Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM could be thought of as online marketing Nirvana!

If you are looking to increase the number of visitors to your site then the first thing to consider is Search Engine Marketing. This splits into: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), ensuring that your site is listed in a high position in search engine results pages for relevant search phrases; and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, bidding on placement within the sponsored links – often listed on the top and right hand side of search engine results pages. For every £1 spent on attracting visitors to your site using online advertising you’ll normally only need to spend 10p on PPC advertising and just 1p on SEO.

Our approach to SEM

SEM has a significant impact on the way we design and build our sites, in both the nuts and bolts of the site and in the user interface. Our sites are not only built to be ‘robot friendly’, but we also use SEM data to inform key decisions in site structure and page layout, to build a ‘naturally optimised’ site to maximise search engine coverage and with clear routes to conversion to achieve the most from your site. When running PPC accounts, we also create dedicated PPC landing pages to support PPC traffic and test calls to action.

Immediate results or gaining insight

We often recommend a combined approach to SEM. With SEO it often takes a few months before your site appears in higher positions within the search engine results pages. As such, for immediate results PPC is used where you can pay for top positions and appear immediately. The additional benefit is that we can track which search phrases are most effective to inform future SEO activity.

Alongside combined SEM, we also manage stand alone PPC accounts that are key traffic and ROI drivers in the marketing mix.

Our PPC campaigns are run to set targets agreed with you, to ensure that the spend is achieving the best possible results. PPC accounts are tightly structured with tailored adcopy, to ensure we are advertising on only the most relevant of search terms. The aim is to deliver as many visitors as possible, at the right price.

Using your offline connections

Inbound links are an important factor in any SEO campaign. Search engines consider the number and quality of a site’s inbound links when evaluating a site’s value. Link building is also important for driving relevant traffic to your site, prominent links or even external content on good quality, relevant sites and directories can deliver significant traffic volumes. We plan effective link building campaigns to achieve optimised links both from existing offline connections and those sites we discover through desk-based research of sites and directories.

Questions?

To discuss how we can increase traffic to you site using Search Engine Marketing, call Iain on 0131 625 5500.