These words should ring true every day. Whether you are running your own business or working in the marketing department for a small or major corporation: your competitor is one mouse click away!
According to internetlivestats.com: Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average. What are these 40,000 queries for?
What are people looking for? Who are sending the 40,000 search queries per second?
Solutions!
Before picking that phone or going to social media or writing a nice email, people first begin by searching for who can help them. Is that person, you? Is that entity, your corporation?
The more you analyze this data you realize, in a world of approximately 7.8 billion people, google processes 1.2 trillion search queries per year. This brings to the front, with a matter of certain urgency, how integral search engine marketing has become in modern-day marketing efforts.
Thus the need to understand search marketing.
Now, what is search marketing? Search Engine Land defines it as, the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts. In the event people are out there looking for solutions, online, search marketing helps businesses to strategically position their solutions for said people.
Some of the popular search engines are Google from which the verb googling has been coined: Bing and Yahoo. Feel free to add to the list.
When was the last time you bought shoes? Did you fire up your laptop and launch a browser and quickly searched for male shoes in Nairobi, or something closer to that?
Further observation shows that it has become second nature for consumers to look up products and services online using their mobile devices. Products with good reviews from peers tend to attract more business and vice versa.
Given that we are just from a holiday season, many of the searches revolved around hotels, rental cars, clothes, shoes and so much more. People were looking for deals, discounts and the best service possible. Did they find you?
Whether for convenience purposes or busy schedules, this is a trend that is rapidly growing. That is why e-commerce websites such as Jumia and logistic companies such as Glovo are permeating the market.
Any keen observer then should be alive to this growing trend. And not only that but proceed to make necessary adjustments to make a significant digital transformation.
One key objective of search marketing is to drive traffic. Mostly to the website, for that is where all the goodies are, but sometimes, this can be done for social media channels. In order to accomplish this objective: there are two processes: Organic and Paid.
To understand the differences between paid search and organic search, we need to understand the two types of search marketing:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Organic Search (SEO)
From the word ‘Organic’, this refers to any search marketing efforts that are not paid for.
For instance: Whenever you type a question into Google or any other search engine, the list of links and or search engine results that appear below the ads are known as “organic results.”
To further understand Organic Search, you must understand what SEO is: SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.
Some of the tactics used for successful SEO are:
- Improving user experience across an entire site
- Optimize for voice search
- Focusing on topic clusters instead of keywords
- Building a variety of backlinks
- Getting a grip over technical optimization
- Targeting local searchers with local landing pages and listings
Paid Search (SEM)
On the other hand, have you ever been on your browser searching for an item and you noticed search results with a green AD tag?
Paid search accounts are those that companies have paid to appear at the top of search results (above those that earned their page-one spots organically.
Below are some of the most common terms also used to refer to SEM activities?
- Paid search ads
- Paid search advertising
- PPC (pay-per-click)
- PPC (pay-per-call) – some ads, particularly those served to mobile search users, may be charged by the number of clicks that resulted in a direct call from a smartphone.
- CPC (cost-per-click)
- CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions)
- Most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis, but some advertising options may also be sold on a CPM basis.
If you need help with your marketing, we’re dedicated and ready to help! Contact us here or talk to an expert now at (+254) 738 759566
