Reach Marketing Pro

Tag: SEM

How to Optimize Website Pages for Google Discover Traffic
Well…What Exactly is Google Discover?

Google Discover is a feed that appears on the homepage of Google’s iOS and Android application (APP) as well as the mobile Google.com homepage. When utilizing Google Discover, users can personalize their feeds so they can visualize content that directly aligns with them. This is separate from Google Search Ads because, with Discover, people aren’t required to enter a search query to have this interest-specific content visible. Essentially, Google Discover replaces the Google feed on mobile devices and provides relative content that is specific to the likes and interests of the user based on their mobile (iOS and Android) activity.

Google Discover, Google News, and Google Alerts – They All Seem Quite Similar but They are Quite Different

Google News versus Google Discover

Aside from Google Discover, Google News features news headlines, local weather, and the top stories of the day on the main page, while promoting fact-checking on the right-hand margin. Specifically, Google News is an aggregator service that presents a continuous flow of backlinks to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. It is available for users on a mobile application via Android and iOS as well as online.

Google Discover, however, utilizes artificial intelligence to show users the information they may want to see, or have shown previous interest in. As a replacement for the Google Feed, it surfaces relevant content to the user, even when they’re not searching.

Google Alerts versus Google Discover

Google Alerts is a content change detection platform that is based on a free notification service. Essentially, it notifies the user via email when it finds new results, such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research that matches the user’s search term(s). Aside from Google Discover, it’s been known that Google alerts haven’t been the most effective in terms of accuracy. With Google Discover, everything the user sees is based on their specific search history, rather than alerts they might not be interested in anymore.

Why You Should Optimize Your Webpages for Google Discover Traffic

Although Google Discover isn’t a prioritized platform that digital marketers keep in their immediate toolbox, it is one businesses are leveraging to grow, further develop their brand, and reach new customers. Optimizing your content for Google Discover allows your content to have a higher chance of reaching a larger audience due to its personalized approach. There will even be times when you’ll generate much more traffic through Google Discover than you would with organic search. For your marketing content to appear on Discover, it should be of top quality with your web pages indexed by Google. Discover helps your brand become relevant to what the user seeks. Based on what they search for and have an interest in, Discover brings your content that matches the user’s interests to the forefront, which optimizes your pages, increases conversion rates, and boosts your brand’s credibility.

How to Optimize Your Website for Google Discover Traffic

Content is automatically eligible to appear on Discover as long as it’s indexed by Google and meets Discover’s content policies. To get there, it is best to follow the below recommendations to optimize your website and web pages to improve your online foot traffic:
- Ensure that your Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business (GMB) is created fully and working properly.
- Confirm that your Google Business Profile (GBP) is verified on Google. If it isn’t, learn how to verify it here.
- Adhere to and comply with Google’s content policies.
- Consider and implement a “Mobile-First” approach by starting from within and optimizing existing products/services for mobile users.
- Make sure you develop a mobile approach that prioritizes the user experience (UX), including mobile friendliness and responsiveness.
- Strengthen your copy and graphics and consider current events for future content that is relevant to what the user wants.
- Utilize and leverage high-quality visuals such as organic photos and emotionally-triggering videos that bring the user in.
- Recommend readers to follow your brand by utilizing call-to-actions (CTAs).
- Research what your competition is doing so you can innovate unique solutions that help you stand out.
- Write optimized page titles that capture the essence of the content you’re presenting to your target audience.
- Implement AMP and Schema (structured data) so your content can appear in rich results in mobile search, like the “Top Stories” carousel or “Host” carousel.
By following these tips and putting plans into motion, you’re well on your way to optimizing your website and being successful on Google Discover.

How Schema (Structured Data) Helps Google Discover Traffic

Schema, a type of microdata that creates an enhanced description that Google may use in search results to share as a snippet of your article, allows the reader to get a sense of what your article is about and how it may bring value to their related query.

By using this form of structured data, you are essentially helping potential customers find your article easier- meaning a potential lead or conversion! Utilizing this data type can improve the appearance of your site for the relative search result(s), enable you to appear in front of a user that may not have seen your site without it, and increase the readers’ time on your page with the relative query and engaging content!

