SEM (search engine marketing) involves using search engines like Google to promote websites and drive traffic. 76% of B2B buyers use Google to research suppliers. SEM offers a cost-effective way to get higher ROI than traditional marketing. It includes SEO (search engine optimization) to improve free search listings and PPC (pay-per-click) ads. Key aspects of SEM include understanding customer search habits, choosing relevant keywords, optimizing webpages and off-page links, managing PPC campaigns, tracking results, and using tools to research keywords and measure performance. With the right SEM strategy, companies can significantly increase website usage, leads, and acquire new customers with a relatively small marketing budget.

1. SEM
Search Engine Marketing
Mark Hayward

2. Why
• 76% of B2B buyers and procurement
managers use google to find new suppliers
(IDM, 2009)
• Offers cost effective promotion delivering
higher ROI than traditional marketing
methods and many digital channels (Mark
Hayward)

3. SEM
• Google lead the way – over 80% of all
searches in UK
• Providing relevant results to the user
underpins all of Google's work
• Other serach engines have followed Googles
approach

4. SEM
• Divided into two platforms
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
– The free listings on Google (the main body)
• PPC (Pay Per Click)
• The sponsored links on the top and right hand side of
Google
• Over 70% of people click on main listings and of
those 80% click on the top three

5. Some definitions
• SERP – search engine results page
• Impressions – the number of times and ad is show (not clicked on)
• Hits – files being downloaded from server
• Visitors – people visiting your site
• ROI – return on investment
• Keyword or phrase – what customers type in to find you
• Conversion – getting a customer to do what you want them to do
• CTR - Click through rate – impressions/clicks x 100
• Landing page – the page you come to when clicking on a ad

6. Customer journey
• From Search to sale
• Consider your customers search habits
• General keywords when searching for
knowledge/awareness eg “Digital Camera”
• Specific search when decided to buy eg “Sony
P200 10 megapixels and 5x optical zoom”

7. The long tail

8. SEO
• Split in to off page and on page factors
• Can take longer than PPC to provide good ROI
but will be better in the long run

9. On Page
• Internal links using keywords as anchor text
• Meta tags – keyword/description/H1/title tags
• Bullet points
• Bold keywords
• Keyword density/frequency
• Loading time
• Alt tags for images
• WC3 validator - http://validator.w3.org/

10. Off Page
• Links to your site/page
• Ensure anchor text is keyworded
• Link quality is key rather than quantity but
quantity is ok
• Dont pay for links!!!

11. PPC
• You pay per click
• You set the price you want based on your budget
and the price Google says you will need to bid
• You ad position is based on the quality score of
the ad x the bid price
• Make your QS great so you pay less

12. Ad rank
• QS = relevancy + CTR + landing page quality
• Only have to pay the bid of the advertiser
below them (like ebay)
Company Bid QS Ad rank Position
(BidxQS) (BidxQS)
A £4 1 4 4
B £3 3 9 2
C £2 6 12 1
D £1 8 8 3

13. Successes at Malthouse
• Increase in website usage by 922%
• Quotes for over £90,000 in 5 months
• Acquired 7 new customers
• Only spent £600

14. Key to successful SEM
• Know what you want
• Understand your customers and the customer
search journey
• Dont go bid crazy
• Track and measure

15. Tools
• Googles keyword tool – google it
• Traffic Travis - www.traffictravis.com
• Yahoo site explorer - siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

16. Resources
• Internet Marketing podcast
• Dave Chaffeys blog
• Dave chaffeys newsletter
• Mashable feeds/RSS
• Googles adwords blog