If you feel you haven't reached 'the ceiling' besides success with SEO, it is worth considering advertising on search engines as well. This is called Search Engine Advertising, but is better known as SEA. While SEO is a good long-term marketing method, it has the disadvantage that it takes a reasonable amount of time before you see results from it. With search engine advertising, you can shorten this waiting time and bring your company directly to the attention of your target audience. Read all about search engine advertising in this blog!
In a nutshell
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, meaning optimisation for search engines. This involves setting up the posts and pages on your website textually and technically correctly, according to Google's wish list. Every search query uses an algorithm from which search results emerge. These are unpaid search results in Google. SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising, or search engine advertising. These are the paid posts that Google shows in the search engine. When you use SEA, you have a choice of different principles of paying for your ads. These are:
● Cost per Click. In this, you pay a certain amount every time your ad is clicked. This is the most common strategy.
● Cost per Mille. This basically works the same as Cost per Click, but here a certain amount is paid per thousand clicks on your ad.
● Cost per Action. With Cost per Action, costs are only incurred when a preset action is taken by the person who clicked on your ad. Usually this is a conversion, and you should think of completing a purchase, downloading an e-book, subscribing to the newsletter, and so on.
● Cost per View. This principle works based on the number of times the ad is shown. This can be a good way, but it also depends on the effectiveness of an ad. If it is low, your budget will slowly run out, without you actually getting anything in return.
Advertising among search results
Bij een deel van deze opties wordt jouw website gratis vertoond in de zoekmachine. Vindt een gebruiker jouw advertentie vervolgens relevant en klikt hij of zij hierop, dan pas gaat de teller lopen. Behalve bij Cost per View natuurlijk. De organisaties die SEA gebruiken om hun website of merk te promoten worden in Google, of op andere websites, geplaatst met “Advertentie” ervoor. Dit wordt gedaan om duidelijk onderscheid te maken tussen de betaalde en organische resultaten. Kijk maar eens naar onderstaande afbeelding. 
What are search engine ads?
Within SEA, there are different types of ads. The most common ads are text ads. These ads are displayed above and below the organic search results. Text ads have limited space, but what you do with this space is essential for the effectiveness of the ad. The better you design your ads, the higher the click-trough rate (CTR) will be.
Een goede tekstadvertentie bevat in ieder geval een goede titel met relevante zoekwoorden erin. Daarnaast moeten de URL en dus de bestemmingspagina duidelijk weergeven worden. En als laatste een korte, maar duidelijke beschrijving wat er op de bestemmingspagina verwacht kan worden. Naast tekstadvertenties zijn er ook display advertenties. Deze zijn te vergelijken met offline banners of posters in bushokjes en bevatten over het algemeen minder tekst. De tekst die erin staat moet kort en bondig zijn, maar vooral visueel aanspreken tot klikken of aankoop. Na het invoeren van de instellingen voor jouw advertentie campagne ontstaat er een lijst van websites die daarbij passen. Deze lijst bestaat uit websites die aangesloten zijn bij het Google Display Network. Mensen die voldoen aan de eisen voor de door jouw geschetste doelgroep, zien een advertentie dan bijvoorbeeld op deze manier: 
Another possible place where your ad will be shown is YouTube. There, it looks like this:
Google Ads: advertising via Google
The advertising programme most commonly used to advertise in Google is called Google Ads. It allows your ad to appear in Google as a sponsored link or advertisement. With Google Ads, you advertise on keywords. These are words or word combinations that Google users type in to search for something. Your ad is shown when someone googles a relevant keyword. The prices for advertising through search engines vary enormously by keyword. Words like 'insurance', 'loan' and 'mortgage' are among the most expensive words to advertise on, with prices of around €15 (!) per click.
Long tail keywords
It can also be interesting to use long tail keywords. These are multiple keywords that almost resemble sentences. For example, "website" is a keyword, but "get website made in London" is already starting to look like a sentence. Using these long tail keywords has two clear advantages over 'normal' keywords.
1. De concurrentie op long tail keywords is lager, omdat deze een stuk specifieker en meer onderscheidend zijn dan één of twee woorden. Het is met een lagere concurrentie makkelijker om een plekje op de eerste pagina van Google te veroveren.
2. Hoe lager de concurrentie is, hoe lager de kosten voor deze advertentie. Natuurlijk zullen minder mensen jouw advertentie tegenkomen, want het is nou eenmaal een specifieke zoekopdracht. MAAR, de personen die jouw advertentie zien, zijn wel vele malen interessanter voor jou. Deze personen zoeken namelijk naar specifieke producten of diensten, die jij ze kan bieden.
Where to find search engine advertising?
On the Bing and Yahoo search engines, the ads appear above, below or next to the 'normal' search results. Google uses different display where the ads appear on different SERPs, which are search engine result pages. Besides the page where search results are displayed, ads can also end up on other pages such as Google Shopping, Google Maps and Gmail.
