Tag Archives: SEM audit

How to Perform a Complete SEM Audit for your Website?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of internet marketing that seeks to promote a business website in both paid and organic search. We understand that you want to create a website for people that actually help them finding and opting your business and services. Take the example of Wikipedia that absolutely dominates Google search results. It has become a natural resource for millions of people. This is because of its knowledge sharing experience.

A good experience always add value to the business. Thus, the businesses are trying to offer easy and exquisite, and personalized experience.

And Search Marketing is the main source of promoting any business online. It is intrinsic for business growth especially when you are trying to reach a wider audience. Sometimes your search strategy doesn’t work even after spending a fortune on it. Then you need to analyse and re-strategize your search marketing campaigns.

One thing is clear that you need to create a website for both- users and search engines. Unless you won’t be able to seize the desired business opportunities on it.

You must be wondering how some companies dig the treasure by promoting their business online. No fascinating stories, just real experiences. At times you may need to research, re-think and re-strategize your campaign to get the desired results.

There are many components that need to strategize and implement on a website to make it search engine as well as users friendly.

Before you can do that, you need to set your priority, budget and some timeline for your SEO and paid campaign first.

The top considerations that will help you creating a website that suits well for users and search engines includes keyword analysis, campaign structure, campaign setting and analysis, ad copy analysis, bid & budget management, conversion tracking, ad extensions, display placements, remarketing, shopping campaign analysis, competitive overview, etc. These things are essential which needs to set properly and execute well, otherwise you cannot get the expected results. So, if you want to create a lasting impression on users mind you need to create a better visibility first!
To create a better search visibility of your website you need to do a SEO on the site. A website take time to get well indexed on major search engines- Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.

However, you can get fast results through paid and social media campaigns. But, you need to make sure you’re hitting the requirements of users properly or you’ll lose your money for nothing.

Both things need strategy, time and skill. Our consolidated ‘Website Marketing Checklist’ will help you in creating a website for both- users and search engines.

SEO Audit

SEO Audit must perform at least twice a year. The reason is quite simple as Google always come up with new changes and keep updating its search algorithm. There are certain elements that plays a crucial role in determining the success or failure of a SEO campaign. For example, you need to asses the quality of your website on-page SEO, check whether your website is search engines friendly. You need to remove all the links or backlinks from your website that are no more active. You also need to ensure that your website is ready for search engine indexing and the search engine robots can crawl through it.

Once your website is ready, give a thorough look over it and check if there is any issue related to user experience such as navigation, loading speed, etc. These are some of the things that you can add to your SEO checklist and implement the same while fixing SEO on your website. However, We have created a comprehensive SEO Checklist, which can be helpful in improving the search visibility of your site.

PPC Audit

Performing a PPC Audit on a website is much easier than the SEO Audit, because it gives you an instantaneous result. You don’t need to wait for the good amount of traffic or leads to be generated as it takes time. Pay Per Click management services delivers results almost instantaneously. But, there are things that you need to fix or execute properly while performing a result driven digital marketing campaign for any business.

Here, you’ll have to start with cost per click (CPC), which is the cost associated with a click made by a user on the ad. However, conversion rate for any website is a critical factor. Furthermore, you need to analyse the volume of your campaign, which is basically the number of leads and conversion you received after spending a definite amount. However, you need to estimate how changing the level of ad spending can affect the conversion. That’s how you can be able to perform a better ad campaign for your business, which actually converts.

We help digital marketing agencies in their search and paid campaigns. If you want to create a better visibility of your website then contact us or you can just drop a mail to us at hello@uplers.com, one of our executive will get in touch with you in next 24-48 hours.

Online Marketing Tips: How To Perform An SEM Audit

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When it comes to your online marketing SEM strategy, never disregard the importance of performing regular SEM audits. Chances are that however hard you worked on building an account – implementing all the best practices along the way – you probably missed something. It happens! It’s easy to overlook the basics when you’re stuck in the nitty gritty.

