Search Engine Marketing: Maximise Visibility With AdWords
by Ben Wilson on March 20th, 2017
Google has become the search engine of choice for tens of millions of users in countries all around the world. Australia is no exception.
Accounting for about 94% of all searches on the web in Australia, Google inevitably positions itself as a platform where your business can take advantage of searches relevant to your business.
The higher your results, the higher the CTR (Click Through Rate) is. Click Through Rate is calculated by how many times your links show up in searches versus how many times they're clicked on. The more people click on your links, the more you stand to gain.
There are two ways of showing up when users search for your business:
- Organically: By optimising your web pages, blog posts, and other content on your website for search engines (SEO), you have the opportunity to display in organic search results.
- Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: Through Google’s AdWords platform, you can have ads show up for pertinent searches when your potential customers type in keywords or key phrases relevant to your business. Pay Per Click advertising is often referred to as ‘PPC’.
Organic Results often get higher CTR but you are better off working towards this goal over the long-term. In the short-term, paid ads (for the same keywords) get you results faster.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) -- involves optimisation for organic search and also for AdWords -- and is the most powerful way to get intent-based potential customers to visit your website (or other properties). When you look for search engine marketing services, this sort of wholesome approach is what you should be looking for.
This is not to say other digital marketing options such as social media don’t work. While social media is certainly important, the number of active users don’t mean as much to your business as intent-based, active searchers on Google do.
On Social, you’ll target a passive audience. On Search, you’ll target an active audience that’s looking for you—at that very moment.
Your presence (and how well you show up) is all about relevance, timing, and context. With AdWords, you can check off all those points.
According to Junglist of Gizmodo, Australians spend more than 552 million hours on Google alone. You can imagine how important it is for your business to show up on the first page of search results.
In fact, almost 17 million Australians (about 86% of online users in Australia) over the age of 14 used Google to find something they need.
SEO or PPC: What Works Better?
Your business gets the best results over long-term when you use a two-pronged approach: optimising your web pages for SEO and implementing PPC (Paid ads using Google AdWords).
Success with SEO means investing in good content, backlinks and other tasks. It takes considerable effort and time to start seeing results for your business (depending on competition, keywords, and more). In a highly competitive environment, it can take you months or years to achieve great results.
AdWords, meanwhile, helps you start showing up almost instantly on search. Your ads show up every time your potential customers search for keywords relevant to your business.
Turbocharge with PPC & Strengthen Marketing with SEO
For best results, deploy both strategies (SEO and PPC) along with pertinent strategic digital solutions to help diversify your efforts and to enable maximum reach and visibility.
Jonathan Dane of Ahrefs.com points out that you’d do well to avoid the 'would you rather' game with SEO vs. PPC and focus on both to strengthen your digital marketing overall.
This way, you get to:
- Understand search intent better,
- Work towards optimising expensive keywords (and save on PPC costs),
- Test and gather data before you scale up campaigns and spend more,
- Bring back organic visitors, and
- Gain valuable Backlinks with PPC (and backlinks are great for SEO).
Together, SEO and PPC work like supercharged engines for your business.
Conclusion
AdWords will help bring you quick results and set you on a journey that helps you merge the organic benefits of SEO later. Using digital marketing for your business (especially PPC with AdWords) allows you start at any budget level. Plus using tools such as Google Analytics, you will have the ability to closely monitor performance by tracking user behaviour and ultimately measuring the ROI.
Getting qualified relevant traffic is one thing, however you also need to carefully consider their experience once they land on your website, ensuring:
- You get conversions, leads, and other results you seek,
- The website loads fast and easy (on any device)
- The website give users (potential customers) a great browsing experience, and
- The content helps solve their problem (or at least be able to educate customers on how you are in a better position to solve their problem).
At Web Force 5, we provide a professionally designed website including best practice navigation, fast load times and an advanced yet easy to use content management system to ensure a positive user experience for all of our clients. However to take your website’s performance to the next level, implementing strategic PPC/SEO marketing services is essential. It will allow you to maximise your results by improving visibility, driving relevant traffic and generating leads.
For more information or for assistance with SEO, PPC or digital marketing for your business, get in touch with us today.