Resources

A conversion is a desired action taken by a website visitor, such as clicking on a link, making a purchase, submitting a form, downloading an app, etc.

Cost-Per-Click or PPC is a method of paying for targeted traffic. You can set an specific amount you are willing to pay for every click and sites like Google and Facebook will direct specific traffic to your website.

An impression refers to the point when an ad or listing is viewed by a site visitor. The number of impressions an ad gets is determined by the number of times that particular page is located and loaded.

Keywords are the terms that a website is targeting to rank highly as part of an SEO campaign.

This is the web page that a user “lands on” after clicking on a link. This page is often designed with a specific purpose or call-to-action in mind.

This is an online marketing model that allows your business to display ads to internet users who are searching for similar services/products your business offers. Google and other major search engines use an automated process to determine relevance and validity of advertisements, so to show your ads in front of the right people it is wise to use experienced digital strategists who understand these factors.

A combination of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to achieve high-ranking positions on search engine result pages. The higher your organic position on a search engine result page, the higher the traffic will be for your website.

This is the 160-character description you read underneath a Google search result. It helps users and search engines understand the purpose of your page and plays a significant role in on-page SEO.

A quality score takes ads, landing pages, and keywords into consideration in order to pinpoint how relevant your business’s ad will be for a user (someone searching the web). A high quality score can help push your business in front of your competitors by increasing your business’s ad position on search engines.

These are the pages you see every day when you search online with a search engine. A SERP has a list of results relevant to your search, some in paid ad positions and some in organic results. The goal of SEO is to reach a high organic positions on a results page.

YouTube ads are well-suited for engagement and conversions through diverse placements, while Performance Max ads streamline the process with automated strategies. Display ads shine in brand awareness with customizability, and Discovery ads uniquely focus on user engagement within YouTube feeds. The choice depends on campaign objectives, with YouTube ads being the most versatile, Performance Max ads for streamlined conversions, Display ads for brand awareness, and Demand Generation Ads focus on building a relationship with potential customers and guiding them through the sales funnel.

Learn more

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a form of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It is a way to buy visits to your website, rather than attempting to “earn” them organically.

1. You set your budget & control costs 2. You only pay when an interested pers clicks on your ad 3. You can reach your target consumer at the right time with an ad 4. PPC can show results quickly 5. Results are measurable and provide a wealth of useful data

Small businesses often overlook all the great benefits of digital marketing because they don’t have the staff or the time to do so. However, digital marketing is extremely important for all businesses, including small and local ones. Digital marketing allows you to reach customers that are actually searching for the services you offer, rather than hoping that a local TV ad reaches potential customers. SEO and PPC efforts often provide much better leads, and at a lesser price. At EMSC, we can take care of all of your digital marketing needs, from building a new website to running your social media accounts, so that you can focus on your business. We are able to provide you with a customizable digital strategy, meaning that the budget that you have for your digital marketing is optimized to the fullest extent. Call today for a free SEO consultation!

Crawling and indexing are two distinct steps in a process where search engines locate, file, and rank web content. Crawling is the initial discovery stage, where “spiders” scour the internet looking for new content. Once pages have been crawled, the next phase is indexing. Indexing is the organization and storage of pages that have been crawled. If a page is indexed, it becomes a contender to show as a search result for relevant queries.

Spiders, the automated robots that search engines send out, use links to navigate their way through billions of pages of content. The bot starts with a few pages, and then follows links on those pages to find new URLs. Links act as a highway system for the internet. Each exit that the spider takes leads it to new content that it can index, like webpages, images, videos, PDFs, etc. Once the pages have been found, the code is deciphered and selected pieces move forward to be stored in an index.

An index is a massive database of discovered URLs that made the cut after crawling. All pages that are indexed have been deemed good enough to offer to searchers, however, there’s cause for alarm if you notice that all pages on your website aren’t indexed.

A search engine’s number one goal is to provide answers, whether in the form of an article, video, or image. When someone looks for something online, the search engine instantaneously combs through billions of stored pages to provide the user with relevant, ranked information. It determines rankings, how the websites are ordered on the results page, by which content is most pertinent to the search query.

Link building is the practice of getting quality websites to link back to your own website. Search engines, like Google, use links as a way to decide how well a page should rank in their results. Think of it as a popularity contest: links are like votes from your peers establishing importance and relevance. The more links from other websites to your own, the higher the likelihood your page will be ranked well in the search engine results.

Yes and no. Understandably, all links were not created equal. A link from a trustworthy website, such as the New York Times, has a much greater impact on your rankings than a link from a newly created or less reliable site, like web directories or link farms. However, with that being said, we know it’s easier said than done to get authoritative links.

If you create captivating, unique content, you’re already headed in the right direction. People naturally want to reference high-quality material, so spread the word to build awareness around your site. Consider reaching out to loyal customers, partners, or other relevant businesses in the industry to link to your website through partnership badges or content you’ve created. This helps build long-term relationships with those in and around the industry while also improving your page rankings.

While search and display are both types of advertisements, they differ greatly in what they can offer. Search advertising focuses on providing an ad(s) to individuals who search for their product or service. Display advertising has very little to do with searching on Google, and the ads are displayed on other websites across the internet to draw the user back to their site.

When using a search advertising campaign, your targeting option is to use keywords. When you target a keyword, your ad(s) will be displayed whenever a prospective customer searches for that keyword. Search advertising allows you to compete with other competitors in your market. Businesses are also able to target
individuals based on their geography so your search engine ads only show to people who are in your geographic area.

With a display advertising campaign, there are more options as to how to target your audience. Contextual, behavior and demographic targeting are all tactics used when creating a display advertisement. Contextual targeting relies on Google to match your keywords and ads to relevant web pages. Behavioral targeting displays your ads to prospects who appear to be interested in your product based on their browsing history. With demographic targeting, you can choose which demographics you want to target, such as males or females.

The most successful advertising campaigns are the ones that utilize multiple forms of media. Search advertising is great because you can bid on specific keywords that work for your business, but display advertising is also necessary so that you can reach customers when they aren’t searching.

Search advertising usually leads to a sale because you can track the behavior of the customer, from the impression, to the click, to the purchase. Display advertising gets credit for bringing awareness to your product or service, it guides customers back to your site and helps them remember your business.

A CMS (Content Management System) is a website application that is used to create or manage digital content on a website. Within the CMS application, you have the ability to add, edit or delete content, which can be comprised of text, images, video and other media, that is published, or to be published on the website.

To run a successful PPC campaign, its important to understand quality score and the influence it has on both the effectiveness and performance of your paid campaigns. So what is it?

Quality score is Google’s rating of the quality of ads, keywords, and landing pages in your PPC campaign. Essentially, it is representative of the relevance of your ads to users’ search queries. Quality score is reported on a 1-10 scale and depends on several different factors including:

• click through rate
• the relevance of each keyword to its ad group
• landing page experience
• relevance of your ad text

The closer your keywords, ads, and landing pages are related to one another, the higher your quality score is going to be.

Why is it important?

To appear above organic results on Google or Bing, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. You can’t simply “buy” top ad positioning by increasing your bids, so optimizing your campaigns to have high quality scores is extremely important. Higher scores are also likely to improve your ROI (return on investment) because higher scores correlate to a lower cost per conversion.

How can I improve my Quality score?

The best way to obtain high quality scores across your Google Ads account is to structure your campaigns with organized keywords in appropriate ad groups, create ad text that uses the keywords from a corresponding ad group, and send users to landing pages that provide information about the ad text’s offer. The more cohesive a user’s experience is from search query to keyword to ad text to landing page, the higher your quality score will be and the better your campaign is likely to perform.