Search engine advertising also referred to as search advertising, online search advertising, or internet search advertising, is a form of marketing that allows you to display your ads on a search engine platform, such as Google or Bing. Businesses who use search engine advertising are bidding, behind the scenes, on keywords that their target audience is typically searching for.

Search Engine Advertising Topics:

What is Search Engine Advertising?

Search engine advertising, like any other form of advertising, should be part of a complete marketing plan strategy and not simply used by itself, in order to drive business. This specific form of advertising shows ads to an audience who is searching for a specific keyword, set in place by the business or marketer “running the ad”.

These ads will typically show up either above, on the right-hand side of, or below the organic search results for the inquiry selected. The typical search engine ad will include three things: a headline, a display URL, and a description.

Sometimes, a search engine ad will also include ad extensions. A few of these include:

  • Sitelink Extensions: You can link to different pages on your site that are relevant to the search term and ad group.
  • Phone Call Extensions: You can display your phone number in the ad. The visibility on phone call extensions is different if you’re on a mobile or desktop view.
  • Review Extensions: You can source local reviews you’ve received and these snippets will show in your paid ad.
  • Call Out Extensions: These showcase a particular product or service out of the main body of the ad and site-link extension.
  • Location Extension: This extension lets you show the address of the physical location of your business.
  • Message Extension: This extension will give you the option to display a button for people to send you a text message.

All four of these pieces need to work together in order to gain the most clicks possible, and adding in ad extensions is an excellent way to use your one ad in multiple ways.

Why Search Engine Advertising?

Search engine advertising for small businesses is what drives most online marketing campaigns. Every day there are over 5 Billion searches done on Google, and the number is growing every day.

Search engine optimization (SEO) works to improve the visibility of your website in the free listings based on keyword searches. Search engine advertising allows you to insert your paid advertisement into the search results on Google and Bing. Ad fees are based on the pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-mille (CPM) models.

For a more comprehensive guide, check out SEO vs SEM.

Search engines allow you to pay to rank for your target keyword’s search position. This happens by placing the ads above, beneath, or right next to the search results. Google, as a platform itself, is so dominant, that most discussions of paid search are usually with respect to Google’s ad services. Even though advertising costs on Google are often greater than other available platforms, it promises an influx of traffic that no other platform can offer.

paid ads on search engines screen shot on google search results of realtor paid search advertising

It doesn’t actually cost anything to place an advertisement in the search results for selected keywords. Search engine advertising works either on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-mille (CPM) basis. Advertisers will only incur charges after a user clicks on an ad and redirects to the landing page. However, the frequency of how often an ad is displayed is dependent on the bid and quality score. Bids compare with other advertisers who compete for listings using keywords.

How Does Search Engine Advertising Work?

When the search term contains a common keyword, there may be several suitable ads to display. These get rated in order of their relevance and arranged above the organic listing on the display page. All this happens in a split second! Just imagine a little mini-auction for each keyword, happening inside of Google, at all times.

Important criteria for choosing which ads to show boils down to a few simple factors: the CPC bids offered by advertisers, and the quality of ads. The quality must be taken into account so the search engine can create the most useful results for the searchers, rather than overload users with low quality or confusing information. It’s all based on each user’s search intent. A higher ranked ad (based on quality score) is more likely to display in top spots during a relevant search. These top ad spots will also cost less for advertisers, in general.

Search engine advertising offers small business owners the opportunity to place advertisements onto search engines at the exact moment that potential customers are looking for their desired products and services. Search engines want to insert advertisements right above relevant search queries.

The highest ranking ads are generally the most relevant to the user’s keyword search. The majority of search engine users accept search engine advertising as useful. This is because they can find the information they’re looking for much quicker.

Search engine advertising is an effective tool for increasing small business website traffic. The most valuable use of search engine advertising for small businesses is to promote your company’s products and services, elevating brand recognition. Most importantly, use it to generate more revenue for your business.

