Keyword advertising or SEA (Search Engine Advertising) means text-based advertising in search engines. By advertising on Google, you reach customers when they are looking for your service or product.
Every company should invest in search term advertising, as it practically guarantees round-the-clock visibility on Google. This naturally helps to increase brand awareness and boost sales.
In this article, we will tell you in more detail why keyword advertising is worth doing, how you can advertise on Google more effectively, and what keyword advertising costs when outsourcing and doing it yourself.
How does keyword advertising (advertising on Google) differ from search engine optimization?
Search engine marketing or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) consists of search engine optimization or SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and search word advertising or SEA (Search Engine Advertising).
These concepts are sometimes confused and their connection to each other is not always understood. Contrary to what someone might think, neither keyword advertising nor search engine optimization should be pursued alone.
Keyword marketing, or SEM, includes a set of methods and strategies that increase a website's visibility in search engines, increase brand awareness, and increase sales of a product or service. These are the goals of both SEO and Google advertising, but the ways in which these things are achieved are different.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to actions taken on a website that improve its organic, i.e. natural, search engine ranking in the long term and without investing a cent of money in advertisements. This can cover everything from improving the technical structure to content and link building. Search engine optimization gives excellent results in terms of search engine visibility, especially with lower volume keywords that are not too competitive.
Search keyword advertising, or SEA , is advertising where a website is displayed above organic search results. In keyword advertising, the ads are always text ads. The most common place to do keyword advertising is Google, and that's why we talk about keyword advertising and Google advertising as synonyms.
Keyword advertising is the best choice when you are targeting keywords that have high monthly search volumes and for which several authoritative websites are competing. In this case, Search Engine Optimization can be too slow to get results and even ineffective.
In practice, if you want the best possible visibility and a lot of clicks for your own Google ads, it requires a successful keyword analysis. If you want customers who click on your ad to also buy your product or service, your website should be optimized for conversions before advertising on Google. When you have reached the point that search keyword advertising is effective, the results should be analyzed and developed regularly.
For these reasons, you should also advertise on Google
1. You reach potential customers at the right time
Often the first place to look for information, products and services is Google. With keyword ads, you attract the attention of users who are looking for information and/or a solution to their problem and are therefore interested in your company that offers information and/or a solution.
In addition to the fact that by advertising on Google you reach people in your domain at the right time, i.e. in the information search phase and later when they are ready to buy, with the help of keyword advertising you can increase brand awareness and make your product or service a familiar and safe alternative for the customer.
2. You can target Google advertising effectively
It is possible to target Google's text ads to exact groups. This is how you ensure that exactly the target group or target groups you are aiming for will see your ad. With accurate optimization, the funds invested in advertising are not wasted and search keyword advertising produces a sure result. Of course, this also requires that you know how to create attractive ads and that your website is in order (the barriers to purchase have been removed).
Search keyword ads can be optimized, for example, according to keywords, location, target group, interests, age, days and times, or devices used for searching. Ads can therefore be displayed, for example, only to local residents or those who have already visited the website or online store.
3. You can control costs
In keyword advertising, the budget is completely up to the advertiser, i.e. the company, to decide, edit and manage. Expenses can be controlled in detail or you can set a fixed daily maximum for the campaign.
You can always adjust the budget based on the performance of the ads and at any time you want to pause the campaigns or stop them completely. On the other hand, if you notice that an ad works more effectively, you can invest more in it and less in others.
In addition, in search keyword advertising, you only pay Google for realized results, i.e. clicks.
4. It is possible to monitor and develop the results
The biggest advantage of advertising on Google is that the results are 100% measurable. And when you know how to analyze the results accurately, it is possible for you to develop them almost endlessly.
By tracking and using data with Google tools (Google Analytics), you can therefore find out what works in your own search keyword advertising and what you should do more of, and what doesn't work accordingly. With the right tools, the results of search keyword advertising can be developed with each new campaign.
In addition, it is possible to see the results and start improving immediately within a few days or weeks after starting advertising, and not until a couple of months later.
5. Results come quickly and much faster than with optimization
We emphasize that if you want to appear in search engines even without advertising, you should invest in search engine optimization. However, keyword advertising will bring your company to the top of the search results much faster than optimization. Advertising on Google brings almost immediate results, i.e. several potential customers to the website.
Which brings more results, advertising on Google or search engine optimization?
Both Search Engine Optimization and keyword advertising produce good results (if done correctly). However, keyword advertising may require search engine optimization to work.
