Search Engine Advertising – SEA
You know you need to do something with search engine advertising (SEA). But what exactly? And how?
One thing you know for sure: It’s better to be as high as possible in the search engines. And you do that by advertising, among other things. In this blog, we explain the most popular and effective ways to advertise in search engines (read Google and Bing).
Spoiler Alert: It’s not as difficult as it seems.
But first, let’s cover the basics.
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SEA, SEM, SEO, huh?
SEA is an abbreviation of Search Engine Advertising.
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and is a form of marketing that focuses on search engines and improving your visibility.
This includes both SEA and SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing your website for search engines, a way to reel in more organic (unpaid) traffic.
Clear?
Great, that wasn’t so bad after all, was it?
A SELECTION OF OUR most remarkable Cases!
In the cases, we share some of our most remarkable achievements and tell the story behind the successes. At ROXTAR, we strive to push boundaries, exceed goals, and create online marketing strategies that not only stand out but also have a measurable impact.
Coating Floor
In the top spot for Cast Floor within a year!
gaafinjectables
More appointment requests via SEO, new website and SEA for Gaaf.
Hilversum dentist
Reached #1 in Hilversum within a year with a new website and a customized SEO program
Vitalderma
A targeted social media approach delivered Vitalderma growth in online visibility and more new clients in the clinic
fatfreezing centers
A smart Social Media and SEA strategy led to significant growth for Fatfreezing Centers
extern dakwerken
From hardly any online orders to a constant stream thanks to Roxtar’s targeted SEO and SEA strategy
New Chapter Maternity Care
Did we achieve the goal, a growth in conversions? Absolutely! After one year, we realized a conversion increase of 288%!
Dentist Heeren
Doubled appointments achieved thanks to a targeted SEO strategy and a renewed website.
Doijer & Kalff
Organic traffic doubled 102% in one month!
Sell your car to us
Selling your car easily and quickly? That’s possible at verkoopjeautoaanons.nl! We realized an increase in organic search traffic of 86%!
De Wifi Specialist
For De Wifi Specialist, we realized, among other things, a conversion increase of 171% in one year!
FIXERS
For Fixers, the repair company for mobile devices, we have managed to realize more than 350 top 5 positions in Google!
Bert Jonk
58% more organic traffic within 6 months
GIGA Storage B.V.
128% more sessions with more quote requests due to higher engagement.
Laser Specialist Santpoort
159% Increase in number of clicks after 1 year
Kopen aan de Costa
Thanks to our strategy, the company generated 167% more leads,
apollo beauty
More conversions from Ads in the last 30 days
Metain
We realized a conversion increase of 59 percent
Advertise in which search engines?
So, search engine advertising. But which search engines are there actually?
You probably already know the answer. Because where do you go when you’re looking for an answer to a question?
Exactly. It starts with a big G.
With 92% of all searches, Google has been the leader in the list of the world’s largest search engines for years. More than 65,000 searches are processed per second (that’s more than 8.5 billion per day) and more than half of the world’s population actively uses Google. In the Netherlands, it concerns a total market share of 93.47%.
The second largest search engine?
That’s YouTube, surprisingly enough. It receives more than 3 billion searches every month, which is more than the rest of the search engines combined.
Of the ‘real’ search engines, Bing occupies 2nd place with approximately 3% of the searches and Yahoo is in 3rd place with a market share of over 1%. Closely followed by the Russian Yandex (1.04%), Baidu (0.8%) from China and the privacy-first search engine DuckDuckGo (0.62%). Newcomer Ecosia (an eco-friendly non-profit search engine) closes the list with approximately 0.1%.
Curious how we can help you further?
What can I do with it?
Search engine advertising offers quite a few advantages. We’ll list them for you.
Better visibility
SEA (and okay, SEO too) is very simple at its core: As a company, you have something to sell and your target group is actively looking for what you sell. By being at the top of the search results pages, you have a good chance of getting (a part) of those people to your website.
Search engine advertising, or rather, advertising on the results pages of search engines, is a fast and effective way to get extra traffic to your website or a specific landing page in the short term.
In exchange for euros, you get a nice the best position on the search results pages. Right at the top.
It is very targeted
One of the major advantages of search engine advertising (and online advertising in general) is that it is -to say the least- targeted; you can use it to specifically address certain target groups.
You also know that the target group already has some interest in your product because they are actively looking for a product, information or an answer to their questions.
Instant result
With SEA you book instant results. Compared to SEO, where it can sometimes take months before you notice results, with advertisements you immediately notice that more traffic is coming to your website.
It is measurable
Sounds boring, it isn’t.
Via Google AdWords (and Microsoft Advertising) you can measure conversions fairly accurately. This often goes via a page with a piece of code (technical story, something for another article) that keeps track of whether someone buys something or, for example, registers (whatever you set as a conversion).
Why would you do that?
A, because you get more insight into what works and what doesn’t.