Goals For Search Engine Advertising For Small Businesses

When it comes to marketing analytics, we understand that the sheer amount of data thrown at you can be overwhelming. You can see all the numbers, but if you don’t know what they mean or how they affect your business strategy, they’re only numbers on a screen. If you need more help with marketing metrics, we’ve included a comprehensive guide here! The micro goals can be broken down into the following:
  • Driving Phone Calls: For most local businesses, phone calls are the key metric for local search engine advertising campaigns. Make sure you have custom tracking numbers set up from your local search engine advertising campaign. How will you justify a specific cost per click amount, if you don’t know how much traffic these clicks are getting your business?
  • Website Form Submissions: Most local businesses have online forms on their website and since these days more people are filling out forms or engaging in an online chat. This is a key metric that should be a primary goal to raise. Track them using analytics and your online reporting profile.
  • Increase Website Traffic: The main goal of search engine advertising is to direct a stream of visitors to a website. In a fight for the top spot, the ads rank by quality and relevance. But spots on the first results page can also be bought with a high bid.
  • Promote Brand Recognition: Search engine advertising is an effective marketing tool for enhancing a brand’s visibility amongst others in its field. Another goal of a SEA campaign should be to occupy keywords services with advertisements for your own product lines or services.
  • Generate Sales Conversions: Search engine advertising pays off when it contributes to gaining leads, or to the increased sale of products and services. Advertising programs like Google Ads make it possible for website owners to determine exactly how often search engine ads lead to conversions. It helps you track when a potential customer becomes a customer.

How Much Should I Spend On Search Engine Advertising?

“How much does search advertising cost?”, and honestly, that is a reasonable question that we get from almost every customer. Unfortunately, we’ll tell you as we tell them because there isn’t a one size fits all equation, “it depends”. The amount you should spend should be based on your long-term customer value (LTCV) and short-term customer value (STCV). Base this on your target cost per customer acquisition or cost per sale.
  • Short-Term Customer Value. This can be the value of a customer based on what the average one-time transaction is or the monthly transaction of the customer.
  • Long-Term Customer Value. This is what the lifetime value of the customer is, and what the referral value is to your business. In essence, it’s what the customer contributes to your business over the course of a lifetime. If 50% of your business comes from a previous client referral, then your long-term customer value will be much higher. You also need to take into consideration that the customer you acquired from a search engine campaign is also going to refer someone to you later. This presents more value for that first new customer acquisition.
To determine your daily and monthly budget, Google has budget and traffic estimator tools. They focus on the keywords you want to target as well as the geographic areas you want to target. These tools will give you a general idea of how much search inventory there is for you to buy. It also shows what your possible budget should start out with. Here are a few takeaways we’ve learned when it comes to Google search engine advertising budgets:
  • Search ads are based on an auction system. Normally you’re going to pay more for words that typically bring more value. You’re going to pay more for a steak keyword than you would a chop beef keyword.
  • You can control how much you spend and exactly where the money is spent. The more you target your audience, the less money you’ll waste and the more opportunity you’ll have for conversions.
  • The average spend of a small business on search engine advertising per month is anywhere from 5,000-10,000, depending on the industry.

Who Should Use Search Engine Advertising?

A successful search engine advertising campaign does not depend on the size of the business. Businesses with a larger budget for paid search can explore more growth opportunities quicker. This will, of course, provide them with a competitive advantage.

The location, products, and advertising budget are the big factors that determine the success of a paid search campaign. Smaller companies should only use search engine advertising when they are sure they will generate a profit from it. Some experiments can teach valuable lessons that help drive sales in other areas.

Small business owners who invest in search engine marketing campaigns should think about how much their search engine marketing strategy will help to gain new clients and be as specific as you can when bidding on keyword data. For example, a local personal injury law firm might use the keywords “personal injury lawyer in city name” or “injury attorney near me.” These paid search campaigns will receive clicks from searchers who aren’t shopping by other specifics or niches.

Businesses of every size should also consider search engine optimization as part of your long-term growth strategy, as well. Since advertising with a search engine should aim to generate leads, it’s ideal to first target and answer specific search queries. Your customers will be more likely to buy from your company if they are able to find valuable content also readily available on your website.

