Top 5 SEM Tools To Improve Websites Visibility And Prominence

What are the top 5 SEM tools to improve your websites online visibility on the major search engines like Google and Bing? Let’s dive into the World of SEM marketing!

All the world has gone online – be it business, education, shopping, trading, or paying bills. Since the inception of the World Wide Web in 1990, website building has gained remarkable prominence in recent years. Website building is no longer a complex form of exercise that include days of coding and implementation. According to Mill for Business, there are 1.3 billion websites in the world as of January 2020.

Years ago, there were a limited number of websites and limited tools to improve visibility. However, with the remarkable growth in number of websites across different segments, a new challenge confronts website owners: the challenge of improving the visibility of websites, gaining new visitors, and holding existing ones.

As the number of websites have increased, so has the mechanism for searching websites, or search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, among others. Now, the battle to be on the front page of different search engines started, which led to the emergence of the concept Search Engine Marketing. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a vital concept of the marketing world that use complex and different marketing channels to generate website traffic and provide higher than usual visibility. In layman terms, it is an internet marketing exercise that encompasses the promulgation of websites and improving their visibility and ranking on different search engines results pages (SERPs) by using the methods of paid placement, inclusion, and contextual advertising, among others. The concept of SEM compliments the mechanism of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which employs outreach and link building.

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella concept that encompasses a variety of activities, including search targeting, search retargeting, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media marketing, among others. With the unprecedented growth of internet users and the rate of internet penetration in the world, especially in developing and emerging economies, various firms have expanded their business propositions through robust internet marketing tools. The tools under SEM help firms to generate higher returns on investments by leveraging appropriate and robust search engine marketing tactics and strategies.

The SEM market has expanded by leaps and bounds in recent years, driven by big giants and new entrants, including Google, Screaming Frog, Internet Marketing, Word Stream, and Analytix, among various others. According to the data of Statista, global advertisement spending is expected to touch USD 158.9 billion during 2020, at a growth rate of 9.4%. Different services are offered by these companies, based on different requirements and strategies. These services are broadly categorized under pay-per-click mechanism, cost per impression mechanism, search analytics and web analytics.

SEM uses specific tools and methods to properly advertise and market products and services on SERPs. The following are the top 5 SEM tools to improve websites’ visibility and prominence:

1. Word Stream Advisor: Word Stream is a SEM platform with a one-stop resource that assists firms from different sectors to digitally market agencies, advertisers, small and medium sized enterprise owners, and students, among others, in a streamlined, easy, and cost-effective manner. It helps in making essential changes in marketing strategies with significant return on investment. It channelizes with the Google AdWords platform to market a firm by saving money and time.

Some of the advantages of Word Stream are:

• Creating detailed analytical reports quickly and with ease. The created reports can be used to build in-depth insights about the market and analyze the performance dynamics of the firm.
• Creation and management of budgets is another major advantage of the platform. A firm can directly integrate with the Google AdWords platform with the Word Stream platform to set budgets and run iterations. The process is robust and saves effort and time.
• Comprehensive and brilliant customer support have been the differentiating element for Word Stream Advisor. A firm can post any query and get results within days. Besides, it’s a global platform with support staff all around the world.
• Breaking down and simplifying Google Ads.
• Guidance towards making essential and beneficiary changes in the account.
• Better recommendations for optimizations regime and keywords.
• Enabling a mechanism to identify and remove duplication of keywords to improve campaign performance.
• Delineating actions based on the level of urgency for each and every individual account.

Some of the disadvantages of Word Stream are:

• The user interface is a bit tedious to work around. The UX design is not bad, however there is scope for improvement to make it more aesthetically attractive and user-friendly for the final customer.
• Despite having a robust customer service, the onboarding process is a bit tedious and requires independent assistance. Also, the initial integration with the Google account has an entirely different and long process.

2. Marin Software: Marin Software is a great SEM tool to address the key challenges faced by any digital marketer in the present times. The essence of the software is its ability to align all the activities under social, search and e-Commerce advertising and marketing under a single roof. This independent platform has the potential to optimize online advertising and connect customers with firms by moving across publishers and devices. One of the key aspects of Marin Software is to create maximized results of the digital and online campaigns of a firm and using it to create a one–point single view of the end user or customer.

