SEO

How To Optimize SEM Campaign

Published

2 years ago

September 13, 2022

Ever lost at least $1,000 in an SEM campaign? You probably have but you may not have realized it until today. Here you will learn how much money you’re leaving at the table – unrealized – and what you can do about it.

Add Negative Keywords

One of the things that will ultimately help make sure you are not spending your hard-earned money needlessly is using negative keywords in your SEM campaign. Negative keywords are a list of keywords that you do not want your ad to appear in.

For example, let’s say that you’re doing SEM for a mobile phone brand such as Samsung. However, you find out through the Search Terms that your ads are appearing in keywords related to your competitor’s brands such as “apple mobile phone price” or “huawei mobile phone price”.

The problem with this is that those people searching for your competitor’s brands likely won’t click on your ad at all. Or if they do, it’s probably by mistake because they are not interested in you but in the other brand – because they literally searched for the specific brand!

If that’s the case, you may want to set up the following negative keywords:

[apple mobile phone price] – as an exact match
[huawei mobile phone price] – as an exact match
“Apple” – as a phrase match
“Huawei” – as a phrase match

Besides excluding the keywords found above, you can also set the brand name as a phrase that matches the negative keyword. This will help ensure that your ads will never appear in any keywords that contain these terms.

Make Your Ad Copy Engaging

One of the first things searchers will see is your ad copy. It should be able to reflect on their pain points and provide them with a solution. The more that they feel that you understand what they’re going through, the higher the chances of them clicking on your ad versus your competitors.

In order to do just that, first, you have to understand who your target market is. Who are they? What do they look like? How much is their spending power? Are they the decision makers or simply the purchasing agent? Where are they from? How old are they? And what type of tone would they best react to?

Take a look at some of the headlines I created for a supplier of walk-in tubs. I chose to highlight their ADA certification, residential services, and their installation services. Based on my research, I found that these are terms that customers would use when searching for accessibility solutions.

SEM Google Ad Headline Samples

Then, research your keyword’s intent. What are people there to look for? Do they want discounts or maybe free installation? Make sure you showcase these benefits in your headlines and descriptions. Take a look at the features I highlighted in the descriptions below.

SEM Google Ad Description Samples

Optimize Your SEM Landing Pages

Next, let’s discuss how to optimize your SEM Landing Pages. Similar to what was mentioned above, it’s crucial that your landing page contains content that can help solve your customer’s pain points. Ideally, it should be a separate page that includes a “noindex” tag so that its content does not compete with organic traffic.

Call To Action Sample in a Website

The landing page should also contain a Call-To-Action mentioned multiple times throughout the page. This can be in the form of brochure downloads, contact forms, or even newsletter signups. Ensure that these Call-to-Actions lead to another page such as the brochure page or a Thank You page so you can set up Google Analytics to track those conversions as goals.

Set Ads To Appear Only To Relevant Locations

Besides your content matching your customer’s needs, it’s also important that you optimize your Google Ads campaign to target the right people. One of the first ways that you can do this is through the Locations feature.

Do you service certain provinces or areas? Ensure that these are featured in your Locations so that your ads appear to the right people in the right places. If you cater nationwide, it would help to save your spending budget if you specify which cities you’d want to focus on instead of targeting the entire country at the get-go.

Google Ads Location Settings

Revisit Your Ad Schedule

You can also set your ads to appear on certain days of the week and on certain hours. For example, if you’re a B2B company, you may only want to show your ads during the country’s business hours. Or if your customers are seniors aged 60 and above, you can set your ads to appear from the morning until their estimated sleeping hours, such as the one set below.

Google Ad Schedule Setup

Get to know WHEN your target market is most active online, and adjust your ad schedule accordingly.

Exclude Irrelevant Age Groups

If you’re a business that targets specific age groups, then ensure that you make use of the exclusion tool on Google Ads. Here are age groupings you can choose from:

Google Ads Audience Age Group Setting Sample

Exclude age groups that are not relevant to your business. This is also done per ad group, so make sure to take note of it.

Key Takeaway

These are just a few tips and tricks on how to optimize your SEM campaign. By improving these factors, you will be able to more accurately target your customers, saving you loads of money, increasing your Click-Through-Rate, and increasing your leads and sales.

Do you have any other go-to ways to optimize your SEM campaign? Let me know in the comments below.

We can check your current SEM campaign and analyze how you can improve it. Simply click here.

Related Topics:campaign optimize SEM seo

Up Next

SEO For Ecommerce Product Pages: 20 Do’s & Don’ts

Don't Miss

Microsoft Ads Unveils New Smart Campaign Features

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

SEO

Google Declares It The “Gemini Era” As Revenue Grows 15%

Published

10 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Max

Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, announced its first quarter 2024 financial results today.

While Google reported double-digit growth in key revenue areas, the focus was on its AI developments, dubbed the “Gemini era” by CEO Sundar Pichai.

The Numbers: 15% Revenue Growth, Operating Margins Expand

Alphabet reported Q1 revenues of $80.5 billion, a 15% increase year-over-year, exceeding Wall Street’s projections.

Net income was $23.7 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $1.89. Operating margins expanded to 32%, up from 25% in the prior year.

Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s President and CFO, stated:

“Our strong financial results reflect revenue strength across the company and ongoing efforts to durably reengineer our cost base.”

