SEM Specialist (SEO/SEM) Interview Questions And Answers

Adwords work on bidding system if the bidding price is higher your ad will appear on top of the Google page. Adwords works on “pay per click” that means you only pay the amount you have bid if someone taps on your ad as a result of a web search.

Each month auction gets run billion of times, and the result are such that users find ads that are relevant to what they are looking for. The search engine processes the request and runs the auction that determines the ad positions and each advertisers CPC.

Adwords is the system that Google has designed to assist in marketing product or services in Google search engine and its affiliated sites. It will place a text ad that appears when people search for phrases associated to your offering.

Conversion Optimizer is a tool used by Google Adwords for bid manipulation and decides which clicks on the ad will be valuable. It can help you to return maximum on your investment.

CTR stands for Click through rate that tells the number of visitors visited on your ad on the web page. The formula for calculating CTR is

Number of click / Number of impressions X 100

These will give you an answer in percentage like what percentage of customers have viewed your ad.

In Google Adwords, conversion tracking can be done in following ways

☛ Tracking purchases by involving basic tracking code provided by Adwords and modifying it with additional code unique to your particular e-commerce platform
☛ View-through conversion window options tracks when a person sees your ad but does not click it (impression)
☛ By enabling your ad rotation setting to optimize for clicks, meaning that Adwords will serve the ads it feels are likely to be clicked
☛ By accessing search funnels inside tools and analysis, you can also know when customers clicked on your ad for the first time and how frequently they saw your ad before converting.

Ad rank defines the actual cost per click that your opponents pay when someone clicks on their ads. The CPC can be calculated as Price by you = The ad rank of the person below you / your quality score + $0.01.

Ad group is a container of your landing pages, advertisements, and keywords. Google rewards advertisers who prepare AdWord Campaigns with tightly structured ad groups. Adding all keywords into the single ad group is not advisable rather it is better to organize keywords into themes.

To target users to the campaign for boosting conversions, one has to create ads that match properly with keywords and create tightly themed ad groups.

In AdWords, the limit for

☛ Description line 1: 25 characters
☛ Description line 2: 35 characters
☛ Description URL: 1024 characters

This is one of the most common PPC interview questions you will face! When the interviewer asks this question, he/she wants to know more about you as a candidate and why you chose to work in the field of Pay per Click marketing and advertising. You need to tell them about your passion and your desire to work in the industry in the future. It would be great if you tell them about your back story with regard to what makes you tick as a candidate. Also, a good response could be to say that you are aware that the industry is extremely challenging and this is what attracts you. Show that you don’t want a boring job and prefers one which would challenge you on a daily basis.

Click through rate abbreviated as CTR tells the number of visitors visited on your ad on the web page. To calculate CTR, one can use the formula:

Number of clicks/Number of impressions X 100 = CTR
The answer will be in percentage which represents % of customers who have viewed your ad.

An auction runs billion of times each month and the results are such that users find ads that are relevant to what they are looking for. Google processes the request and runs the auction that determines the ad position and CPC of each advertiser.

Other than CPC the other two options are CPM (Cost per Thousand Impression) and CPA ( Cost Per Action ).

Different ad extension can enhance the increase in traffic. Some of the common Ad extensions used in adwords are Sitelinks

☛ Call Extensions
☛ Location Extensions
☛ Social Annotations
☛ Seller ratings
☛ Mobile app extensions
☛ Offer ads
☛ Communication Ad
☛ Review extension
☛ Image and drop down navigation Ad extension

Google Ad API is designed for representing large, tech savvy advertisers and third parties. It allows developers build an application that directly interacts with Google Adwords server.

Google’s quality score determines how beneficial and relevant your ad is to the user, based primarily on your ad’s CTR, quality of your landing page and keyword relevance. Higher quality score keywords will save your money and earn better ad ranking.

Google Adwords behave differently to traffic that comes from Google Adwords or “Pay Per Click”. The traffic that comes through surfing often visits the website for information, whereas the traffic via pay per click knows what they are clicking on and what they want to buy. So few visitors through Adwords might be more valuable than million visitors.

Ad group is a container of your keywords, advertisements, and landing pages. Google rewards advertisers who prepare Adword campaigns with tightly structured ad groups. Its not advisable to include all your keywords into the single ad group, but to organize keywords into themes.

By creating ads that match properly with keywords and create tightly themed ad groups, you can target users to the campaign that helps in conversions.

Google designed AdWords with an aim to assist in marketing product and services in a search engine and its affiliated sites. It places a text ad that appears when people search for phrases associated with your offering.

There is no definite type of keywords, however, they are classified on the basis of how likely is going to be clicked by visitors.

For instance,

☛ Research Keywords: dress
☛ Consideration: white dress
☛ Purchase: buy white dress
☛ Loyalty: This must be shorter – Forever21

Again, the best thing you could do is research. The interviewer yet again wants to know if you have done your homework. You need to consider which is the best-paid media platform for the company and how effectively they are using these platforms.

Think about different aims of the business in terms of objectives, KPIs, and keywords. Also, think realistically about which platforms would help them to achieve their goals. You can also go an extra mile by researching any new platforms and how it could help the company meeting their objectives.

The efforts you put in search engine marketing are quantifiable and can be measured easily.

☛ If your objective is to generate awareness then you can track ‘impressions’ and ‘clicks’ on paid and organic search engine listings.
☛ Whereas, if the aim is to measure brand performance or preference of text ad creative then you can measure ‘click through’ and ‘conversion’ rates.
☛ For generating qualified leads, one can track email inquiries, downloads (demos or trials), or online registrations (for white papers, events, or newsletters).
☛ In order to track SEM efforts for sales, you can track offline sales or e-commerce sales through printable coupons or phone call tracking.

The hallmarks of a good PPC landing page considers the following aspects:

☛ An attractive and powerful headline
☛ A supportive tagline
☛ Trust symbols
☛ A list of advantages
☛ A clear CTA (call to action)
☛ A lead capture form
☛ Use an image showing the context of use or a graphic that appeal to the visitors’ emotional side.