Some of the advantages of Marin Software are:

• The robust feature of automated bidding for firms.
• Automatically assign and implement tasks such as inclusion of negative keywords using the online searched terms report. This saves a lot of time and effort.
• One touch bulk change across different platforms such as Google AdWords and Bing Engine, simultaneously.
• Creation of update reports on spending, return on investment, and others by a single click overview tab. The updates are useful to have a quick look at overall average performance. Besides, the client’s reporting is easily customizable and streamlined.
• A variety of filters can be used to search and implement strategies.

Some of the disadvantages of the Marin Software are:

• The uploading of the preferred bulk changes in line with AdWords Editor is tedious and creates unnecessary errors.
• Although the reporting element of the platform is comprehensive, the process is time-consuming during the initial phases.
• Time-consuming when integrating new features of the platform. For instance, transition to final URLs are lengthy.
• Viewing and uploading of sitelinks is a tedious task.
• Download speed for reports is relatively slow. Higher speeds may improve the degree of effectiveness.

3. Bing Ads: Bing Ads is one of the most popular and renowned SEM tools, wherein advertisements are sold in a paid search area of Bing Search Engine. Bing Ads assists in building up leads with a relatively lower cost per clicks and higher conversion rates. The process improves brand name across clients by using different campaigns. The audience and searches in the Bing platform are slightly different from the Google platform. Besides, the clientele and audience are also different from Google.

Some of the advantages of Bing Ads are:

• Advertisement allocations at various syndicated partner websites, which would have been difficult otherwise.
• Management at broader or narrower scale is easy depending upon the size of the audience.
• Quick and easy creation of reports. Besides, the implementation process of the suggested changes is also easy.
• Better targeting of interested users depending upon the product and service at a relatively cheaper cost per click.
• Assistance in creation of new leads with a strong conversion rate.

Some of the disadvantages of Bing Ads are:

• Lower volume of online traffic on the Bing Search Engine, particularly on mobile phones compared to Google’s search engine.
• Compared to other major search engines, the quality of syndicated network traffic is lower and leads to unnecessary wastage of resources ultimately.
• The exact match algorithm followed by Bing is relatively weaker than Google’s search engine algorithm.
• The Bing Ads platform does not allow a user to bid for copyrighted keywords. Thus, one cannot bid on competitors.

4. Adobe Advertising Cloud: It is an advertisement management platform, also called Adobe Media Optimizer. It is a sub-segment of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, which provides a specific rules-based bidding mechanism and solutions to improve the performance of SEM tactics and campaigns. Besides, the entire platform is linked with the Adobe Analytics.

Some of the advantages are:

• Strength to create different ads with higher optimization ability.
• Saves time and effort in creation of reports.
• Upload changes in different campaigns simultaneously.
• Brilliant and easy to use user interface with filtering across budget levels and campaign plans.

Some of the disadvantages are:

• Complicated visualization component with Adobe analytics and reports.
• Rigid configuring and implementation processes.

5. SEM Rush: The tool allows user to create an extensive keyword search regime, websites audits, ranking of keywords and tracking, and traffic analysis, among others. The tool helps in delineating and ranking long tail keywords. Besides, it can be further used to analyze the competition and concentrate marketing strategies accordingly. It also analyzes regional and local presences to suggest the budget allocation a firm can make for certain keywords.

Some of the advantages are:

• Slightly convoluted tools organization. For instance, searching for a certain metric can be difficult sometimes.
• Limited customization abilities for graphs, charts, etc.
• Weak support responsiveness.
• Priced on a higher bracket.
• Difficult user interface navigation.

There you have it!

These are the top 5 best SEM tools to improve your websites visibility and prominence in the search engines and help build you the momentum that you need to help drive tons of free seo traffic from search engine giants like Google.

Your comments are welcome below!

What are your favorite SEM tools to use for your internet marketing campaigns?