When some­one searches online using a search engine, the engine dis­plays results on a web page called, sen­si­bly enough, a search engine results page, or SERP. Every search engine is try­ing to deliver the most rel­e­vant search results pos­si­ble, based on every­thing they’ve learned from the bil­lions of searches that are con­ducted online every day.

As more and more peo­ple rely on search to help them make deci­sions and find infor­ma­tion, it becomes increas­ingly vital for busi­nesses large and small to have a high degree of vis­i­bil­ity on the SERPs when­ever some­one con­ducts a search that is rel­e­vant to that company’s busi­ness offerings.



Two Ways to Get on a SERP



There are two ways for a com­pany to try and get their web pages to the fore­front of the SERPs, and many com­pa­nies pur­sue both meth­ods. The first is to cre­ate web pages that are designed to appeal to the search engines so that they appear “organ­i­cally” on SERPs when the engine con­ducts a related search. There are many tech­niques to opti­mize a web site for organic search list­ings, but basi­cally it is all about includ­ing high qual­ity con­tent that is rel­e­vant to the peo­ple who would be search­ing, and cod­ing the pages in such a way that they are easy for the search engines to index. The search engines look for many, many other indi­ca­tors, includ­ing clues about how pop­u­lar that page is with searchers, based on traf­fic to the page, how many other web pages are link­ing to that page from other web sites, and other signals.

The sec­ond way to get listed promi­nently on a SERP is to buy an ad. This is known as Paid Search, or pay-per-click (PPC). For exam­ple, if you were to type in “BC Travel” on Bing, a num­ber of ads will appear on the right rail as well as at the very top of the SERP. Adver­tis­ers bid on the search terms they would like to have trig­ger their ad, and they are only billed if some­one clicks on the ad – but they are billed every time some­one clicks on an ad.

The good news is that this is a very mea­sur­able kind of adver­tis­ing. Each click can be counted along with each time the ad was dis­played on a SERP (each appear­ance on a SERP is known as an “impres­sion”). The bad news is that a sloppy paid search cam­paign can burn up a lot of money and pro­duce poor results, if the peo­ple click­ing on the ad are not the audi­ence that the adver­tiser intended to attract.

What­ever search term is used, if a com­pany is bid­ding on some or all of those words, their ad may appear (depend­ing on their bid­ding strat­egy, as well as ad and post-click web page rel­e­vance, as judged by that search engine’s cri­te­ria).  Pay­ing for ad place­ments on the SERPs can be a very effec­tive ele­ment of a company’s online mar­ket­ing strategy.

Uses of Paid Search

If you’re just get­ting started with the web­site, or you’ve just devel­oped a new prod­uct and your SEO (search engine opti­miza­tion) isn’t ready to go yet or you don’t have enough con­tent where you can start rank­ing and the search crawlers can find your con­tent, pay-per-click is a good tool to get that expo­sure and build up brand aware­ness with­out hav­ing to wait for your con­tent to be picked up by the search engine. It’s also a really good tool if you are try­ing to reach a broader audi­ence or, con­versely, try­ing to tar­get a spe­cific ver­ti­cal or indus­try that your exist­ing con­tent doesn’t cover; it can help you build knowl­edge on exist­ing mar­kets that you haven’t approached before, so that you can start inte­grat­ing them into your over­all mar­ket­ing strategy.

If you’re in an indus­try where you have a big event hap­pen­ing or there’s a spe­cific con­test, tradeshow or other time-sensitive event that you want to pro­mote, paid search is a really good way to get auto­matic expo­sure right away.

There are a num­ber of other mod­els for using Paid Search effec­tively, depend­ing on your busi­ness objec­tives. Are you look­ing to get more leads, more sales oppor­tu­ni­ties, or even more direct sales? These are all valid objec­tives for a well-considered Paid Search cam­paign. With Paid Search, it’s also easy to mea­sure the results you’re get­ting, and make changes quickly. With good mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment, the return on invest­ment for Paid Search can out­per­form many, if not all, other kinds of marketing.

Paid Search is a very pow­er­ful tool when you inte­grate it into your cus­tomer acqui­si­tion cycle. It’s use­ful in get­ting vol­ume through to the top of your sales fun­nel, but then it’s going to be up to you to do some­thing con­struc­tive with that infor­ma­tion. Usu­ally it works best when you pair it with a remar­ket­ing strat­egy or you inte­grate it into your other mar­ket­ing plat­forms, and use it as a por­tal for gain­ing new customers.

If you are cur­rently using Paid Search in your mar­ket­ing, and you’d like to know if you could be get­ting bet­ter results, con­tact us for a free con­sul­ta­tion.


Biography / Resume : Karl joined Mediative’s service delivery team in 2008. A year later, he moved to the company’s research department where he conducted online surveys, eye-tracking studies, one-on-one interviews and usability testing. Most recently, he transitioned to the marketing department. Before Mediative, Karl worked in sales and marketing. In 1997, he caught the digital bug and became the original “webmaster” for Roland Canada Music. Around the same time, he began teaching the relatively new topic of Internet marketing to college and university students. Karl’s insatiable curiosity and drive to get to the core and substance of every situation has served him well in his various roles at Mediative.