Internet users will still favor the organic results of their web search on Google and Bing. According to SearchEngineWatch, only 6% of search engine users are likely to click on paid search ads. Search engine advertising can’t be a substitute for a natural ranking system. Like we say for every single form of marketing we talk about, this is why businesses should use paid search to be only one aspect of their digital marketing strategy.

For more information on how to improve your SEO priority, check out our blog post, here!

Search engine advertising is helpful for generating traffic using common keywords. This is especially true when the market is over-saturated with competition in the organic search results, as that makes it difficult to rank. Search engine advertising is also a great strategy to employ when there are short-term events such as sales and offers that could use instant exposure.

75 percent of users never scroll past the first page of search results - Digital Logic

Localized Ad Copy & Extensions

The more niche your company, product, or service is, the less expensive it will be to advertise using search engine advertising. With that being said, you will face competition regardless, and you will likely see national companies buying ads on search engines. For both cases to counteract this, make sure that you include geographic terms in your text ads. You can also use location extensions so potential searchers know you’re actually a local business.

More common or competitive industries may experience a larger cost-per-click over main keywords. You can also advertise cheaper if you set up your campaigns aligned to long-tail search terms. Seek lower search volumes in a “low-hanging fruit first” strategy.

There are several tactics we employ at Digital Logic to drop costs and raise the opportunities for conversions for our clients. The list literally continues to grow with each new client. You actually can teach an old dog new tricks!

This is an example of a few extensions for my business for the localized campaigns I’m running:

seo for small businesses google search results with location extensions and sitelink extensions by digital logic in shrevpeort louisiana

What Are The Primary Targeting Options For Local Search Engine Advertising?

Ads displayed in the search engine results pages (SERPs) match with keyword searches. If a user is searching for the keyword “attorney,” they will find a few ads that focus on law firms or attorneys. There are some other factors you’ll want to consider when using displaying advertising. These features are also likely to increase or decrease an advertiser’s bid price. The most important targeting factors include:
  • Location: Advertisements will cost more or less depending on which country, state, or city they’re shown to. A small business owner can offer more for their ad campaigns if they want the ads to appear more often. Ads are more visible in searches within the geographic location the searcher is in. Geofencing or Location Targeting options can include a city, state, zip code, radius. It could be miles around a physical location or even a kilometer around a physical location. You’ll also want to pay attention to the location exclusions so you don’t get out of area traffic. Read our comprehensive post on Geofencing and location targeting.
  • Daily & Weekly Hours: Google can display search ads more or less often, on certain days, or at certain times of the day or night, depending on your preferences. This will influence an advertiser’s bidding behavior. Allocating your budget toward the best buying times for your customers will keep your ads performing well.
  • Language: Google takes the searcher’s language into account. Only displays ads in the local language are shown to each user. You should create advertisements for each language based on your potential customers. Or limit your ad exposure to only certain languages.
  • Remarketing Lists: With remarketing lists, ads display for users depending on what they viewed in the past. This means that a user who has visited your site already. They will have a different display experience compared to a user who’s never visited the site. They might be shown things that could influence a visitor to buy or act in a different way. If you need a specialist to help your business with your remarketing efforts, check out Digital Logic!
  • Google Phone Call Only Campaigns: With phone call only campaigns, advertisements are set to run on mobile devices only. A bid price will be set to the max cost per call that the user is willing to pay. These campaigns bypass having to click through to a website. They direct users to make a phone call from the advertisement on the search engine results page. The highest cost-per-call setting is like the max CPC setting. The cost-per-call will be higher than the max CPC setting. That’s because the value of a phone call is higher than the value of a website click.

How Does Google’s Quality Score Work?

Google has a “quality score” as part of its rating system. Quality score is how Google ranks your ad with respect to how well it is able to answer the question or meet the need of the person who used the search term at hand. This stops low-quality ads with higher bids from landing at the top of the search results. This method helps create a positive experience for all users.

