How do you use SEM data and insights to inform your content and landing page design?

1 Step 1: Define your goals and metrics

Before you dive into SEM data, it's important to define your goals and metrics for your content and landing page design. What are you hoping to achieve with your SEM campaigns? How will you measure success? Common goals and metrics for SEM include traffic (how many visitors are coming to your website from your ads?), impressions (how many times are your ads shown on the search results page?), clicks (how many times are your ads clicked by users?), CTR (what percentage of impressions result in clicks?), CPC (how much do you pay for each click on your ads?), conversions (how many users complete a desired action on your website, such as signing up, downloading, or purchasing?), CPA (how much do you pay for each conversion on your website?), and ROAS (what is the return on ad spend, or how much revenue do you generate for each dollar spent on ads?). By defining these goals and metrics, it will be easier to align your content and landing page design with your SEM strategy and track performance.

3 Step 3: Research your competitors

Gathering SEM data and insights to inform content and landing page design can be done by researching competitors. Utilize tools like SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs, and SpyFu to analyze competitors' SEM strategies. Look at competitor keywords to compare volume, difficulty, relevance, and value. Additionally, examine competitor ads for CTR, CPC, CPA, and ROAS. Lastly, investigate competitor landing pages for bounce rate, time on page, conversion rate, and revenue per visitor. Through this research you can identify gaps, opportunities, and threats in the niche to differentiate or improve your content and landing page design.

4 Step 4: Test your hypotheses

Based on your SEM data analysis and competitor research, formulating hypotheses is a great way to test your content and landing page design. A hypothesis is a statement that predicts the outcome of a change or experiment, for example, using a question headline might increase CTR by 10%, or adding a video testimonial to your landing page could result in a 15% increase in conversion rate. To test your hypotheses, tools like Google Optimize, Unbounce, or VWO can be used to create and run A/B tests or multivariate tests. These tests measure the impact of different versions of your content and landing page design on SEM metrics. Through testing your hypotheses, you can validate or invalidate assumptions and discover which content and landing page design elements are most effective for achieving your SEM goals.

5 Step 5: Implement your findings

After you test your hypotheses, you can implement your findings and apply changes that will enhance your SEM performance. Utilizing tools such as Google Ads Editor, WordPress, or Shopify to edit and update your content and landing page design will help you do so. You can add or remove keywords, ad copy, headlines, descriptions, extensions, and formats. Additionally, you can adjust the design, layout, content, offer, and call to action of your landing pages. Refining audience segments, targeting, bidding, and budgeting will also contribute to improving your SEM results. By utilizing these changes and tools, you can increase the effectiveness of your content and landing page design.

6 Step 6: Monitor and iterate

The final step to use SEM data and insights to inform your content and landing page design is to monitor and iterate. You need to keep track of your SEM performance and measure the impact of your changes over time. It is also important to stay informed of the changing trends, behaviors, and preferences of your audience and competitors. To do this, you should review and analyze your SEM data regularly, conduct ongoing competitor research, test new hypotheses, experiment with new content and landing page design ideas, and implement new findings. By monitoring and iterating on these steps, you can continuously improve your content and landing page design and optimize your SEM performance.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?