Expertly managed Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is essential for any e-commerce company.

It can be summarized into 3 components:

• Search Keywords: Marketers working at scale must maximize the number of relevant options for every product and campaign. For an enterprise, generating keywords manually would be grossly inefficient and would likely only uncover the most popular, and therefore most expensive, options. Keyword generation must be both automated, with a nuanced understanding of both the short and long tail.

• Ad Copy: While having a good keyword set is essential, good copy can make a huge difference. In fact, copy CTR (click-through-rate) is one of the elements search engines use to determine how your copy will rank. If you have the right keyword, but wrong copy, your ad might not even get seen.

• Bidding: Finally, with millions of keywords deployed at any one time, advanced bidding algorithms must be in place. For some high volume keywords, this is relatively straightforward since a great deal of data is available. The challenge comes with the long tail of low volume keywords that usually have very little or no data to work with.

Wize Commerce has been refining our SEM methods since 2002, across all the major search ecosystems.

Here’s how our service benefits you:

• Search Keywords: Thirteen years of iterated learning and analytics across a vast range of industries and product categories has refined our methods to generate and constantly discover a high volume of relevant keywords. Our statistical models and rules identify the best set to focus on, with automated processes that evolve the set on a daily basis to respond to traffic trends and catalog changes. This means that we also manage the keyword set completely. We add keywords as new products are added to a catalog and we remove them when the items are unavailable. The keyword set is always up to date and automated – with no manual intervention.  All our merchant clients and Silhouette customers can be sure they have the right keyword set deployed at all times.

• Ad Copy: How should keywords be grouped for ad copy deployment? How should the ad copy headline and body be constructed? When should keyword insertion be used and where should it be placed in the ad copy? What other considerations when deploying ad copy on the main search engines? Likewise, we have SEM copywriting down cold by conducting hundreds of thousands of copy tests for our clients in the past 8 years, with a full-time dedicated team of expert copywriters and tools to help them prioritize and optimize ads where it matters. The data collection and the extensive knowledge base around copy testing results has allowed us to understand what works and what doesn’t. We recommend ad copies prior to launching a Silhouette. Once approved by the Silhouette customer, we take care of deploying everything.

• Bidding: We believe we offer something that no one else offers in the industry. The bid we set for each keyword is a direct function of the search results we display for that keyword. Prior to deployment of a keyword, we analyze its search results displayed and estimate its value. All other things being equal, a keyword with many very relevant products will merit a bid higher than a keyword with lower relevancy. This effectively means that we will hit the ground running when we deploy a new Silhouette. Furthermore, we estimate that we will be close to full speed 90 days into the start of the test. All this is automated, of course, and we’re doing it at a guaranteed cost of sale across different search engines so there is practically no effort required and no risk to the Silhouette customer.

The proof is in the pudding. Our SEM platform is the key traffic acquisition source for Nextag, which CPC Strategy ranked as the #1 independent Comparison Shopping Engine for web traffic and revenues generated by merchants. Our SEM platform is also fully integrated into our Silhouette service, so merchants can experience these tools and benefits first-hand.

Contact us to start a conversation on how we can help your SEM program.