This is why SEM audits – like audits of SEO tools – are so important. Aside from highlighting the effectiveness of your Paid Search campaigns, ad groups and keywords, they can reveal any issues and provide actionable intelligence on website optimization. Therefore, in order for your accounts to maximize their performance and increase ROI, you can’t afford not to conduct audits.

What’s more, if your account isn’t performing well and you need a more in-depth analysis, there’s no harm in outsourcing the project to a white label digital marketing agency. Often, someone with a fresh outlook can easily pinpoint any internet marketing problems.

So, what exactly is an SEM audit? What can be revealed, and what opportunities does it present? Here’s what you need to know.

What does an SEM audit entail?

An SEM audit is beneficial for measuring the performance of your Paid Search campaigns – both before their inception and throughout their lifecycle – to help inform future strategy.

An audit will look at:

  • Metrics such as conversion rate, cost per conversion and average position, and any emerging patterns in those metrics.
  • Campaign settings such as targeted locations, allocation of budget, language settings, etc.
  • Campaign structure including keywords, ads and ad extensions

When should an SEM audit be performed?

SEM audits should be performed before the launch of a campaign to set a baseline marker upon which performance can be measured. They should be conducted whenever there are performance issues, but it is good practice to complete an audit once every six months even when your account is performing well. However, you shouldn’t perform an audit within three months of a major account structure alterations.

What are the benefits of an SEM audit?

In short, performing an SEM audit will uncover budget wastage and reveal hidden opportunities to scale campaigns, with the aim of increasing website traffic and boosting ROI.

How to perform an SEM audit

The basics

Before you begin, set a date range by which you can analyze data. At least 3 months’ worth of data is recommended.

Also, ensure you are acquainted with the business’ KPIs, so you have a key understanding of what metrics to look at.

Now it’s time to dive into the settings of the campaign. If an account was set up a long time ago the settings should be reviewed, as they could be negatively impacting the campaign. So, analyzing the settings and their effectiveness is a good place to begin.

A couple of things you should analyze are:

  • Targeting Search and Display networks

You might see that one campaign alone is targeting both Search and Display traffic, and this could be negatively impact the performance of a campaign. Try dividing this across separate campaigns.

  • Geotargeting

You should consider geotargeting your campaigns if specific geographical locations are relevant to your marketing. Geotargeting your campaigns (with the help of tools like Google AdWords) will ensure you reach a targeted audience and increase conversion rate. What’s more, doing this can help you save money on your budget.

Account settings

Start by reviewing the structure of the campaigns. For example:

  • Campaigns

Could the campaigns be named in-line with the groups they are targeting? Are campaigns divided among topics and interests, or are they housed in one campaign? Could you be do something different here to increase impact?

  • Keywords and ad groups

Keywords are at the heart of Paid Search, and so should be treated with appropriate diligence. Each ad group should be targeting specific categories of keywords, but make sure each ad group has no more than 20 keywords in it, otherwise the wide range could be negatively affecting reach. Plus, creating copy that includes too many keywords will be difficult to achieve and will read robotically.

  • Quality Score

A high Quality Score is vital for Paid Search. It depends upon how effectively your keywords are grouped and their match type (the relevance of the keywords against the copy on the ad and landing page). A higher Quality Score will mean your ads rank higher, therefore you spend less money per click.

  • Ads

Are all of your ads relevant, displaying correct information and grammatically correct?

  • Ad extensions

Ad extensions aren’t appropriate for every business’ internet marketing approach, but when utilized correctly they can add real value and increase click-through rate. Consider what additional information and services ad extensions could offer a searcher: call extensions, location extensions, price extensions, review extensions, etc.

Conclusion

After you have completed the audit, you will have a list of actionable insights. You should then prioritize what needs to be done, and set a realistic time frame for which they can be completed. Don’t make any rash decisions to your online marketing strategy without careful consideration, though, as you may end up harming account performance further. And if you’re ever unsure on how to perform the audit and what to look for, call on a digital marketing agency for advice.

By getting these fundamental account aspects in-check, you can make a bigger impact, achieve greater performance and increase your ROI.