Proud partner
Search engine advertising
- Google Premier Partner: we are a certified Google partner, having proven ourselves as a ‘ advertising ’ agency.
- Weekly tracking: our Ads specialists keep a close eye on your campaign and make adjustments where necessary.
- Expert in over 50 sectors: Traffic Today has experience across a wide range of industries. This expertise helps us further develop your Search Engine Advertising strategy.
Would you like to know how to use your SEA budget as effectively as possible? Search engine advertising is more than just creating an advert: there are many techniques behind it that determine whether it succeeds or fails.
Curious about your opportunities?
The benefits of search engine advertising
Immediate results
Constant insight into results
Full control over the budget
Extensive targeting options
Increasing targeted reach
At the top of the search results
What is Search Engine Advertising (SEA)?
The best way to attract the attention of your target audience is to secure a high ranking on Google. Search engine advertising allows you to do exactly that! The name pretty much gives it away: you advertise your website in Google’s search results. Of course, this involves a fee, but the results are well worth it. By setting up your search engine adverts correctly, you’ll achieve your marketing objectives.
What can you advertise on search engines?
When you want to advertise on search engines, you’ll be faced with a wide range of options. As you want to cater to your customers as effectively as possible, this is very useful, as it allows for greater variety. We’ll explain the following types of adverts for you!
Google Ads
Google Ads is Google’s Search Engine Advertising tool that allows you to advertise directly within the search engine’s results. Advertising on Google Ads is relatively straightforward: you select the search terms, set a budget, create an advert and then measure the results achieved.
Google Shopping
With Google Shopping, online shops can promote their products at the top of search results. Google Shopping searches various online shops and compares the results. This form of advertising is highly effective because it doesn’t look like an advert; instead, it gives customers the impression that they can shop directly. By structuring your advert correctly, this is, in a sense, exactly what happens.
Display Advertising
Display advertising involves advertising via banners. With Display Ads, you can generate plenty of attention for your business, product or service using an attractively designed banner advert. These banners can be found all over the internet: just try visiting a webpage without coming across adverts of some sort.
Admarkt Marketplace
With Marktplaats Admarkt, you can advertise right at the top of Marktplaats’s search results. This tool also operates on a cost-per-click basis and allows you to set a maximum bid in advance. It’s highly effective, as you’re advertising to a target audience that’s ready to make an immediate purchase.
Microsoft Ads
Microsoft Ads is the alternative to Google Ads and is characterised by lower bid rates and a different target audience. Microsoft Ads was previously also known as Bing Ads. Although Bing has a much smaller market share than Google, this advertising option is very interesting because Microsoft frequently refers to Bing.
Affiliate marketing
With affiliate marketing, you advertise directly on popular pages. These pages form part of your network; it’s a case of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’. To implement this form of marketing effectively, you need a strong affiliate network, so that you can reach your target audience across the entire internet and direct them to your website.
ChatGPT Ads
ChatGPT Ads is OpenAI’s advertising platform. It allows you to display adverts within the conversations people have with ChatGPT. OpenAI has been testing adverts since early 2026 and has since expanded the channel step by step. ChatGPT does not use keywords like Google Ads, but rather the context of the conversation. OpenAI links adverts to the topic of a conversation, previous chats and previous interactions with adverts.
AI in Advertising s Marketing
AI is playing an increasingly significant role within advertising. Examples include Performance Max, where Google uses AI to automatically optimise bids, budgets, target audiences and placements, as well as new advertising opportunities such as ChatGPT Ads, which enable advertising within an AI tool. We keep a close eye on these developments and explore how brands can respond to them strategically. In addition, we use AI to analyse campaign and audience data, identify opportunities and develop and test ad copy and creatives more quickly. In this way, we combine new AI capabilities with the expertise of our advertising specialists.
How does search engine advertising work?
If a link-building specialist tells you that adding your backlinks to other people’s pages is still effective, it might raise a few eyebrows. People are quick to assume that link building is an outdated concept. But nothing could be further from the truth. With the roll-out of the new Google Helpful Content Update, the search engine is placing even greater emphasis on the visitor. So the better you use link building to cater to visitor intent, the better you’ll be rated by Google. Use backlinks that add value to your website and invest in sources relevant to your industry.
Link building helps you generate higher authority for your website (Page Authority). It also fosters constant growth by giving specific categories a platform on other people’s websites. Linking pages are still synonymous with reliability and security. So do not underestimate this marketing tool, because once you have laid a solid foundation with search engine optimisation, link building is your ‘next step’. That is why it remains indispensable in the digital marketing world of 2026.
Why search engine advertising will still work in 2026
Search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, meaning they are better able to help customers find what they are looking for. As a result, search engines are being used more and more frequently, with Google leading the way. Through constant updates, Google continues to improve the experience for its users time and time again: a proactive approach will therefore also be required in 2026.
