SEM Trends 

Just this week, Google had a phenomenon conference talking about its new Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL and some major up-gradation to Google Home and Gmail. That got me thinking about everything that this tech giant has achieved so far, and one thing that stands out and will always be the wonder of the internet is the Google Search Engine.

40,000 search queries in a second. 3.5 billion searches in a day. 1.2 trillion searches in a year. Those are numbers enough to prove just how mighty this engine is. And numbers enough to prove why Google deserves to be titled the most promising asset in the Online Marketing space today.

Being a digital marketer, my eyes have always been on how and what more can I do to help my clients juice out the best possible visibility via Google. While Search Engine Optimization continues to be our slow and steady underdog, I thought of sharing with you a couple of SEM Trends:

      1.SEM Joins the AI Badwagon

Google has started using Artificial Intelligence in its automated bidding options. The same has also been employed to decide what ads are chosen for display. In addition, the Adwords Smart Campaigns targets customers automatically using its intelligent algorithms. Marketers will now have to concentrate on only meeting the client’s goals while setting up keywords and engineering campaigns will be taken care of with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

     2. If you’re not mobile friendly, you don’t win

Mobile Searches have increased exponentially in the past couple of years. And hence it is only natural that Google has switched to a Mobile-First Ranking Algorithm. This means Google will rank websites that are mobile-friendly higher than those that are not, both in organic and paid searches. Hence, as an SEM campaign manager, it would be wise to execute mobile-friendly PPC ads. Your website, especially your landing page must be well structured, you must have click to call extensions, easily accessible phone numbers and map integration among other mobile-optimized features.

     3.Customized Ads for Different stages of the Buying Cycle

When a possible customer wishes to buy a specific product, his search varies across various stages. For example, If I am looking to buy a microwave oven, I would first think about which brand would be ideal, what options are that brand provides, which one of those is affordable, what are the different websites offering that product, can I get a discount coupon somewhere?

The 2018 SEM expert will make sure that each of these searches that a buyer inputs, is met with a personalized ad. For example, an initial brand search would highlight the features of the oven, a price search would highlight the price with the discounts and so on.

     4. Advertisements based on Voice & Visual Search may not be far away

2018 has seen Amazon Echos and Google Homes flooding into our homes. Siri and Alexa have become good friends, which is why search engines will now see a huge influx of voice or visual searches. The impact of this on SEM is still being monitored.

A voice search is usually longer than a text search. Hence, in order to optimize your ad for a voice command, you will have to take into consideration keywords that are part of a conversational search query. As a result, while a text search may have pages and pages of results, a voice search will have much narrowed down options.

As far as visual search is concerned, PPC campaign marketing on that front may get super creative. For example, if a college kid enters a visual search for a college bag, a bag retailer may be able to buy ad space for that particular search.

The innovations in PPC campaigns are just starting to get interesting. In fact, at All Stars Digital, we are prepping up our client’s profile to make sure that our Google Ads, Remarketing stunts and PPC adverts are leveraging the latest advancements. With Google being a major channel provider, it will be interesting to see how these trends perform and what do we have in stock for 2018.