There are a number of search engine marketing tools (SEM) available to help you manage the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. By using these tools, you can track the performance of your ads and make necessary adjustments to improve your results. Here are core tools that we use on a weekly basis to analyse the effectiveness of both SEM and SEO activities for our clients.
SEM Rush for PPC Campaigns (Paid tool)
Semrush (semrush.com) is an all-in-one suite of tools which can be used to improve your brands online coverage or visibility along with providing the ability to identify competitor insights and keyword usage in the major search engines.
SEM Rush is a great tool for both paid and organic search marketing. The reason we like this tool when looking for PPC information specifically is that you can turn the filters for Organic traffic off and show only the PPC keywords which provide fantastic insights regarding what keyword phrases are driving competition PPC campaigns during given periods of time.
When using SEM Rush, you can view your competitor PPC campaigns on a month by month basis to ascertain what importance competitors are placing on keywords. It also assists in gaining a greater understanding of what keywords are in fact actually providing your competitor the results they are looking for
Since we know the general trends of when different kinds of searches happen, this ensures that our campaigns are always effective according to user demand not only for ourselves, but our competitors. We suggest reviewing the last three months of data on a month-by-month basis and comparing this with current month campaigns in use. Then determining the differences in each campaign on a month by month basis by keyword. You will see when lining up monthly keywords the differences in competitor keywords being used and also ascertain what keywords are no longer in use.
Google Ads Editor
Google ads provide a free application for managing your Google Ads campaigns that runs on your desktop. Google Ads Editor makes the process of managing your Ads campaigns simple and efficient. It’s ideal for any corporation or digital marketing professional managing paid search on the Google Search or Display Network.
You can use it to create, edit, and optimise your Ads campaigns by tracking core keyword metrics. It also allows you to bulk edit your campaigns, so you can make changes to multiple campaigns at once. You can even work offline and then upload your changes when you’re done.
Google Ads Editor can be used for any business, from small businesses running single campaigns to agencies managing multiple accounts. If you’re looking for a way to streamline your Ads campaigns, Google Ads Editor is a great option. It’s free to use and can save you a lot of time and effort with campaign management.
Google Keyword Planer
Like SEMRush, Google Keyword Planer provides insight into keyword activity across the Google Ads Search network. It helps you understand how potential customers are searching for your products or services, and how that activity has changed over time. This information can be used to help you make informed decisions about your keyword strategy, PPC costs and identifies where you may be missing out on coverage based on keyword activity.
Google Keyword planner whilst not as informative as the tools provided by SEMRush is a free service provided by Google Ads.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another free tool provided by Google. It provides an analytics solution allowing for the measurement of traffic and user engagement across both websites and apps. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you understand your website or app’s audience and how they interact with your content. It can also be used to track conversions and goal completion. We recommend that all our clients make use of this service and if/where possible ensure tracking of conversions are in place to ascertain the effectiveness of campaigns.
R programming for analysis and data mining
R is an open-source programming language that provides powerful features for data mining and statistical analysis. It can be effective when customised analytics and reporting are required to identify the effectiveness of Ad campaigns based on real business outcomes. The flexibility and power of R allows marketers and business owners alike to effectively integrate data from multiple systems into single reports or data files.
We commonly use R for our clients to extract data from Google Analytics, multiple ad campaigns and other data sources (e.g. such as internal sales systems, CRMs etc) to ascertain the effectiveness of both SEM and SEO activities.