Improve your search campaigns

Hi there. In this video, you’ll learn why relevance is so important for SEM campaigns. We’re also going to look at the structure of SEM campaigns, and show you how to build your campaigns in a way that helps you achieve that relevance. Ready to be one step closer to SEM success? Alright, let’s get started. ‘Relevance’ sounds like a tricksy sort of word, but it’s easy to understand if you think about it as someone who uses search engines. For example, let’s do a search for 'wedding photographer', and take a look at some of the adverts that appear. Here we have three.

The first headline says Wedding Photographer, followed by information about pricing and selection. This ad is extremely relevant, because the headline matches our search, plus it has plenty of useful information.

The second headline says Candid Wedding Photoshoot. It includes some information about the types of wedding photo packages this business offers. This ad is fairly relevant, but less than the first because the headline doesn’t precisely reflect the search. As a whole, search engines might consider this advert less relevant.

The third headline says Wedding Photograph, but appears to be an ad for a site that sells posters. That’s not relevant to what we were searching for.

When it comes to relevance, search engines also consider the first web page people see after they click on an ad. This is called the landing page. So what does this mean for you? Well, just as your advert should be relevant to the words a person just searched for, your landing page should be relevant to the advert a person clicks on.

Makes sense, right? Great, let’s move on. Relevance is important to search engines - After all, it’s their job to find relevant results for searches, and this includes finding relevant adverts. Relevance is also really important to businesses who advertise on search engines.

For starters, search engines reward relevant adverts with higher positions on the search results page.

What’s more, if your adverts are more relevant than your competitors’, you might be able to get the same amount of traffic for a lower price.

So it makes a lot of sense to pay attention to relevance.

Now let’s look at ways you can structure your SEM campaigns to achieve greater relevance. Think of your SEM plan as an upside-down tree. At the top is your account, which you create with Google Ads, Bing Ads, or another search engine.

Within the account are campaigns. Each campaign controls important decisions, like the daily budget, the areas or countries where ads can appear, and the advertising networks you want to use.

Within each campaign, you can create multiple ad groups. These are collections of keywords and the ads that go with them.

Structuring your account in this organised way helps ensure you show the most relevant ads. Let’s go through another example with the photographer to bring this to life. Imagine you’re the photographer, and you specialise in various types of photography. Let’s say weddings, baby photos and family portraits. Each of these specialities contain different products, so you decide to split them into separate campaigns.

Within each campaign, your next move is to create ad groups for each type of product. For example, within your wedding photographer campaign, you might create ad groups for engagement photos, bridal portraits, candid wedding photos, and more.

Within your baby photos ad group, you add keywords that someone would search for. For example, keywords like baby photography or newborn photos. Now you can write an ad that corresponds to the keywords, like:

Baby Photography We Take Beautiful Newborn Photos Affordable Rates, Book Now!

If someone searched for your keyword baby photography, this would be a relevant ad! To sum up: No matter what type of business you have, your SEM campaigns should have a solid, well-thought-out structure.

By dividing your products or services into separate campaigns and ad groups, you can show ads that help customers find exactly what they’re searching for— which is win-win for everyone.