Google has studied and implemented a system to understand what makes searchers click on ads. This system earns them increased ad revenues. A well-planned search engine advertising campaign with high-quality content will always rank higher in the search engines. This is because it’s the most helpful and personalized to the user’s search intent. A high CPC bid is not the only factor in creating a successful advertisement. Google’s quality score rates the following factors as essential for an effective advertising campaign:

Digital Logic Google Quality Score

Graphic by Digital Logic

  • Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR): This metric is based on how often the advertisement displays (impressions), along with the number of clicks that each ad receives. Ads that have a high click-through rate (CTR) are more relevant and shown more often.
  • Click-Through Rate For The Display URL: If the URL used in the ad has already achieved a large number of clicks, then an ad’s quality score will also be higher. The display URL does not have to match the link target to earn clicks to it. But it should at least be related to earning a high-quality score.
  • Landing Page Quality: Users click on links because they’re featured for its relevance, transparency, and user-friendliness. That ad’s search engine ranking will continue to improve.
  • Relevance Of The Ad Copy: Ads that get the top spots on search engines have titles and copy that align with the related search query. The more relevant an ad’s copy is, then the higher the ranking will be.
All search engine ads are evaluated by their CPC bid and quality score. The value of any advertisement can be found with the following equation: Highest Ranked Ads = Highest CPC Bid x Quality Score

How Do You Find The Right Keywords To Bid On?

Keywords are the foundation of search engine marketing. Users are entering keywords (as part of search queries) into search engines to find what they’re looking for. It should come as no surprise that keywords form the basis of search engine marketing.

SEM Keywords

First, you’ll need to identify specific keywords that are most relevant to your business. Include the ones that prospective customers are most likely to use when searching for products and services that you provide. One of the best ways to perform keyword research is by using Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner. Enter a keyword that’s relevant to your products or services. Then you’ll see related keyword suggestion ideas. Those can form the basis of various search engine advertising campaigns. You want to also make sure that when you’re bidding on keywords, that you’re bidding on keywords that are intent driven. You want the audience who are posing these questions to be at the right stage in their buyer’s journey to want to click your ad and be ready to purchase. The more you know about how your target audience behaves, the more your ads will be able to help you convert your audience.

search engine advertising and google keyword planner screen shot

SEM Negative Keywords

When you’re searching for keywords that your company can bid on, thorough research can also help you identify what is known as negative keywords. Or locate search terms that you should exclude from your ad campaigns. Negative keywords are irrelevant terms that are unlikely to result in conversions. You’ll want to include some of these to protect your budget from wasteful expenses. If your business sells ice cream, then you would want to exclude the keyword “recipes.” Users who are searching for “ice cream recipes” are not likely wanting to buy ice cream from your business.

SEM Keyword Groups

Practical keyword groups and account structure can help you achieve higher click-through rates (CTR), lower costs-per-click (CPC). This usually results in stronger performance. Keyword research can help you think about how to best structure your advertising account to achieve high performance.

Rotate Ad Groups

Your search engine advertising campaigns should focus on similar products or services. Use different ads and keywords for each specific category of products or services within your company’s wider offerings. If you own a hardware store, one ad campaign might focus on seasonal products such as leaf blowers, rakes, and lawnmowers. Another search campaign could focus on industrial-use power tools.

Ad groups sub categorize each campaign for high or “niche” relevance. In the hardware store example, one ad group might be for different types of rakes, or models of leaf blowers. For power tools, one ad group could focus on power drills, while yet another might focus on circular saws. This level of advanced organization will take longer to set up in the beginning. The rewards, like higher CTR at a lower cost, make this effort worthwhile in the long run.

Digital Logic AdWords Account Structure

Graphic by Digital Logic

Tracking And Measurement for Search Engine Advertising Campaigns

You’ll want to set up a Google Analytics account. Then set up a call reporting tool like Call Rail. Now, you can receive specific metrics on-demand related your local search campaigns:

Or, you can use a custom reporting platform like the one our agency sets up for our search engine advertising clients:

digital logic search engine and online marketing reporting dashboard for our shreveport advertising agency and shreveport seo clients

To better provide you with professional digital marketing help on your local search engine advertising campaigns, Digital Logic maintains a Google Partner status. We’ll be happy to give you a free quote along with a free initial consultation.

Click here to see the complete list of services Digital Logic has to offer!