7 Ways to Become the Best Search Marketer

Learn how to perform Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategically to increase your organisations’ online visibility and become a valued search marketer.

Understanding and applying the digital aspects of modern marketing are critical to building an enduring brand that is found by and serves target customers. With the majority of potential buyers hitting the Internet to research, shortlist and choose suppliers, search marketing is one of the most important skill sets marketers and business owners can possess.

But because of its highly technical nature and “results over time” progress, few actually apply search marketing principles strategically or effectively.

To ensure you’re not wasting time and money, good search marketing involves lots of research and planning to understand where to focus your energy to improve the performance of your business and increase return on investment.

What is Search Marketing?

Search Marketing or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is one of the best ways to grow your business online in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Understanding and adopting SEM strategies help an organisation to appear when potential customers are looking for options, improve ranking and drive more traffic to pages on your website.

If you want to start improving your search marketing activities, there are 7 key things you should start doing now to give yourself the best chance of success.

1. Produce a detailed search strategy

There are many ways to increase your website’s visibility. But the two main ways are by understanding SEO and PPC.

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves optimizing organic content (your pages and the content within) by making improvements to your own website instead of paying for ad space. By specifically building an authority site around key terms and phases is a cost-effective way to generate quality traffic and reach new customers. But it takes time.
  • Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the quickest and most-effective search strategy to implement as it is focused on promoting your site through targeted keywords in paid ads so people are presented with your site when undertaking certain searches. It opens you up to a wider audience quicker but does come with costs.

The best search marketers use both (deploying PPC to boost highly search optimised pages), but regardless of strategy, you should understand who you want to attract based on what they are searching for.

You might start by asking questions such as

  • What are my customers searching for?
  • What are their characteristics, demographics, behaviours, motivations?
  • Which method is best for reaching my target? How much can I improve the results of my campaigns?

Use tools like SEMRush (profiled here to help you) and others to help you start to profile who they are and what they are looking for.

2. Create a comprehensive list of keywords

The best search marketers know that keywords are the bedrock of Internet marketing and how important they are to search marketing. It is critical to research the keywords you’ll build your search marketing strategy around at an early stage.

Identify keywords that are relevant to your business and that prospective customers are likely to search for. Start with asking Google questions and see what is presented back. This will give you a flavour as to what is popular, what else is asked and who is providing content to answer these search questions.

Use keyword tools like Google’s own planning adword tool and specialist sites like Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest to discover new keywords and find related keyword suggestion ideas for new campaigns.

3. Optimise your website and pages for keywords and content

The best search marketers know website pages provide the first chance to make a good impression on site visitors. The content you include on these pages will help visitors decide whether to stay on your site and continue interacting with it or leave immediately.

So content becomes a big part of search marketing as high-quality content that answers the search made will interest potential customers the most.

For some great ways to improve content optimisation consider the following:

  • Produce content that is rich in keywords – ensuring nominated page keyword/s are featured in headings, sub heading, the main body copy and the meta description for the page. Optimise images and page links too, everything plays its part.
  • Ensure pages are aligned with ad campaigns, email marketing and social media posts – anything that drives traffic to the page itself. The fastest way to have an immediate bounce away from your site is to not deliver what was promised.
  • Remove software that prevent search engines from indexing and returning your pages in search. This might mean removing Flash, pop ups and complicated navigation menus.
  • Keeping people on your site and building authority ranking based on good experience means being easy to navigate and easy to read. Declutter complicated pages, add plenty of white space and give them things to read, watch and download.
  • And don’t forget to register your site on important search directories as well as Google that play a vital role in determining search engine rankings.

4. Build an inbound link strategy to improve domain authority

The best search marketers know that search engines reward you when reputable sites link back to your own.

By having other sites link to yours, you are building third-party approval and you will rank higher in search results. Include link building in your Search Marketing strategy to generate traffic and increase domain authority.

The benefits you will get from inbound link building is directly related to the quality not quantity of the links. So it’s best to focus on the best industry sites, bloggers and influencers, ie sites that get way more traffic than you do.

It might involve guest blogging on other sites or creating links around other content, perhaps appearing in “Best of” reviews.

5. Start testing paid search campaigns

Paid search campaigns allow you to advertise your ads on search engines results pages such as Google, YouTube, Bing, and Yahoo.

By deploying pay per click models (PPC), you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This means your content is presented to those it is most relevant to and who can manage how much you spend.

PPC campaigns can help you to promote your business to a wider and perhaps hard-to-reach relevant audience that is actively searching with intent to research and eventually purchase what you offer.

As with embarking on quality SEO initiatives, some things to consider when looking to introduce PPC into your business include:

  • Detailed keyword and audience research so you can maximize the results of your content and budget.
  • Start with a mass market platform such as Google.
  • Develop targeted landing pages for each campaign – remember first impression!
  • Create ads with quality copy, images, and multimedia to attract the right people.
  • Implement tracking technology so you can measure what works and what needs adjusting.

The best search marketers use PPC techniques to position useful content such as downloadable guides, long form “how to” blog content and expert webinars – therefore putting the content at the heart of the promotion.

6. Follow search marketing influencers and blogs

If this is a new area or an area you’re looking to make sizeable steps in, we recommend following the following influencing voices and websites.

Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land both offer lots of fresh blog content every week and are available via RSS or as a free email subscription.

And be sure to follow Neil Patel and Rand Fishkin who are both leading experts in the field having both developed their own brands and multiple online businesses using search marketing principles.

7. Consider a specialist search marketing qualification

Emerging specialist courses such as Certified Search Marketing Specialist from MMC Learning in conjunction with Digital Marketing Institute offer a rich grounding in the must know aspects of search marketing and in just 26 weeks can transform you into a well-rounded and well-versed search marketing professional.

If you are considering a qualification in the search marketing space be sure to benchmark the different options ensure they cover the content you need, offer the support you need, and a cohort approach that keeps you accountable and provides additional peer support.