What did we do before Google?

Google has evolved from a noun to a verb. We now use it in everyday life when we say we are going to search something on the web.

However, have you ever wondered why you get certain results when you google a particular term? For example, if you were to google ‘Melbourne electrician’, why do the search results look like this and how does a site get to be the number 1 listing? Three words. Search engine marketing.

“Search marketing is the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts.” - Search Engine Land

There are two key techniques to search engine marketing (SEM) which are:

- search engine optimisation (SEO) which is all about earning web traffic through unpaid or free listings. This organic form of SEM is reliant upon selected keywords and phrases being used by the businesses to increase their ranking on search engines.

- pay-per-click (PPC) listings are where businesses pay a fee every time the ad is clicked.

As seen in the photo above, the first four listings for ‘Melbourne electrician’ have ‘AD’ besides them which indicates they are sponsored and therefore PPC ads. How these ads work are the businesses bid for ad placements in the top sponsored links on the site. This technique is highly useful if you want your company to stand out in a saturated market. In my case, there are four electricians that have opted to take this SEM route to gain more traffic to their website.

One company that has taken advantage of the digital marketing technique of SEO is Amazon. The online retailer utilises Jason McDonald’s 4th step of SEO Fitness which is content marketing. They do this through user-generated content of ratings and reviews posted to product pages. From an SEO perspective, this helps Amazon to frequently rank in the top five search results. As seen in the photo above, when googling the ‘Nintendo switch lite console in grey’, it is appearing as the third result.

Having now learnt the differences between paid and unpaid search marketing, do you think you’re likely to skip over the ‘sponsored ads’ when looking for a recommendation? Would love to hear your opinions in the comments below!