Integrated Search Marketing Agency Australia

Search Marketing is a powerful tool for businesses to get noticed and attract more customers from search engines like Google and Bing. It involves strategies like SEO (Search Engine Optimization – i.e. Organic Traffic) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing – i.e. Paid Traffic) to help your website rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Search Marketing can be a lucrative channel to attract leads for many businesses due to the fact that Google (and other search engines) attract “high-intent buyers” – i.e. ready-to-buy leads who are proactively searching for your products or services.

A “full-service” digital agency offers a range of services to help your business grow online. Their services may span various areas of digital marketing, such as SEO, website design, social media management, social media advertising and content creation. They offer many services but don’t specialise in any particular one. Essentially, jack of all trades, master of none.

A specialist Search Marketing agency, on the other hand, focuses on just one service: search marketing. A.P Web Solutions is a specialist search marketing agency. Our expertise lies in SEO and SEM and we focus on one thing only: helping you rank higher in the search engine results.

While SEO and SEM are both part of search marketing and have similar goals, there are quite a few key differences between them.

• SEO: SEO, or search engine optimisation, is all about fine-tuning your website to show up higher in the organic search results. It involves tactics like keyword research, on-page and off-page optimisation, and content creation to rank higher in search engine rankings naturally.
• SEM: SEM (sometimes called PPC or Pay-Per-Click marketing), or search engine marketing, refers to paid advertising efforts to gain visibility on search engine results pages. It includes strategies like pay-per-click (PPC) ads and sponsored listings to help your website appear at the top of the search engine result pages.

So, SEO is about organic rankings, while SEM is about paid advertising. Both play a vital role in increasing your visibility in search engines like Google and can be implemented side by side.

SEO pricing depends on 5 key factors:

• Type of SEO campaign (local, national, eCommerce, International)
• Keywords & respective difficulty
• Competitors’ SEO profiles
• Your current rankings & positioning
• Your SEO history

That’s why we don’t offer fixed SEO plans. Unlike most SEO agencies, our pricing for each campaign is customised based on your needs and unique circumstances. We perform a full audit of your website, market & competitors to understand the landscape and put together a scope of work that balances your budget against the resources we need to achieve your targets.

The more you invest in SEO, the faster we can achieve your organic search goals. The more keywords you want to rank for and the more competitive they are, the larger the resources needed to get you on the first page of search results.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The cost of your SEM will depend on many factors, such as:

• The number of keywords you’re targeting
• The competitiveness of the keywords
• Your advertising goals
• The length of your campaigns
• Your ad placements
• Audience targeting

These are just a few factors that will influence your ad spend. At A.P. Web Solutions, we work with you to create a customised Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) strategy that aligns with your needs and ensures the best ROI without going over your budget.

SEO typically requires over 6 months to start showing results. SEM (or Google Ads), on the other hand, can deliver results more quickly if executed correctly. Many companies claiming they have “tried Google Ads in the past, but it didn’t work” for them simply didn’t do it correctly.

There are several factors that you must get right to make SEM truly effective, from conversion rate optimisation and campaign structure that aligns with your business to engaging ad copy and ensuring that the keywords on your landing page are consistent with the keywords in your ads.

All of this – and more – impacts the results of your Google Ads campaigns. A lot goes into it, but if you get it right, Google Ads can bring significant revenue relatively quickly.

Both SEO and SEM (Google Ads) can contribute to your business growth. As to which option is better for you will depend on several factors, such as your budget, desired timeline, and business model.

Ultimately, the best option is a combination of SEO and SEM. With this approach, while SEM specialists are working on filling up the pipeline with high-quality leads, SEO specialists are working in the background to build up organic traffic. However, this requires a higher budget.

If your budget limits you to choose one of the two, then the answer depends on the timeline. If you need immediate results, SEM is your go-to option. It delivers quick outcomes to meet your short-term goals. However, if you’re satisfied with your current lead pipeline in the near term and you’re focused on long-term growth, investing in SEO is the better choice.

When people look for products or services like yours on search engines like Google, SEO can help your website or store appear in their search results. This increased visibility drives more traffic to your business – part of which will result in sales.

A search marketer is someone who specialises in search marketing strategies, like SEO and SEM. They work on helping your website and content rank higher in the search results and appear in front of the right people at the right time. They take care of all aspects of search marketing, from choosing the most optimal keywords for you to rank for to setting up and optimising your Google Ads campaigns.

As SEO & SEM are different skill sets, A.P. Web Solutions has dedicated SEO Specialists and SEM specialists with years of experience in Organic Search and Paid Search Marketing, respectively. Coupled with Account Managers who also understand the business side of things and formulate a customised strategy, we take a collaborative approach to hitting your goals.

Every business can benefit from Search Marketing, regardless of the industry. Quite simply, if your customers/clients are searching on Google, then your business can befit from Search Marketing.

The good news is that before you invest a dollar into this, you can find out how many people (approximately) are searching for your products/services and put together a reasonably accurate growth forecast based on this data. It’s less of a “leap of faith” than you might think. Many forms of marketing can often be intangible in how their impact is measured, and many of them can’t be forecasted before you take the plunge – you have to test & invest. Search Marketing, however, is one channel that allows you to forecast before you invest, as well as track performance accurately afterwards.

Whether you’re an eCommerce store, a law firm, or a real estate agency, Search Marketing can help you drive targeted traffic to your website. It can help you put your website in front of people who are already searching for products or services similar to yours, which can easily result in more leads and sales.

Search Marketing can be divided into two categories: Organic Search (SEO) and Paid Search (SEM or PPC) solutions.

For SEO, our primary focus is targeting keywords with the highest buyer intent. This means that we focus on targeting those keywords that have the highest possibility of bringing in leads that are ready to buy. There are a few different types of SEO campaigns, such as Local SEO, National SEO, International SEO, eCommerce SEO, Enterprise SEO, and more.

For SEM, we also focus on targeting the keywords with the highest buyer intent. Our Google Ads services span different advertising channels, such as Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, Google Shopping Ads, and Google Video Ads. This way, we’re able to not only help you generate leads and sales (Google Search and Shopping Ads) but also maximise brand awareness (Google Display and Video Ads).

Let’s be fully transparent: you can do SEO & SEM on your own. However, unless you have years of expertise & experience, you’d be doing a rather basic job and missing out on results you could be getting by having professionals implement tried-and-tested strategies. Avoid this opportunity cost and let the experts handle it for you.

When you engage a search marketing agency, you gain access to a team of SEO and SEM experts who can generate results for your business a lot quicker than you could on your own. When you consider the cost of skills (i.e. wages) required for a full-time team of SEO & SEM Specialists, hiring an agency is often a much more cost-effective solution.