There are many types of Schema out there such as Products Schema, Articles Schema, Recipes Schema, Events Schema, and many more. Each one serves its own purpose and there are some Schemas that can help your articles show up in the Google Discover feed. Most of the articles that populate the Google Discover feed often use some form of Schema.

For example, you will find that webpages populated in Google Discover may use Schema categories such as CreativeWork which houses structured data markups like Article, NewsArticle, Blog, and HowTo. Pages like this are often trendy and frequently searched for in Google and are perfect for Google Discover. With the implementation of Schema, Google has a lot more data to utilize to build a rich snippet or an enhanced search result page (which is really what Google Discover is).

Aside from Schema, AMP is very important too. Google Discover feeds are mobile-only and having your website set up with Accelerated Mobile Pages just speaks for itself. Unfortunately, there is no secret sauce or surefire way to get your content into Google Discover, but utilizing Schema and AMP will increase your chances of showing up in the sought-after Google Discover feed and increase mobile traffic from Google Discover.

Google Discover Will Keep You Ahead of the Competition & Stay Relevant in Your Consumer’s Minds or at Least on Their Phones…and We Can Help!

At Reach Marketing Pro, our team of search engine optimization (SEO) experts will optimize your website and web pages to outperform your local competition and gain more visibility/exposure for your business. We partner with you and your business to look through your unique lens and grow your brand across multiple forefronts in the digital marketing realm. Whether you are familiar with the process of Google Discover or not, it’s always recommended to obtain a professional consultation on expert services to ensure that you are truly optimizing every aspect of your business’s online visibility can achieve. Leverage one of Google’s newest and most critical features to become a staple in your industry today by getting in touch with our team here.
December 12, 2022
Why You Should Align Your SEM and SEO Marketing Strategies

Search Engine Marketing vs. Search Engine Optimization – Serving Two Different Search Intent Purposes

Let’s explain the difference between SEO and SEM. Search Engine Marketing, otherwise called SEM or Pay-Per-Click (PPC), is a form of paid search that costs a business money to boost its ranking or placement in search engines.

Search Engine Optimization is a strategy that helps increase a business’s placement in search engines. You’re probably wondering, why pay for SEM if SEO is free?

Overall, Search Engine Marketing has a greater impact compared to Search Engine Optimization, because SEM focuses on the customers’ intent (what they type into the Google search bar). For instance, when a customer types in “jeans for sale” or “best sushi near me” these searches show that the customer intends to buy and convert a lead into a sale. Paid search (SEM) is a perfect match for this marketing strategy, as it increases your return on investment (ROI).

Where SEO comes on top is when search queries are more research-oriented and informational rather than based on user intent. “How to crochet a baby blanket” or “when does the World Cup start” are research-based searches that focus on retrieving answers or solutions. Rather than using the searches to purchase a product or service, the intent is to learn something new. Understanding intent is a critical component to understanding digital marketing. Although Search Engine Optimization doesn’t technically generate revenue, it doesn’t mean that you should scratch it completely. The reason why is while a customer discovers your content, they’ll become a customer eventually. SEO works on building trust with users and fostering long-term relationships. Understand the unique benefits SEO and SEM provide, and utilize them to spearhead a powerful digital marketing strategy.

Why You Should Integrate SEM and SEO

Now that you know what SEO and SEM do; it’s time to combine what they both do and implement them into a cohesive digital marketing strategy by building off the “search intent” discussion mentioned earlier. It’s time to put what you learned into action!

First, we need to create a list of SEO-driven keywords that are relevant to your brand. Then, separate them into three individual lists based on the level of intent. For example, one list would be for buyer-intent keywords to drive sales, one list would be for research-intent to boost Google Search rankings, and the other list would be for middle-ground intent keywords where it’s more challenging to decipher between an intent to buy/convert or an intent to research/learn.