Performance Max is expected to continue developing rapidly. To stay ahead of the curve, it is important to keep up to date with the key updates to this Google Ads campaign type. We can see that video will be even more important by 2026, so be sure to consider how you can incorporate video content into your online marketing strategy. AI and machine learning are also being used more and more frequently within SEA.
Curious to find out how we can help you?
Want to know where there’s still room for improvement? Find out with our free audit.
They’ve gone before you
The impact of your quality score
There are two factors that influence where Google places your advert: your bidding strategy and your quality score. But what exactly is this score? Your advert’s quality score is, in fact, how well Google rates your page in relation to a customer’s search query. This involves looking at whether the search term appears on the page and in your advert, as well as historical data such as your CTR (Click-Through Rate) and your broader advertising history and its successes.
Your quality score in search engine advertising is hugely important, as you want to achieve the highest possible position in Google as cost-effectively as possible. If you have a high score, it means you’ll pay less for your CPC (Cost per Click). This score is always between 1 and 10. If you score 7 or higher, you won’t pay any extra costs and you’ll even benefit from a lower price than your competitors. If your score is below this, Google will charge a higher price to secure that sought-after position.
Curious to find out how CPC calculation works? You can read all about it in the blog.
Remarketing in SEA
Remarketing capitalises on the art of repetition. You’ll no doubt recognise this: you search for a product online and then see that same product in your adverts on social media. This reminds you of the product, prompting you to take action more quickly. This is also easy to achieve with SEA: by targeting smartly, you can advertise to a target audience that has already shown an interest in your product – perhaps even those who have already visited your website. The text of your advert naturally picks up on this too: by taking the initiative, you ensure that a potential customer chooses you as their specialist!
Ads White Paper
A successful Ads campaign depends on many factors. One important factor is the weather. During hot summer periods, we all search for swimming pools en masse, and when the temperature drops below freezing, search volumes for terms such as ‘ice skating’ and ‘cross-country skiing’ skyrocket. In this white paper, we’ll tell you more about the relationship between weather conditions and Google Ads campaigns.
Determining search terms
Formulating your keywords is perhaps the most important part of search engine advertising. This determines what you want to be found for and, therefore, where you allocate your budget. It is important to advertise using exact keywords, as simply adding or omitting a space can make all the difference. It is also important to target different audience segments, each of which uses distinct search terms.
Fortunately, finding these keywords doesn’t have to be difficult. We’ve already mentioned the link with Google Analytics. This can be a great help, as it provides, amongst other things, an overview of the terms your website visitors use to find your website. However, we also recommend tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs: these show the overall search volume in a particular region. By using these keywords in your adverts, you’ll have a rough idea of how many people will see them.
Different campaign
approaches
The approach you take to your search engine advertising campaigns has a major impact on how they ultimately perform. There are various campaign approaches, all of which will yield different results. The differences lie in how precisely you go about your work.
Exact keywords
If you’re aiming for complete control over your adverts, you’ll work with exact keywords. Here, you specify the exact search term, which means you can make a precise estimate of how many people will see your advert. However, this also means you won’t be advertising on related search terms. If a potential customer makes a typo, your advert won’t appear.
Search by phrase
If you want to target a larger audience, it’s wise to base your campaign approach on phrase targeting. This means your advertising is less precise, but no less effective. The reason phrase matching is effective is that attributes are often added to a search query. For example, with the phrase ‘boat hire’, you’ll not only advertise on ‘boat hire’ but also on ‘boat hire for beginners’, ‘cheap boat hire’, etc.
Broad search
We probably don’t need to tell you that Google is a smart search engine. But the fact that you can also harness this intelligence through search engine advertising may well be new to you. By using broad match, you’re not just advertising on an exact term, but also on related terms. If you advertise using the term ‘boat hire’, your ad will also appear for searches such as ‘cheap boating’ or ‘sailing activities’.
Defining the target audience
To run successful search engine advertising campaigns, you need to know who your target audience is. To do this, you carry out target audience research: you analyse demographic data and, if necessary, create a persona. By clearly defining your target audience on paper, you’ll also know how to position yourself. Formulating your objectives becomes easier, as it’s clearer what your target audience wants and, consequently, how you as a business can grow. It is important to keep your target audience in mind not only when advertising on search engines, but also in all other communications your business undertakes. This helps you build a strong connection with your target audience, which ultimately leads to customer loyalty.