And B, because you want to spend your money as effectively as possible. If you notice that there are certain keywords that convert very well in relative terms, you can allocate more budget to them. And you can immediately delete keywords that appear to be performing poorly.
And the disadvantages?
There are those too, of course.
How does it work?
In a nutshell, SEA works something like this:
Step 1. Set up campaign
Search engine advertising starts with setting up a search campaign. With Google you do that in AdWords (formerly Google Ads) and with Bing they call it Microsoft Advertising.
Step 2. Set up and configure campaign
Here you set up a campaign and determine a goal (for example, more sales or traffic), a target group, a campaign type and, not entirely unimportant: You determine your advertising budget.
Step 3. Keywords
Then you choose the keywords you want to advertise on. Good keyword research is needed for this first. You can also exclude certain terms and indicate which words you do not want to be shown on. With ad groups you bring structure to different ads and divide them per theme or keyword (useful for measuring).
Step 4. Create advertisements and write texts
Then comes the most important thing: creating the advertisements and writing the texts. Tip: Always make several, so that you can see the effect through A/B testing and measure the performance.
Dynamic advertising
To make life a little easier, Google has invented Dynamic Advertising. If someone searches for a search term, Google generates an automatic advertisement based on keywords that appear on your website.
Only advertise in Google or also in Bing?
We focus on Google and Bing. Advertising in both Google and Bing works largely the same. What is a big difference, however, is the cost: They are lower at Bing.
A lot lower.
In most branches you pay about a third of what you have to pay at Google for the same search terms.
Switch to Bing then?
Muah.
The lower costs naturally have everything to do with the fact that there is less competition, and that is due to the lower reach since Bing is used by far fewer people.
And that ultimately means that fewer visitors find their way to your website.
We say: Why would you limit yourself? You can also divide your budget and try to grab both the visitors from Google and those from Bing.
But… what does that cost?
SEA works according to the Cost Per Click (CPC) principle. You do not pay fixed amounts (as with offline advertising, for example), but pay an amount each time someone is kind enough to click on your link.
The precise amount that you have to pay per click is also not fixed per search term, but is based on an auction system. The price per click depends, among other things, on the popularity of a search term. The more competitors want to advertise on the same keywords, the higher the price and, you guessed it, vice versa.
The algorithm also tries to estimate the chance that someone will click on your advertisement, how relevant your advertisement is and the quality of your landing page also plays a role.
What kind of ads can I use?
You can have 2 types of advertisements shown. Product advertisements and text advertisements. Based on an algorithm that looks at the keywords and tries to guess the search intention of the searcher, the search engine determines which type you get to see.
If you are looking for a very specific product, let’s say ‘buy sunscreen’, both Google and Bing assume that you are asking a product-related question and automatically present you with products with images and prices.
But if you search for ‘what is sunscreen’ you will see text advertisements. You recognize them by “advertisements” that is always clearly above it. In their simplest form, text advertisements consist of a title, a URL and a description.
Ad extensions
With extensions you can expand your standard advertisement with additional information, so that it becomes even more interesting for potential customers to choose your advertisement. For example, text advertisements can contain a telephone number or the location of your company, you can highlight certain information or add links to other pages on your website. In Bing you can even link images to your advertisements.
Logically, product advertisements are most relevant for web shops and stores, while other companies need more of the content and should advertise best via text advertisements.
outsource search engine advertising or do it yourself?
Because search engine is not complex at all, you can in principle do this yourself. Especially if you want to set up a one-off campaign. But what we (too) often see is that people enthusiastically get started with their search campaigns and then neglect them with disappointing (then we express ourselves kindly) results as a result.
SEA is a specialty and not something you do in between. Certainly not as an entrepreneur who is already busy enough. Successful search engine advertising starts with two things: good research and strategy.
Why?
Because research makes it clear where the opportunities lie for you and a strategy tells you how best to seize them.
Although outsourcing SEA is not free, you do benefit from the expertise, experience and knowledge of an experienced company. It is also always useful to have a partner who thinks along with you (but perhaps we are a bit biased).
Outsource Search Engine Advertising to ROXTAR?
ROXTAR is happy to help you with your Search Engine Advertising. It is our strength to unburden you as an entrepreneur in the field of online marketing and SEA plays an important role in this. Why should you choose ROXTAR as a party for your SEA?
Start with SEA?
Can’t you wait to get started with SEA/advertising in search engines or would you like to exchange ideas with one of our specialists about the approach, strategy and possibilities? Or are you perhaps curious about the other services that we provide? We are happy to think along with you! Feel free to contact us or send a message via our chatbot at the bottom right.
Free Strategy Session
Do you want to take your online marketing to the next level? Request a free strategy session now.
Meet our team
Don
Online Strategist
Sherelle
Office Manager
Peter
Online Advertising Specialist
Seppe
Web Developer
Juliëtte
Project Manager
Bram
Online Advertising Specialist
Mucahid
Web Developer
Vazja
SEO Specialist
Juul
SEO Specialist
Sjoerd
Web Developer & Designer
Lilianne
Online Marketing Consultant