Putting these best practices into place will help you utilize your paid search marketing budget more efficiently by focusing heavily on crafting targeted keywords relative to an intent to convert. Placing research-based keywords that are meant for Search Engine Optimization into the Search Engine Marketing/Pay-Per-Click marketing strategy can cost more in the long run without seeing a positive ROI. If your PPC budget allows for increased spending on more buyer-intent keywords with money left over, then add in more research-based keywords.

The overarching purpose of aligning your SEO and SEM strategies together is to prevent unnecessary expenditures on paid searches. Both SEM and SEO heavily rely on keywords—that’s what drives traffic. Targeting keywords through SEO research that’s relative to research-based keywords saves you money in your SEM/PPC marketing approach. This way, you’re covered in each step of the online journey for buying a product or service since the user will always research (SEO) before making a purchase (SEM).

So, if you haven’t learned already, boosting both of these marketing strategies will drive enormous potential to launch a powerhouse digital marketing team that increases brand awareness, drives recognition, and boosts a higher ranking in Google Search engines through a multi-touchpoint approach.

Trends to Keep in Mind for Your SEO and SEM Strategy

Trends are always changing. Here are key things you should prioritize to initiate an effective digital marketing strategy:

Ensure your website is SEO-friendly. Incorporating optimized keywords that associate with your business, brand, and target customer will generate digital foot traffic and increase the chances of user purchases.

Maintain a friendly user experience (UX) when updating your website content. Creating an enjoyable and simplified experience for new and returning customers will not only boost brand loyalty but also drive more traffic to your site.

Craft a mobile-first experience. Curate an approach that innovates product design for mobile devices first. That way, your website will be accessible across multiple digital channels, no matter if a customer is on their phone or computer.

In a growing digital age, data-driven campaigns will continue to grow and become more accessible in the future. As technological advances continue, there will be an increased ability to personalize SEO and SEM campaigns as well as target opportunities for paid advertisements.

Please note: always ensure the data you receive is not crossing illegal boundaries, as privacy is a highly debated topic.

When do These Two Specific Strategies Become Essential to Your Marketing Operations?

Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing are both essential strategies to a company’s marketing operations. It doesn’t matter if someone is just starting a business or has been working for an established corporation for over a decade—you should implement SEO and SEM into the overall marketing plan. If an entrepreneur isn’t familiar with either of these two marketing strategies, invest the time to research and learn the ins and outs of them or hire a marketing professional.

What Happens If I Don’t Utilize SEM and SEO Together?

To keep it simple, not utilizing SEO and SEM strategies will not allow your business to make a maximum impact on a digital scale. For example, if you don’t use promotions with Paid Social or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaigns, your business won’t generate promotional growth and increase product awareness. Putting your brand out there is what will drive traffic. Not refreshing your website content or leveraging proper Search Engine Optimization practices can result in a poor Google Search ranking or minimal website traffic. Not using SEO or SEM strategies together will cost more in the long run. If you want to grow your business, find ways to develop and implement digital marketing strategies that incorporate SEO and SEM.

Let Our SEM & SEO Experts do the Hard Work for You!

We live and breathe digital marketing; we are Google My Business Experts, Google Partners, Google Analytics Certified, SEMrush Experts, AMP (accelerated mobile pages) Implementation Qualified, and Google Tag Manager Experts. As your digital implementation leader, we’ll partner with you to combine data-driven strategies and optimize performance with both your SEO and SEM marketing campaigns. Want to get the most out of your digital marketing?

Contact us today to discuss your budget and establish your next steps.

Don’t try and do it all—let us leverage tactical practices to improve your business’s search ranking and conversion rates.

December 12, 2022
How to Improve Your SEM Marketing Strategy

First of All, What is SEM?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is leveraging paid strategies to increase your business’s search visibility. With SEM, brands pay for advertisements to appear as search results on search engine results pages, otherwise known as SERPs. Search engine results pages utilize targeted keywords so that when a user searches them, they see an ad from the brand. SEM and SEO are similar, however the main difference is that SEO is focused on optimizing a website to gain more traffic from organic search results, and SEM focuses on gaining traffic and visibility from both organic and paid search.

