gets clicked on. That means that I only pay for results. This is very different from other ad channels like TV, where I can pay for a large ad and not get any response for it. With SEM, Google only charges me if my ad is clicked and someone goes to my site. So in truth, bidding a low price on a very popular word like “gifts” isn’t really going to cost me any money. It is however going to cost me time, and I’d rather not waste that.
Note, Not All Bids Are Created Equal
Google is smart. They don’t just take bids into account when deciding which ad to show. Remember that they only get paid when someone clicks on an ad. Therefore, it’s in Google’s best interest to show good ads. That means the your actual bid is a combination of your bid price and some multiplier which Google figures out by looking at your site’s content. For example, let’s say that there were only two people bidding on the keyword “gifts”. One of them is Diamonds or Dogs, bidding $1 and the other is a porn site which is bidding $2. Based purely on price, the porn site would win.
Fortunately, Google can see that the porn site’s content is not really appropriate for this keyword and they’re doing to discount their bid. At the same time, Diamonds or Dogs has great gift content so my bid is adjusted up. So the actual bids turn out to be:
- Diamonds or Dogs bids $1 times a 1.5 quality score for an actual bid of $1.5
- The Porn site bids $2 times a .5 quality score for an actual bid of $1
Diamonds and Dogs wins. Note that I still only pay $1 but Google considers my $1 to be worth $1.5.
Last Note, Phrases Vs. Individual Words
Should I bid on the exact phrase “gifts ideas for women” or should I bid on any query that includes the words gifts, ideas and woman? Should I bid on gift ideas for women or gifts ideas for women over 50? Good question and the answer is maybe. Luckily, Google makes this rather easy by allowing bidders to specify if they’re looking for an exact phrase, key words or whatnot. For me, I believe in picking out specific key words and then bidding on every search query that includes all of them. So I bid on any search query that includes gifts, ideas and women. I’m also running a separate campaign for any queries that include gifts, ideas and men.
These Are The Keywords You’re Looking For
So to get the right keywords to bid on, they must have the following qualities:
- Relevant – The key word must represent something that is meaningful for your site. For example, Gifts Ideas For Men would be great for Diamonds or Dogs.
- Focused – The majority of the people searching for this keyword need to be interested in your content. Christmas for example would not be a good keyword for Diamonds or Dogs even though it’s associated with presents because it’s also associated with many other things.
- Winnable – You want a keyword where your marketing budget is big enough to win. So I’m not going to bid on “gifts for women” but I will bid on “gift ideas for women”.
Landing Pages Are Key
Last but not least, do remember to put up the right landing page. As opposed to SEO where Google decides which of your pages to send the searcher to, SEM allows you to specify exactly where to send the searcher. Send them to a generic page and they’re going to click that back button faster than you can believe. You just lost a potential deal, you lost the money you spent on getting the user to your site and Google (who does track this kind of behavior) might start thinking your page sucks for this query causing you to bid higher if you want to win it.
Here’s an example. I’m running two different campaigns right now, one aimed at women and one aimed at men. Rather than sending all of these folks to my central landing page, I’m sending the searchers from the women’s campaign the women’s gift page and the searchers from the men’s campaign to the men’s gift page. This decreases the odds of a bounce back and increases the efficiency of my SEM campaigns.
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As for what’s better, SEM or SEO, the answer is both. They both get your links to the top of the page which is where you want them to be. Both require a good strategy and both can make or break a site. SEO relies more on hard work where as SEM relies on money. So decide which of those you want to spend. Just remember that if you spend more on SEM in trying to get someone to your site than you can actually make on them, you’re not really running a good business.