Where your ad will be shown depends on the campaign type you set. Places where your ad can be shown:
- Above and below the organic search results (as mentioned earlier)
- A separate column next to those same search results.
- With Google Shopping (when your goal is to boost sales).
- During or under a video on YouTube, or anywhere else on the internet.
- Google Maps and Google search partners.
- Other applications from Google, such as Gmail.
The choice of where to have your ad displayed is vast. For a successful campaign, it is therefore necessary to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the possibilities. Look at the goal you want to achieve with search engine advertising and plan your campaign accordingly. If you start without a plan, you will end up having less success and probably spend more money than necessary.
How does search engine advertising work?
Search engine advertising and its costs operate on an auction-based system. Advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their product, service or market. A keyword selection determines through which searches your ads are displayed. A comprehensive keyword research is very important here. If you do not conduct a keyword research, chances are very high that you will miss a large part of your target audience. By choosing the most suitable keywords, you can ensure that your ad performs optimally with your chosen budget.
Quality score
Apart from cost and proper keyword research, the quality score also plays an important role in the performance of your ad. The quality score indicates how well your ad meets the needs and search intent of the target audience. The search engine uses this to provide the best useful results for those searching. To determine the quality score, search engines take these different factors into account:
- CTR (Click through rate): the number of clicks the link receives.
- Relevance: is the content relevant and does the final page match the keyword?
- Kwaliteit van de landingspagina: hier wordt gekeken naar verschillende prestaties zoals de
content en de laadsnelheid van jouw landingspagina. - Klikratio en historie: hoe goed presteert een advertentie (hoeveel wordt er op geklikt) en hoe
was dat in het verleden? Hoe veel beter dit is én was, hoe beter deze score.
Do you need a big budget for SEA?
Are you willing to invest and have a monthly budget? Then you can definitely opt for SEA. But even if the budget is 'too low' for SEA in your eyes, we advise you not to dismiss this option straight away. After all, click rates vary per search term. A keyword with more competition has a higher click price than keywords with less competition. You can decide your own strategy in this.
For example, do you have €300 per month? Then you could choose to spend €10 a day for a month. If the click price is then €0.50 cents per keyword, you can generate 20 clicks to your website per day. You can also choose to leave your budget open. This way, you give Google the freedom to spend the total amount and you may only be shown for a few days. So it depends on the strategy and goals how much budget is needed. You might like to know that, on average, companies bring in €2 in revenue with every €1 invested in Google Ads.
Short- and long-term
Also keep in mind that search engine advertising will give short-term results, but if you stop advertising those results will also stop immediately. Unless the goal is to increase brand awareness or want to draw attention to something (new). In that case, the collected awareness will not suddenly be gone, but the increase in visitors through SEA will stop. With SEO, your website will be more findable in the long run, and will be found organically. Of course, even with SEO, it is important to pay constant attention to this. Of course, the competition does not sit still and Google likes to see up-to-date content.
SEM
Waarom zou je niet het beste van twee werelden combineren, en SEO en SEA tegelijk in te zetten? Deze combinatie is bekend als SEM, wat staat voor Search Engine Marketing. Pas SEO toe en werk aan een goede basis voor een hoge positie in de toekomst. Zet daarnaast SEA in om op korte termijn te zorgen voor een verbetering van je prestaties. Op de lange termijn optimaliseer je op relevante zoektermen, terwijl je op korte termijn al goed zichtbaar bent dankzij de advertenties. Op lange termijn kun je de SEA campagne langzaam afbouwen, of zelfs stoppen, omdat de organische
resultaten hoog zullen verschijnen. Dat is natuurlijk wel afhankelijk van jouw strategie en budget.
Social Advertising
Besides SEA, there is another way of advertising that allows you to reach a large but specific audience. Many social media platforms allow you to target a specific audience. That is advertising via social media and is called Social Advertising. Reaching the right people no longer depends on the keywords someone types in. Ads on social media filter on a person's place of residence and interests, among other things. Social Advertising also makes it possible to show ads based on behaviour on the internet, which is made possible by installing a so-called pixel. If you would like to know more about this, feel free to contact us!
What you now know about search engine advertising
You now know what SEA means, entails and the possibilities of search engine advertising. The content of a campaign is determined by the goal you have in mind, the place where you want to show the ad and the target group you want to approach. In addition, you have learned that using long tail keywords brings you closer to the potential buyer than short keywords. You also now know that the combination of SEO and SEA is called SEM and that this combination is gold for the online findability of your product and website.
Starting search engine advertising yourself
You can apply SEA to your own website. However, without experience, it takes some time to read up and use the right search terms. We at Monkey Vision have a lot of experience and are happy to help you. Please contact us for more information about search engine advertising, or to see what opportunities there are for your company to grow online!
