SEM 101: How It’s Different Than SEO

How To Set Up Google Ads

How should a digital marketing professional integrate SEM into their marketing strategy?

Step 1: Identify which keywords are most important to your business. Ideally, your branded keywords already rank high in SERPs. If that’s the case, focus on your non-branded keywords and make a list. (You can use Google Search Console or tools like SEMRush to get an idea of where you rank for which keywords. You can also measure the typical monthly volume for each keyword phrase; typically, those with higher volume are more valuable, but will also cost more money).

Step 2: Group keywords into related buckets. For example, you could have a bucket of branded keywords, tied to your company’s name and its branded products (like “Samsung” and “Galaxy”). You should also have buckets of non-branded keywords you want to rank for (like “smartphone” and “best smartphone”). These buckets can become different ad groups within Google Ads.

Step 3: Set up a landing page(s). While it’s tempting to direct ads to existing pages on your website, conversion rates will usually be higher specifically designed landing pages— preferably a different landing page for each ad group.

Step 4: Create a campaign. A campaign is the broad outline of the suite of Google Ads that you will run. To set up Google Ads that appear above organic search results, select “search campaign.”

Step 5: Set up Ad Groups. Using the keywords buckets, set up different Ad Groups within your campaign. One Ad Group could focus on branded keywords; another could include a set of related non-branded keywords. Your Ad Groups should be grouped so that you can target relevant keywords that send traffic to targeted landing pages.

Step 6: Target keywords in each Ad Group. To do this, add the relevant keywords to each ad group. These are the terms that will trigger Google to show your ads to the searchers who use those terms. You can set these ads as broad match, phrase match, or an exact match. Broad match will show ads to searchers who use terms broadly related to your keywords, while the exact match will only show ads that exactly match the words entered into Google. Different campaigns, terms, and products will benefit from different types of matching.

• For example, broad matching for the keywords “low-carb diet plan” would lead the Google algorithm to show ads for people who searched using terms broadly related to those keywords, such as “low-carb diets” or “carb-free foods.”

• For phrase matching, the algorithm will show ads to people who search for keywords that include the meanings of the initial keywords. For example, “lawn mowing service” ads would also be shown for searches for “hire company to mow the lawn” or “lawn mowing service near me.”

• Exact matches are more precise, showing results for searches that almost exactly match the core phrase. For example, if the exact match keywords are “shoes for men,” Google would return ads for “shoes men” or “men shoe,” but not for “shoes for boys” or “mens tennis shoes.”

Entering negative keywords will ensure your ads are not shown to searchers looking for similar but unrelated terms. Like other keywords, these can be designated as broad, phrases or exact matches. For example, if you are advertising wine glasses on Google Ads, you would probably want to add “reading” as a negative keyword, so your ad doesn’t show up for people looking online for reading glasses.

Step 7: Write the ads. The ads you compose, which can include headlines, descriptions, and extensions, should closely match the keywords in the Ad Group. So, an ad group built around keywords such as “luxury homes for sale” or “high end houses for sale” should include similar terms in the ads themselves. These keywords should also echo the language used on the landing pages so that the content on all three (keyword, ad, and landing page) aligns.

Google allows advertisers to draft multiple versions of ad copy, including as many as 15 headlines and four descriptions for each ad. The Google Ad algorithm will then mix and match different headlines and descriptions to find the best combinations. While it can seem like a lot of work to draft 15 different headlines, they will provide Google with more options to find the best-performing ad copy.

Step 8: Launch the campaigns. Once you’ve set up the ads and the landing pages, you’re ready to launch your campaigns. Deciding how much to budget for the ads can be tricky to do before the ads are set because the CTR and conversion rates are unknown. But the Google Keyword Planner is an excellent way to estimate budgets.

You can also establish target audiences within Google Ads. Among the most common ways to use this feature is by geography. Google Ads allows advertisers to only show their ads to users in specific geographic areas (states, cities, etc.).

Step 9: Monitor your results and adjust. Almost immediately, Google Ads will offer a set of recommendations to improve your PPC campaign. Not all of these recommendations will make sense. For example, Google may recommend adding a specific keyword phrase that it thinks will expand the reach of your ads, but you know would not match your business. But reviewing the recommendations regularly will offer you ways to improve and enhance your existing campaigns, even ad copy.

In addition to evaluating the performance of the ads themselves, be sure to also review the results from your landing pages. Most importantly measure how many leads you are getting from your PPC marketing campaign and determine how much those leads are worth. Ideally, the value of the leads will far exceed the cost of your ads.

In other words, be sure you are calculating ROI for your ad campaign. If your costs exceed your revenue, you will likely need to adjust your online marketing efforts. That could mean reducing your budget, improving the ads themselves, adjusting the keywords, or making the landing page simpler and easier to submit a form from.