Search Engine Marketing for Small Businesses

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, otherwise explained as how customers find your product or service on the web.  As more businesses move to the web, it is more important than ever to market your business on search engines like Google.  But what are the steps and how do you get there?

Paid vs. Organic Website Traffic for Small Businesses

First, you have to know the different versions of SEM. Your search marketing efforts can focus on paid traffic or organic SEO.  Paid traffic includes any PPC (pay-per-click) or CPC (cost-per-click) campaigns that are used to drive in traffic to your website.  This can be through Google Search ads, social media ads, or retargeting platforms like Adroll.  On the other hand, SEO is a complex system of strategies and practices designed to increase online traffic to your website through the customer's search engine queries.

How to Create a SEO Strategy for Small Businesses

SEO is most efficiently done through creating a customer avatar and planning a content calendar based on the core values of your ideal customer.  From there, join in on the conversations that your customer cares about.  Create a social presences on the platforms they hang out on, stay current on important issues that he/she resonates with, and most importantly begin keyword research immediately.  Need tips on how to find the right audience?  Check out our blog on how to attract the right clients.  Once a keyword strategy is in place- content, content, and content.

Paid SEM Tools for Small Businesses

So now you know how to implement a strategy and why it is important, but there is still one key piece of SEM; analytics.

The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP

In other words, you can guess all you want, but the proof is in the pudding.  Are you still wasting your time trying to guess what your customers want next, or are you ready to learn from them?  There are so many great tools out there including Google Analytics, Google Console, SEM Rush, Ubbersuggest, and Facebook even has their own business insights management system.  A/B testing has never been easier, and now is the time to learn from real customers.

SEM for Small Businesses on a Budget

This is the part of the article where you start trying to figure out where you are going to find the time to learn all of these platforms and ideate all of the content needed to drive traffic to your site.  But here's a tip that most entrepreneurs forget - you don't have to do it all on your own.  In fact, a better use of your time and resources is usually spent on what grew your business in the first place.  What if you could outsource this headache to someone else for the cost of that Starbucks coffee you get on your way to the office every morning?  Well, look no further.  We are entrepreneurs just like you, that focus on what WE do best- Search Engine Marketing for small businesses.  Just check out our constantly updated digital marketing certifications, or our customer testimonials.  Contact us today for a free site audit, and let's discuss your goals![contact-form to="andi@thecreativedigitalmarketer.com" subject="Prospective client from what is SEM blog"][contact-field label="What should we call you?" type="name" required="1" /][contact-field label="Can we contact you via email?" type="email" required="1" /][contact-field label="What's your website address?" type="url" /][/contact-form]