With the up-gradation and development of technology and communication, digital marketing is turning to be a crucial component of the overall marketing efforts of businesses. It is widely used by firms for brand building, customer engagement, goodwill creation and market penetration. Digital marketing has several components like social media marketing, search engine marketing, optimization, data analytics, email marketing and so on. Accordingly, there is a soaring demand for marketing professionals who are skilled in different aspects of digital marketing. Certified digital marketing courses have become popular among marketers who want to stay ahead of the curve.
Why is Search Marketing Important in Digital Marketing?
Of the components of digital marketing, search marketing has been accorded importance by marketers. Search engines take several million queries every day on a wide array of subjects and issues, and if your brand appears on page 1 of the search, your website is going to get higher traffic and your organization can generate plenty of leads. Appearing on page 1 of search results is not sheer luck; brands put in a lot of hard work and solid effort into this process. Search marketing is a tactic that uses paid and unpaid strategies on search engines to gain online presence and improve website traffic. It is broadly divided into 2 main categories:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
SEO is the set of unpaid search marketing efforts that brands engage in. Usually, websites and blogs are optimized by incorporating search terms and phrases (better known as keywords). When a specific keyword is searched for, the organic results will follow the paid search results on top of the page. Whether your website or blog appears on page 1 of the search will depend upon your ranking. Marketers use tools that help them to improve this ranking.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM):
SEM refers to the paid search marketing efforts of brands. Through SEM you can purchase a listing in the sponsored areas of a search engine and have a greater brand presence online. One of the most common SEM programs is PPC (Pay per Click) wherein you pay only for the number of clicks you receive for your ad. While getting visibility through SEO programs may take a while, you can get instant visibility through SEM programs, provided you can make a budget provision for it.
SEM and SEO Tools
Marketers use a variety of SEM and SEO tools available at their disposal for sharpening their digital marketing efforts and improve their ROI. These tools provide valuable insights in different areas of search marketing like keyword analysis, ranking, content ideas, link building, link removal, technical aspects, budget estimation, etc. while saving time, energy and resources of marketers. We have listed some efficient tools here.
SEMrush
Semrush is a freemium service and a holistic tool that has a large amount of free data that can be accessed. Upon switching to the paid service, you can access a wide range of tools and services ranging from domain and keywords analytics to targeting audiences, gap analytics, lead generation and SEO content templates. This tool provides valuable insights about competitors and helps understand an increase/decrease in clicks.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a set of free tools from Google that helps marketers understand the effectiveness and performance of websites. You can see your ranking in terms of your keywords and accordingly plan your interventions to bring your website on page 1 of the search results.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is considered one of the best SEM tools to improve ROI. This tool allows you to research and discover keywords that are most relevant to your product or service. Using these keywords, you can create ad campaigns and copies that attract greater website volume and lead generation.
Spyfu
Spyfu is a tool that helps in understanding the competition. It searches competitor websites and provides an in-depth, insightful and extensive report of the top keywords used by competitors to generate website traffic, shared keywords, which competitors are top-ranked in organic and paid searches, their ranking history, etc.
SEOSpyGlass
SEOSpyGlass is a tool that is useful in comparing, analyzing and monitoring backlinks and thereby, improve its quality. Another important service that this tool provides is the Task Scheduler that allows you to automate some of the regular and mundane tasks of SEO.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog is a freemium technical SEO tool and help in the backend work relating to your website. As the name suggests, it crawls through the website and brings tabulated data about page titles, meta descriptions, meta keywords, images, etc. It enables you to find missing/ broken links, duplicated content, missing content, etc.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a paid tool that helps you identify the trending content, find relevant topics and major influencers in the area.
To get a better understanding of various aspects of search marketing and how to intersperse it with your overall marketing efforts, you should enrol yourself in a certified digital marketing course.
More Information:
Future in Digital Marketing as Career
Why choose digital marketing as a career?
Is Digital Marketing a good Career in India?
Why to Choose a Career in Digital Marketing?
Growth & Opportunities for Digital Marketing Professionals in 2022