Due to Google's requirements for websites, the effectiveness of keyword advertising improves and the price of ads decreases when your site is optimized for search engines. Similarly, if the site does not meet these criteria, the search keyword ads will not get the best possible exposure, even if you put more money into them than your competitors.
For these reasons alone, Search Engine Optimization in addition to advertising is worthwhile. An unoptimized website or online store also tends to drive away the majority of potential customers as soon as they land on the site.
The most common causes of loss of life are excessively long loading times, low-quality or uninteresting content, a difficult-to-understand structure or a website that is otherwise behind the times. Even if the ads would get a lot of clicks and bring people to the website, no sales would be made, because no one simply can or wants to use a poorly functioning website. In this case, customers will turn to your competitor.
So, website search engine optimization and conversion optimization are an essential part of keyword advertising whenever an entrepreneur wants to make advertising a truly productive and cost-effective way to grow.
On the other hand, by advertising on Google, you can effectively bring people to new websites when the new homepage or online store has not yet had time to gain visibility through search engine optimization. In this case, keyword advertising should be done assuming that the website is technically in good condition and selling.
If your site has shortcomings, it is good to use the help of a professional for search engine optimization . Next, let's move on to what it costs to advertise on Google.
What does it cost to outsource search engine advertising?
When you outsource the planning and implementation of search keyword advertising to an expert in the field, a few different factors affect the price. The most common are the working hours used and the number of results (clicks). The difference in price is created by the advertising agencies' individual operating methods and pricing models.
At the beginning of the cooperation, the price of advertising on Google can be determined by how much the company has ready-made things. If the implementation of advertising is continued from the implementation that worked, starting keyword advertising will often not cost much.
When outsourcing, keyword advertising also includes reporting and customer meetings, which at Digitoimisto Growly are always included in the price of keyword advertising every month. In more demanding keyword advertising projects or at the customer's request, reporting and meetings can be carried out more often.
The price of keyword advertising is also affected by how many different ad groups, campaigns and search terms the client company has in total. When keyword advertising is implemented on a larger scale and with bigger goals, the working time spent on keyword advertising and the cost of advertising also increase.
However, it is possible to achieve good results in Google advertising even with a smaller investment. For example, at Growly, the price of keyword advertising is usually between €399 and €1299.
If the work starts with advertising planning, or if measures such as Search Engine Optimization or conversion optimization must be carried out on the website first to improve the effectiveness of advertising, the costs will naturally increase. When the advertising is later maintained and developed on a monthly basis, the costs are significantly more moderate.
However, search engine optimization should not be skipped out of fear of costs, because if you jump straight into keyword advertising, the ads will run ineffectively and the money will be wasted. The best possible results from search keyword advertising are obtained when search engine and conversion optimization has been done as a basis.
The cost of clicks in Google text ads
In search keyword advertising, Google bills for clicks, so the entrepreneur only pays for realized results. The price of these results also depends on a couple of things.
Since Google's pricing works through an auction, clicks cost more the harder the competition for the search term used.
Depending on the competition, the click price for different keywords can vary quite rapidly. For example, the average price per click for an online store entrepreneur may be twenty cents, but for an accounting firm, a click may already cost closer to ten euros.
In addition to the competition, the price paid for clicks consists of the quality points given by Google. The higher the quality of your ad and website and the higher the click-through rate of your ad, the better the quality score. So you pay more for keyword advertising if your website and ads are poorly executed.
When determining the score, the search engine takes into account the quality of the ads, how relevant they are to the website or landing page, and the condition of the website (is it user-friendly).
If any of these pieces are missing, advertising on Google can become quite expensive, and results are still not guaranteed. When outsourcing advertising, the ideal partner can, if necessary, explain to the customer why effective search keyword advertising includes much more than just advertising, for example making the website user-friendly. This saves the customer time and money.
Summary of keyword advertising/advertising on Google
With search word advertising, it is possible to target ads to those potential customers who are ready to receive the information and solution you offer, i.e. to buy your company's products or services either at the time of making the search or later, when it is relevant.
Advertising on Google is very fast and cost-effective, and therefore every entrepreneur should take advantage of it in their marketing.
While keyword advertising is a great way to drive potential customers to a website, there are other factors that must be addressed to make it as productive as possible. The most important thing to take care of is optimizing the homepage or online store primarily for customers and also for search engines.
Since search word advertising is sometimes technical and quite demanding, it should be left to a competent and experienced partner. We implement Google advertising , which produces reliable results for our customers. However, nothing prevents you from advertising on Google yourself.
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