Do You Know About Affordable Search Engine Marketing in San Diego California?

Most people start looking for a new product or service with an online search. Even if you’re a local business, your users often start with Google. Affordable search engine marketing allows even the smallest businesses in San Diego to compete with bigger competitors, leveling the playing field for all.

If you’re not using search engine marketing, there’s a good chance your competitors are passing you by. We’re here to help you with some tips on how to start building an affordable search engine marketing plan in San Diego, California:

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

Most business owners are familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), but fewer understand search engine marketing (SEM). Search engine marketing is a function of digital marketing that utilizes search engines to get more traffic flowing to your website. Many use the terms SEM and pay-per-click (PPC) synonymously, yet SEM encompasses both PPC and SEO.

SEO strives to gain traffic from search engines using organic tactics. SEO specialists use tools to help your site pages rank high in various searches. It helps grow your business organically. PPC is strictly about purchasing ads on search engines to be ranked high under desired keywords and phrases.

SEM uses both organic and paid methods to achieve the same results. We believe it’s best to incorporate both PPC and SEO into an all-encompassing search engine marketing plan to ensure you aren’t leaving money on the table. So, where do you start?

Start Building Your SEM Plan With Keywords

You can’t build an effective search engine marketing plan without keywords. Yet, before you can select which keywords to focus on in your marketing campaigns, you’ll need extensive research into what users are searching for.

Start by identifying what keywords are relevant to your business. These are the keywords prospective customers are likely to use when searching for what you do. There are many free keyword tools available:

• Google Trends allows you to analyze real-time and historical search trends.
• Keyword Surfer is a Chrome extension for content and keyword research.
• AnswerThePublic aggregates Google and Bing autocomplete suggestions to help you find long-tail keywords.
• Google Keyword Planner is part of the advertising platform in Google Ads.

Dig deep. As you come up with your keyword list, you’ll have to decide which keywords to target with SEO, PPC, or both.

How to Use Keywords in Your Planning

As you create a list of keywords, pay attention to the marketing statistics. Look for decent search volume; some will have more traction than others. This can help you decide how to use each keyword in your campaigns.

Take each keyword and perform a search. Analyze the search results:

• What type of information shows up in the results?
• How much information is available?
• What websites are ranking?

This is where you start fine-tuning your SEM plan. If a keyword is heavily used and has lots of search results where the landing pages are all built by large, well-funded organizations, you’ll have trouble competing with organic growth anytime soon. These are the keywords to focus your PPC ads on to reach out to potential customers.

As keywords become more long-tailed and not as heavily searched, you’ll discover more leeway in what ranks well. Smaller companies will have an easier time gaining traction. This is where you focus your SEO strategy. Over time, you’ll see patterns in how your keyword strategy works. When you find keywords that work well, your PPC campaigns are heavily clicked, this is where you focus your energy on building out organic SEO too.

PPC gets you fast traffic. It allows you to see what keywords work well for your business. It allows you to test campaigns and discover more about your customers. You can use that to build out your organic strategy. Spend time building content your customer loves, which will help you grow over time.

Building an SEO and PPC Strategy

Having a spreadsheet filled with keywords can help you build out your SEM strategy. It will point you to where to spend your time with SEO and PPC tactics. While SEO and PPC are both comprehensive subjects, there are a few basics to keep in mind as you start planning.

For your SEO keywords, you’ll need to create an SEO campaign. This means content creation based on each keyword and optimizing any content that already resides on your site.

Start with on-page SEO to optimize existing content and build SEO structure into everything you create from this point forward. Don’t forget the technical side of SEO by optimizing the website’s code and structure. Link building is also a part of SEO, getting backlinks from other websites in your community.

You’ll need to learn the basics of putting together strong Google ads for your PPC campaigns. This includes writing powerful ad copy, setting up a budget, monitoring your campaigns, analyzing the traffic, and testing new strategies.

When people think of PPC, most think of Google. Other platforms support PPC ads on other sites as well, so you’ll need to consider where you want your ads to go. You might start with Google, expand to social media sites like Facebook or Instagram, or utilize other search engines like Bing. It really depends on your goals and how much you’re willing to spend for each ad.

Optimizing Over Time

Search engine marketing is always a work in progress, and there will always be ways to get more out of each campaign. This is your starting point.

We’re firm believers in testing. The benefit of running paid search campaigns is all of the data is easy to track, test, and measure. And you can do it quickly—even a day’s worth of information can be beneficial and aid you in adjusting your ad content. PPC ads are experiments. Always strive to do a little better with the next campaign you run.

Find what works, and keep doing it. Up your bids and watch them grow. This isn’t a once-and-done project. It’s always about fine-tuning and making it better. If we can answer any questions, we’re here to help. Reach out to us here at Innovision today and see how we can help with your SEM.