So let’s say you are looking for a new pair of Common Projects Achilles because your old ones are turning into the definitions of “beater’s” (which I personally think adds a lot of character and tends to look cooler than brand-new shoes). You pull up your browser using Firefox because Internet Explorer is a joke, and you type into your browser Google.com. Google pops up and you type into the search bar “Common Projects Achillies Low Men’s Shoes”. BOOM after 0.41 seconds, 81,900 results pop up. Then you notice that the first two links have this icon next to the title that reads “ad”. Like what is that fam? Is that a real link? Is it spam? Am I going to get hacked by an anti-virus system which is actually a virus system posing as Norton anti-virus? Don’t worry fam, I got the answers to all of these questions.

This is what scholarly people call paid search AKA PPC AKA search engine marketing. I felt like a rapper when I typed that out. You know how a lot of rapper’s say things like, “Yo it’s A$AP Rocky aka that pretty flacko aka that PMF aka Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye The II” (Quoting the famous A$AP Rocky). Anyways, search engine marketing is an awesome service for companies looking to build awareness around their products or services. Before we talk about Google AdWords more in depth, I want to discuss some key building blocks that I have personally learned about from a nifty eBinder (which I believe is a pretty good term considering its over 350 pages long) created by Google.

1. Keywords: You determine what keywords trigger your ad to appear. These would be words or phrases like my example of “Common Projects Low Achilles Men’s Shoes”, your ad would pop up.
2. Placements: When you create an ad or campaign you have the choice of where you would like you ad to be placed. This is critical because you wouldn’t ideally want to have your ad on the side of the NYTimes.com if you are selling a luxurious pair of shoes. You can also allow Google to choose where they believe the ad should be posted based on the keywords that are used.
3. Ad Ranks: Now let’s say that you are Tres Bien (High-end fashion company) and your competitor Mr. Porter (Another high-end fashion company) is selling the exact same shoes. Now let’s say that you both want your ad to pop up when someone types in “Common Projects Low Achilles Low Men’s Shoes”. This is where Ad Ranks comes into play. Ad Rank is a combination of your bid (how much you are willing to pay) as well as your Quality Score (measurement of the quality of your ads, keywords, and website).

Above I mentioned Bid’s and Quality Score, which I want to discuss a little more. When you do a keyword-targeted ad on Google and it’s search partners, your bid would be your maximum cost-per-click bid (this would be the maximum amount of money you are wiling to pay every time someone clicks on your ad). The Quality Score is a mixture of your keyword relevance, the quality of your landing page, your ad’s click-through rate (CTR), adjusted for its position on the page, and a few other factors. This is the present, and the future of marketing. As mentioned in my blog post about search engine optimization. A tremendous amount of people use search engine’s on a daily basis. In fact, Google actually has a counter and when I checked it at 9PM, they had well over 3 million searches just in that day alone. This is nuts!!! Think about how many potential customers you can get strictly off of search engine marketing. After using search engine marketing you will have way too much revenue, and your profit margins will be twice your age. Before you know it you will be throwing money in the air because you forgot your sunscreen, and you need shade. Hubspot also created an eBook titled, The Beginner’s Guide to Paid Search. This eBook goes more into depth on the benefits of paid search and how you can truly use it to your advantage. One thing that they discussed was the difference between paid search and organic search. These are important concepts to know, especially since you are considering dabbling in paid search.

• Organic search: these type of search queries are based on unpaid, natural rankings determined by search engine algorithms, and can be optimized with various SEO practices.
• Paid search: well this would be paid search, of course. When you pay that fee, it allows your site or ad to pop up when someone types in a phrase that correlates with the phrase that you “bid” on.

Hubspot also mentions that 70% of people press on the organic links, and the remaining 30% of people press the paid links. So you can’t expect insane ROI right off the bat. Think about it though, you are exposing yourself (wow, there man) to people that would have potentially never thought of your website. They might not press the link right at that moment, but next time they see your site, it will trigger curiosity in their brain. Before reading this blog post you probably thought that getting to the top of Google or any other blog post was impossible. Well now you know the impossible is actually possible. Thanks to search engine marketing. THINK AGAIN SEAN BEAN!!! Search Engine Marketing as stated before, is the present, and the future of marketing. Whether you are a small scale business that is trying to build awareness, or an enterprise-level business that is trying to build market share. Search engine marketing is the key to the door that leads to success. Until next time fellow smarketer… //