Search Engine
Marketing

Search engine optimization consists of the technical and non-technical work that is implemented to organically rank web pages highly in SERPs. Technically, there’s no need to pay to rank highly in the organic rankings of SERPs if you have the know-how and time to optimize your site. Realistically, most business’s pay marketing agencies and SEO firms to manage the search engine optimization campaigns as it is unlikely a single person can address all the data points, algorithm changes, content update needs, backlinking, technical site corrections, and speed work required to rank highly in SERPs.

With search engine marketing, you’re paying a platform (ex. Google Ads) to advertise your website information in the SERPs, often in a manner that somewhat mimics organic rankings. For example, Google text ads look strikingly similar to organic Google SERP entries – see below:

Each of the above entries has a URL (web address), a title, and a description set up in relatively the same manner. As you can see, they look pretty much the same (save for a few ad extensions and site extensions specific to these entries). The primary difference is the semi-obvious bolded Ad text next to the Google Ad entry URL.

SEM allows businesses that would otherwise not appear on Google Page 1 to compete for traffic and clicks by paying-to-play. For newer domains and businesses without much immediate organic ranking potential, SEM is a viable and performant means of leapfrogging the clutter of entries beyond Page 1 to obtain some of the traffic that the 1st SERP of Google typically receives.

Without a decent knowledge of SERP components, many people will inadvertently perceive these ads as organic in nature, which can be beneficial since ads tend to display prominently in SERPs.

Additionally, you can compete with larger brands by creating high-quality ad copy. If your ads are better targeted and better written than your competitors, you can overcome their sizable ad budgets and win bids against them. SEM performance is tied to budget, but it’s not the only factor, and Google’s revenue and value is dependent on providing the most accurate information as quickly as possible to search users. That means there’s opportunity to outperform competitors with deep pockets and name brands by having better creative and implementing better campaign/ad group setups to better target the keywords that users might enter during search than your competitors.

Another benefit that we see with search engine marketing is improved organic rankings. I’m going to raise a flag of caution here as Google has expressly denied any organic ranking boosts stemming from PPC engagement via Google Ads. Speaking from what we’ve observe anecdotally, that’s not quite accurate,  and it makes sense that ads would help boost organic performance. When you run ads you drive additional, targeted traffic to your website. This traffic is often directed to a specific landing page that matches the subject of the ad that brought the visitor to your site. If the content matches what site visitors are looking for after clicking an ad, the bounce rate on the page should decrease and on-page user dwell times should increase, and while bounce rate doesn’t directly affect SEO, a low bounce rate with high dwell times indicates quality content to Google.