The essence of Search Engine Marketing comes from the keywords you implement for it. Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is when you pay a search engine to have your website advertised on the first page of a SERP. (Search Engine Results Page)
Your ad will show up when potential customers search for the keywords that you specified when setting up your ad. While the concept of SEM is quite simple, some businesses struggle with their keyword research. The fact of the matter is, if you don’t pick the right keywords, your advertisement isn’t going to show up for the correct customers. Search engine marketing by parallel profits is not easy.
In this article, we’ll take a quick look at how one should process their keyword research for SEM. Read on to find out more:
Pick a Keyword Research Tool
Before you can even get into choosing the keywords you want, you’ll need a keyword research tool. Some of the more popular keyword research tools are SEMrush and Moz’s Keyword Explorer. The choices for keyword research tools go on for miles so feel free to give some of them a try and make your choice afterward.
Search for Relevant Keywords
Now that you have a keyword research tool to work with, you can look into finding relevant keywords for your ad. This is where many businesses struggle. It doesn’t matter if you’ve found the best keyword research tool already when you don’t know what keywords you want.
There are two main factors to consider when picking your keywords:
- Search Volume
- Competition Level
Obviously, the keywords you search for must have relevance to your business and product. However, you also need a balance of these two factors. Typically, the keywords with a higher search volume will also have a higher competitor level. If you do find a high search volume keyword with a low competition level, make sure you use it!
You’ll benefit your SEM the most by having a combination of high and low competition level keywords. Just because the most searched keywords are claimed by many competitors doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also put your claim in. However, grabbing the revenue from keywords that are less searched but have little competition is also beneficial to your business.
Short-Tail and Long-Tail Keywords
Short-Tail keywords are those that are just a few words long. (Typically three or less) Long-Tail keywords can be a full sentence or a longer phrase. (Four or more words)
You’ll want to have a combination of keyword lengths, but the tail lengths are more beneficial for specific businesses. For example, if your goal is to advertise a product page or anything else on your business website, short-tail keywords are more beneficial as a focus.
On the other hand, if you’re advertising for a blog post, you should have more long-tail keywords for specific searches about the blog topic. Still, don’t just stick to one or the other as you’ll still gain some clicks from each regardless of your purpose.
For more information on SEM, you should be aware that search engine marketing campaigns start with Google my business. You can learn far more about where your business sits in the online marketing world this way. Good luck!
