What is SEM?

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

It can be confusing to find a good Search Engine Marketing professional or firm to manage your accounts.  Many advertising agencies and corporations outsource their Paid Search (PPC) marketing.  To help in finding the right solution for your online goals, you may want to gather the information below when scouting a new Paid Search partner.

What Questions Should You Ask a Paid Search Partner?

Conversion Tracking:

1. Do you have integrated tracking across all media types and all the leading search engines worldwide?
2. Does your platform have the capability for transaction tracking based on:

• using server redirects or direct traffic?
• unlimited types of transactions?
• multiple variables (Order ID, Zip Code, Etc.)
• organic search results

Bid Management:

1. Can you set up rules based on bidding such as:

• Optimum Keyword Ranking
• Big Gap Management
• Cost per Acquisition (CPA) targeting
• Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) targeting
• Day Parting Rules
• Manual bidding tactics

Reporting:

1. Does your platform show both reporting and tracking data for the following criteria:

• Campaigns
• Keyword Groups
• Keywords and Keyword Phrases
• PPC Search Engines
• Destination URLs
• Date Range (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly)
• Latency Reports

Account Management:

1. Can your platform handle multiple accounts?
2. Are there single or separate logins, or dropdowns, for each campaign?
3. Is there a limit on the number of keywords per account?
4. How many bid reviews per day?  Is there a limit?
5. How many people will be dedicated to your account?

Keyword Generation Tools:

1. Do you have a Keyword Research / Generation tool to suggest relevant keywords and phrases for your campaigns based on input provided, and through “crawling” the site?
2. Do you have a Keyword tool that enables building a large keyword list specific to the site campaigns by utilizing all potential combinations of keywords and keyword phrases?

Ad Creative:

1. Does your client team write ad copy?

Testing:

1. Is your platform capable of handling A/B split tests?
2. Is your platform capable of multivariate testing?

Competitive Differentiation:

1. How do you differentiate your company from your competition?

Pricing Model:

1. How is your service priced?
2. Is it full-service client services or advice for do-it-yourself SEM?
3. Are there multiple pricing models?