Google’s core advertising units, such as Search and YouTube, drove growth. Google advertising revenues hit $61.7 billion for the quarter.

The Cloud division also maintained momentum, with revenues of $9.6 billion, up 28% year-over-year.

Pichai highlighted that YouTube and Cloud are expected to exit 2024 at a combined $100 billion annual revenue run rate.

Generative AI Integration in Search

Google experimented with AI-powered features in Search Labs before recently introducing AI overviews into the main search results page.

Regarding the gradual rollout, Pichai states:

“We are being measured in how we do this, focusing on areas where gen AI can improve the Search experience, while also prioritizing traffic to websites and merchants.”

Pichai reports that Google’s generative AI features have answered over a billion queries already:

“We’ve already served billions of queries with our generative AI features. It’s enabling people to access new information, to ask questions in new ways, and to ask more complex questions.”

Google reports increased Search usage and user satisfaction among those interacting with the new AI overview results.

The company also highlighted its “Circle to Search” feature on Android, which allows users to circle objects on their screen or in videos to get instant AI-powered answers via Google Lens.

Reorganizing For The “Gemini Era”

As part of the AI roadmap, Alphabet is consolidating all teams building AI models under the Google DeepMind umbrella.

Pichai revealed that, through hardware and software improvements, the company has reduced machine costs associated with its generative AI search results by 80% over the past year.

He states:

“Our data centers are some of the most high-performing, secure, reliable and efficient in the world. We’ve developed new AI models and algorithms that are more than one hundred times more efficient than they were 18 months ago.

How Will Google Make Money With AI?

Alphabet sees opportunities to monetize AI through its advertising products, Cloud offerings, and subscription services.

Google is integrating Gemini into ad products like Performance Max. The company’s Cloud division is bringing “the best of Google AI” to enterprise customers worldwide.

Google One, the company’s subscription service, surpassed 100 million paid subscribers in Q1 and introduced a new premium plan featuring advanced generative AI capabilities powered by Gemini models.

Future Outlook

Pichai outlined six key advantages positioning Alphabet to lead the “next wave of AI innovation”:

Research leadership in AI breakthroughs like the multimodal Gemini model
Robust AI infrastructure and custom TPU chips
Integrating generative AI into Search to enhance the user experience
A global product footprint reaching billions
Streamlined teams and improved execution velocity
Multiple revenue streams to monetize AI through advertising and cloud

With upcoming events like Google I/O and Google Marketing Live, the company is expected to share further updates on its AI initiatives and product roadmap.

Featured Image: Sergei Elagin/Shutterstock

SEO

brightonSEO Live Blog

Published

1 day ago

April 25, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Hello everyone. It’s April again, so I’m back in Brighton for another two days of ~~sun~~, sea, and SEO!

Being the introvert I am, my idea of fun isn’t hanging around our booth all day explaining we’ve run out of t-shirts (seriously, you need to be fast if you want swag!). So I decided to do something useful and live-blog the event instead.

Follow below for talk takeaways and (very) mildly humorous commentary.

SEO

Google Further Postpones Third-Party Cookie Deprecation In Chrome

Published

1 day ago

April 25, 2024

Max

Close-up of a document with a grid and a red stamp that reads "delayed" over the word "status" due to Chrome's deprecation of third-party cookies.

Google has again delayed its plan to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome web browser. The latest postponement comes after ongoing challenges in reconciling feedback from industry stakeholders and regulators.

The announcement was made in Google and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) joint quarterly report on the Privacy Sandbox initiative, scheduled for release on April 26.

Chrome’s Third-Party Cookie Phaseout Pushed To 2025

Google states it “will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4” this year as planned.

Instead, the tech giant aims to begin deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome “starting early next year,” assuming an agreement can be reached with the CMA and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The statement reads:

“We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem. It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence, including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June.”

Continued Engagement With Regulators

Google reiterated its commitment to “engaging closely with the CMA and ICO” throughout the process and hopes to conclude discussions this year.

This marks the third delay to Google’s plan to deprecate third-party cookies, initially aiming for a Q3 2023 phaseout before pushing it back to late 2024.

The postponements reflect the challenges in transitioning away from cross-site user tracking while balancing privacy and advertiser interests.

Transition Period & Impact

In January, Chrome began restricting third-party cookie access for 1% of users globally. This percentage was expected to gradually increase until 100% of users were covered by Q3 2024.

However, the latest delay gives websites and services more time to migrate away from third-party cookie dependencies through Google’s limited “deprecation trials” program.

The trials offer temporary cookie access extensions until December 27, 2024, for non-advertising use cases that can demonstrate direct user impact and functional breakage.

While easing the transition, the trials have strict eligibility rules. Advertising-related services are ineligible, and origins matching known ad-related domains are rejected.

Google states the program aims to address functional issues rather than relieve general data collection inconveniences.

Publisher & Advertiser Implications

The repeated delays highlight the potential disruption for digital publishers and advertisers relying on third-party cookie tracking.

Industry groups have raised concerns that restricting cross-site tracking could push websites toward more opaque privacy-invasive practices.

However, privacy advocates view the phaseout as crucial in preventing covert user profiling across the web.

With the latest postponement, all parties have more time to prepare for the eventual loss of third-party cookies and adopt Google’s proposed Privacy Sandbox APIs as replacements.

Featured Image: Novikov Aleksey/Shutterstock