How Exactly Can SEM Help You

SEM provides benefits to your business by increasing your online presence, enhancing your brand awareness and visibility, and leading to more online leads, thus generating sales. SEM can make the process of implementing and managing advertisements more easily and quickly. Another added benefit of SEM is that businesses will only pay once an action is applied onto an advertisement.

Consider These Factors to Improve Your SEM Marketing Strategy

To successfully lead a search engine marketing strategy, the following tactics and tools are helpful.

Aim and Purpose: It is important to understand the aim and purpose of the campaign. By doing so, you will set up goals and establish milestones that point forward. This will result in helping your team analyze metrics better and ensure your campaign will perform at the level you desire.

Audience, Scope, and Targeting: Identifying specific targeting parameters, geographic regions/locations, time, conversions, and search terms will help with your ad’s showing capacity to the right people at the right time.

Keywords: Targeting the right keywords aids in the refining process. To be strategic, your business would not just choose a set of keywords and forget them later on. Instead, monitoring their performance removing keywords that aren’t generating leads will need to be reevaluated to ensure a successful SEM strategy.

Search Query Intent: Information, navigational, and transactional types. You need to understand the intent behind the keywords chosen for your campaigns; knowing this will help you build better keyword groups for specific ad campaigns.

Landing Pages: Creating a proper landing page will help your audience find what they’re looking for once they click on an ad.

Re-Marketing and Display: Both strategies are a great way to keep your brand or offer in front of a customer close to converting and bringing them back to the site so they can complete their purchase.

Testing: Conducting testing on advertisement extensions, product feeds, long-tail keywords in ad copies, ad copy trends, and ad creatives will help boost landing page performance.

Continuous Optimization: To boost your business’s SEM, optimizing each aspect of every campaign will help maximize performance. This would include refining keywords, targeting parameters to landing page performance, quality scores, and everything in between. More importantly, ensure you are keeping up with available census data and marketing insights so that it aligns with your SEO marketing!

Why Keywords are an Important Part of Any SEM Strategy

Keywords help identify and determine what your company is known for. By using the right keywords, your team will understand what content to market in the paid search marketing realm. More importantly, you shouldn’t bid on just any and every keyword out there, even if they are relevant. Keyword research is the blueprint for your online marketing efforts, hence driving every decision you will make. Intent of keywords matter for paid search and you don’t want to overspend.

For example, let’s talk dealerships. You should avoid wasting your entire budget on a keyword such as “Ford F-150” because it is way too broad. The intent is more informational than commercial or transactional, and the search volume of this keyword could result in you splurging through your entire budget. Instead, focusing more on phrases such as “Ford F-150 for Sale” or “F-150 Near Me” are more specific searches and showcase a commercial, transactional intent where the user is looking to convert or purchase.

Don’t Forget About Your Google Ads Bidding Strategies

Google Ads provide a cost-effective way for businesses of all sizes to reach a virtually unlimited, targeted audience. These advertisements are extremely flexible, and you can start, stop, pause, or adjust your bids at any time. When you set up a Google Ads campaign, you will notify Google how much you’re willing to pay for your ad to be shown. Otherwise known as your bid, Google’s automated bidding strategies adjusts bids for you based on the ad’s likelihood of getting a “click” or conversion. With manual bidding, you notify Google of the maximum amount you’re willing to pay per click (PPC) on your ad and can then make adjustments based on performance

We Know There’s A lot to Consider When it comes to SEM

At Reach Marketing, we understand the importance a proper SEM strategy brings to the table. If you plan to compete in today’s competitive landscape, you can’t overlook the value of search engine marketing. It’s just one piece of the marketing pie, and a significant slice at that!

We have a team of SEM experts who are available to improve and optimize your business’s SEM marketing strategies.

Contact us here to schedule a free consultation.

By partnering with your business, we will make sure that you’re bidding and appropriating the correct keywords, creating the best campaigns, building the most effective landing pages, and combining marketing strategies to obtain the best long-term results.

April 18, 2022