Paid Search
Many forms of digital marketing, including organic SEO and social media, have no upfront cost in the sense that, arguably, you can work on them yourself. But however effective these channels may be in the longer term, sometimes you have to pay for certainty. For precision targeting and clearly measurable ROI, paid search is unbeatable.
What is paid search?
Paid search advertising is a real-time digital marketing solution. It enables businesses to pay search engines for guaranteed higher placement on search engine results pages (SERPs). High rankings are crucial for driving website traffic and paid search ads are a highly effective way of short-circuiting digital marketing to drive immediate results.
All the major search engines have chosen to monetise their capabilities in this way but while it allows businesses to pay for improved visibility, it doesn't disadvantage those who choose to stick with organic SEO in the longer term.
How Does Paid Search Work?
When someone searches for a product or a service, they will see the usual list of top placed results. In addition, they will see the ads of any business that has agreed to pay for exposure and whose ads match the search terms used.
Paid search uses a pay-per-click model, which means you pay the search engine for each time someone clicks on your advertisement. In return for this guaranteed revenue, the search engine provider places your ad at the top of the search page, clearly labelled 'AD' to distinguish it from the organic results. The fact that it carries this label doesn't diminish the effect of the ad's prominence. The ads can appear in different formats, such as text ads above or below the other results and shopping ads displayed at the top.
There are several determinants which will affect where your ad is placed, of which these are the most significant:
Bidding
Companies bid on keywords and phrases relevant to their business. The higher the bid, the better the ranking.
Ad Extensions
The inclusion of useful company information such as contact details and website links can raise the likelihood of higher placement.
Quality and Relevance
Search engines will assess the quality, relevance and authority of your landing pages and assign your ranking accordingly.
Keywords
The optimum use of appropriate, well-placed keywords also influences your performance.
Why is Paid Search Important?
Without search engines, the internet couldn't function. Finding businesses and services would be a gargantuan task. High SERPs rankings are vital and paid search removes much of the uncertainty of the process. Organic SEO may get you onto the first page of results, but paid search will take you to the top. With 3.5 billion searches a day on Google alone, it's impossible to overestimate its significance. Other specific benefits include:
Targeting
The use of thoroughly researched keywords allows you to target your audience precisely.
Budget Control
You can make virtually every click count. Instead of paying for a billboard, radio or TV campaign with no sure way of measuring its success, you can assess the effectiveness of every penny spent.
Speed
Developing a web presence through organic SEO takes time. Paid search delivers efficient, instant results.
What is Google Paid Search?
As the world's largest search engine, Google is usually the focus of SEO marketing. They've made it easy for businesses to use their paid search facility. The first step is to create a Google Ads account, after which you can start running search ads. Google provides a tool called the Google Keyword Planner, which makes the job of keyword selection easy so you can optimise the effectiveness of your ads. Once you've created your ad, you simply specify the maximum amount you want to spend per day on pay-per-click and you're all set.
Not only are Google Ads easy to run and cost-effective, but their results are also measurable, so you can constantly re-evaluate your campaign according to metrics including the number of people who see your ads, how many click though to your site and the amount of sales revenue attributable to the ads.
What is Bing Paid Search?
Essentially, Bing uses the same process as Google paid search. However, because Google is the market leader in online advertising, some categories can be over-crowded and this demand pushes the price up in the most competitive industries. The cost per click in Bing can be 30-40% lower.
Another advantage of Bing paid search is its facility to schedule ads, location and networks within the campaign settings. While you can do this with Google, it requires changing the entire campaign rather than just making minor adjustments. Bing also allows you to target specific devices, so that if you want your ads to appear only on phones rather than tablets or desktops, this is easily arranged.
The mechanics of Bing paid search are broadly the same. Create an account, use the Bing keyword research tool and either create a new campaign or import one you're already running from Google. Bing may not be as big as Google, but it does get somewhere in the region of 11 billion searches every year from around the world, including 60 million searches from people who don't use Google.
Why Use Us?
Paid search is theoretically very easy to do. However, it involves a substantial level of creative, managerial and administrative investment. It's simple to set up but not so simple to maintain at an effective level. [Going Media] has the experience and resources to create and manage your paid search campaign for you.
What makes us special is our first-hand experience in generating exceptional SEO results for our own brands in fiercely competitive sectors such as insurance, energy and finance. We have acquired our expertise in the real world, and we're now able to offer that expertise as a fully comprehensive marketing service to our clients.
Please contact us today to find out more about how we can help you reap the plentiful rewards of paid search.
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