Targeting
Why is defining your target audience important for search engine advertising? Well, not everyone needs to see your adverts: you’ll get the best results from the adverts shown to your target audience. Fortunately, with SEA, you’re in control of who sees your adverts: via your Ad Manager, you can specify exactly who will see them. If you’re targeting multiple audiences, make sure you create separate targeting sets. Targeting is very useful, as it not only affects the text of your advert but also the type of advert. For example, display advertising will work better for a younger target audience than for an older one, as younger people use the internet more frequently.
SEA strategy with campaign structure
Before you start with search engine advertising, it is important that you act on the basis of a strong SEA strategy. We have already mentioned the importance of the right keywords, but these words alone are not enough. There are other questions that need answering, which together form a strategy that will serve as the foundation for you to conquer the market. We’ve listed the most important questions for you! Once you’ve answered these questions, you can easily translate them into a campaign structure. Through your Google Ads manager, you can easily manage various campaigns and, as it were, fill in the answers to these questions. By creating different campaign groups, you’ll have a clear overview of which actions yield which results: this means you can easily replicate the successes of one campaign in another.
What is a realistic budget?
In search engine advertising, you’ll encounter various bidding strategies. Each of these manages your budget differently, so you need to carefully consider how much of your total budget you want to allocate to SEA. Naturally, a higher budget means better results, but investing money in other services is also advisable.
What are the competitors doing?
In your competitive analysis, we examine the behaviour of your competitors. It is important to take this into account, as you want to carve out a unique position for yourself. Of course, it is good to compete with rivals for key search terms, but you should also try to focus on other search terms that make it easier for you to appear at the top of the rankings.
Can I combine other services?
Because search engine advertising places you at the top of Google’s search results, it is a highly suitable service for cross-media use. In your strategy, you explore the possibilities this offers: first, you consider which other services you wish to utilise, and then how you can link them together. For example, link to a page where your social media profiles can be found, so that these also benefit from your Google adverts.
Outsource SEA to Traffic Today
By now, you’ll know why search engine advertising is an effective service, but how to ensure it’s implemented correctly isn’t entirely clear yet. Search engine advertising with Traffic Today is the most suitable way to achieve this. We understand all too well how important Google is for a business, but also what Google expects from a business. Successfully meeting customers’ needs within Google is therefore no problem at all for us: in fact, we have proven to be quite successful in this regard over the years.
For us, the focus is not only on your objectives, but also on the way we work towards them. We believe it is important that your adverts do not become a repetitive formula for success, but that they truly represent your business. To bring this to life, we’d first like to get to know you well. That way, we’ll understand your business philosophy and be better able to act in line with it. Does this sound like music to your ears? Great – we’d love to work with you. Get in touch with one of our Ads specialists now and request an Ads scan straight away.
Frequently asked questions about search engine advertising
Which tools for search engine advertising?
To ensure we can carry out thorough analyses of market developments, we spare no expense on tools. By making smart use of omnichannel strategies, we can clearly identify the opportunities available. Using tools such as Trueclicks and Google Data Studio, for example, we can identify the gaps left by organic search engine optimisation (SEO) and how we can then fill these gaps with search engine advertising. To achieve this, we use tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush to identify the right keywords and Google Analytics to analyse your target audience. This enables us to create the right adverts for you!
What is the difference between SEO and SEA?
The terms SEO and SEA are very similar: not only in name, but also in terms of the ultimate result. The aim of both is to rank as highly as possible on Google. The difference between the two lies in the approach: whilst with search engine advertising you pay to appear at the top, this is not the case with search engine optimisation. This involves adapting your website to the factors that Google takes into account when ranking websites. This service is therefore essentially free of charge, but it does not guarantee results.
How much does search engine advertising cost?
The Google Ads campaign is set up based on keywords relevant to your business. When someone types a keyword into Google, your advert appears. You only pay when someone clicks on your advert.
The cost of outsourcing search engine advertising depends on the work we are to carry out. We can undertake both support tasks and manage the online strategy. Search engine advertising is an ongoing process, requiring us to carry out monthly tasks to achieve the highest return on investment. We work with clients who have a marketing budget of at least €1,250 per month. Book a no-obligation consultation with our adviser to discuss the costs.
The cost of outsourcing search engine advertising depends on the work we are to carry out. We can undertake both support tasks and manage the online strategy. Search engine advertising is an ongoing process, requiring us to carry out monthly tasks to achieve the highest return on investment. We work with clients who have a marketing budget of at least €1,250 per month. Book a no-obligation consultation with our adviser to discuss the costs.
What is the aim of search engine advertising?
The aim of search engine advertising is to reach your target audience quickly and easily by appearing at the top of search results. You should choose this option if you want to drive more visitors to your website and generate more revenue straight away.
Want to get the most out of your advertising budget?
Are you curious about the possibilities of search engine advertising for your website? Please feel free to contact us for a no-obligation chat. By phone, online or in person? Just let us know what suits you best.
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