Paid advertising such as Google AdWords is a lucrative way to
bring targeted traffic to your website fast. You just need to set up
an account with a small activation fee of $5 and you can start
bidding on keywords and gain ranking in the SERPs on the right side
of the organic search engine listings instantly. Everytime someone
clicks on your ad, you pay Google a few cents or dollars depending
how much you are willing to pay as maximum cost per click(cpc) for
your different keywords.
While it's easy to start advertising on Google AdWords, it's not
easy as just creating an ad, get clicks and sales start pouring in.
Always remember this so that you don't get deceived. Below are 6
strategies for you to get the most out of Google AdWords
advertising.
(1) Getting Clicks
I've experienced it before and the problem most people are
confronted with is to get sufficient amount of clicks that can
convert into a sale for instance. The key to get clicks is to give
people a compelling reason to check out your offer. You don't have
enough room to write a long ad so your primary objective is to get
people to click on your offer among all the rest. Some people might
not even know you are selling something until they click and get to
your site and they don't need to know that because your sales page
is going to do the rest if it has attractive and powerful sales
copy.
(2) Higher Bids
Next important thing is you need to bid high enough so that your ad
appears among the top. I've found that you can still get a decent
number of clicks even though you are on the second or third page of
the search engine results for highly competitive terms. For less
competitive, more targeted and cheaper keywords, you can appear on
the first page, usually the most recommended. It's very important to
test which keywords are most profitable for you in terms of clicks
and conversions. If a keyword isn't getting clicks at all and you
have bid high enough, most probably, your ad is not attractive in
generating clicks. On the other hand, if you are getting many clicks
and no conversion, your sales letter might not be doing its job
properly. Perhaps, you need to tweak it. A sale for every 50 or 100
visitors is generally considered good on the Internet. That's a 2%
conversion for every 50 visitors and a 1% conversion for every 100
visitors. Everything above that is very good.
(3) Creating Different AdGroups
To get the most out of Google AdWords, you need to create different
AdGroups for each keyword and ensure that your keyword is highly
targeted, hence improving your conversion. It's much work than just
slapping one AdGroup, one ad and one maximum cost per click(cpc) for
say 100 keywords. With different AdGroups, you can have different
ads, different maximum cost per click(cpc). One of the main reason
to create different AdGroups, is that you can add your targeted
keyword phrase in your ad, be it the title or the description. It
has been proven that people are most inclined to click on ads that
contain the exact keywords they are looking for, so this is a good
reason for you to create keyword-rich ads.
(4) Keyword Status
With Google AdWords, you no longer have disabled status keywords, on
hold status keywords, trial status keywords and normal status
keywords. You just have active or inactive keywords now. For
inactive keywords, usually you will see a message like this "1
keyword(s) are currently inactive. These keywords are marked in the
status column below. Improve their quality through optimization,
delete them, or raise the keywords' maximum CPCs to the minimum bids
indicated. (Raising the bids will activate the keywords.)"
Next to the inactive keyword, you will see something like "Inactive
Increase quality or bid $1.00 to activate" or "Inactive Increase
quality or bid $5.00 to activate" but it can also be other bid
values. Usually, I just leave it inactive if it costs too much to
activate and I delete it. This new method of keyword bidding
evaluation is much more interesting than the previous method because
most of the keywords are active and showing now, hence better
advertising.
(5) Keyword Matching Options
If you are selling specific products, use exact match and phrase
match for your keywords. With exact match, you just need to put
square brackets between your keywords for eg [sports cars], hence
your ad will only appear to people searching for that exact keyword
phrase. Phrase match is a bit the same as exact match but double
quotes are used instead of square brackets, for eg "sports cars".
This keyword phrase with double quotes will only appear to people
searching for that exact keyword phrase plus any other keyword
combined with sports cars at the beginning for eg "red sports cars"
but not "sports cars red". You also have negative keywords where you
just put a minus sign in front of the keyword that you don't want
your ad to appear for eg -free. All people who type the word "free"
in their searches won't trigger your ads. The negative keywords
applies mostly to phrase match and broad match which we are going to
discuss.
The last one, the broad match, using keywords with nothing around
it, is usually not recommended if you are selling specific products
because you might not get very targeted visitors. For eg, if you use
the keyword phrase "sports cars" as broad match, your ad might
appear for people searching for "sports" or "cars".
(6) Google Search and Content Network
You can also use Google search network such as AOL, Ask Jeeves,
Netscape, Earthlink, Compuserve amongst others to get your ads
appear on them too as well as Google content network, which
represents all the sites that have Google AdSense on them.(You can
read more about adsense at
http://www.zineguru.com/article54.htm and open an account at
http://www.google.com/adsense .) To enable these options, you
just need to put a tick in the checkbox next to your campaign number
and click on "edit settings" at the top of the campaign list. Then
you can put a tick in the checkboxes for search and content network.
In fact, all the AdWords publishers that have allowed their ads to
be syndicated in the content network, will appear in the form of
adsense ads on other webmasters' sites. If your ad is related to a
specific topic, it can appear on some of them. If people click on
the adsense ads, you pay Google according to your maximum cost per
click(cpc), generally a bit less and Google pays a percentage to the
webmaster. This is how it works. Generally, if you let your ads
syndicated on the content network and if your ad is good and your
bid, high enough, you can get interesting clicks. You might even be
the only ad in the adsense space of the related site just because
with the new Google AdSense rules, sometimes the highest paying ad
can be the only one displayed even in a block usually comprised of 4
ads. Hence, it will fill the entire unit giving your ad more space
and exposure. Less competing ads means more clicks for you.
How To Get Started With Google AdWords
If you want to get started with Google AdWords, sign up an account
with them at
http://www.google.com/adwords and conduct an extensive keyword
research related to your business and start bidding on your keywords
with your different AdGroups. You can use Yahoo! Search Marketing
keyword research tool previously known as Overture at
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion.
Due to the fact that your ad is new, you will have to start
generating clicks and increasing its value because Google looks also
at the click through rate(ctr) to help determine your positions.
Your maximum cost per click(cpc) might not be the highest but if
your ad is getting more clicks than your competitors, your position
will shoot up. So a bit smart marketing if you want. You might try
to put a higher bid initially and generate clicks and after awhile,
lower your bids to a reasonable amount because your ad might still
be in a decent position due to the click through rate(ctr). In
addition, I advise you to have a daily budget above the recommended
one to ensure that your ads are displayed everytime. If Google
recommends say $5 daily budget, put it $10 or even $20. This does
necessarily mean that you will spend that amount of money daily
although you can. It's just a precaution to make sure that your ads
are delivered well. You might not even meet the initial $5 if you
are not getting clicks.
Conclusion
Google AdWords is a lot about testing and tracking which campaigns,
AdGroups and keywords are working better for you and in the end, if
you have a working campaign, stick to it and monitor it. Patience is
important in pay per click advertising like AdWords. You might not
see instant results but don't give up until you see some results be
it a sale or an ad producing clicks. But be prepared to blow a few
bucks because this is how you are going to learn ie by testing and
tracking. Google AdWords is an additional source of valuable traffic
and can't be ignored.
Good luck and happy advertising.
About this author
Richard Ball founded Apogee Web Consulting LLC, a full service
search engine
marketing firm, to help businesses succeed on the Internet. Use
the company's
free
search engine marketing tools. Prior to starting Apogee Web
Consulting, Richard was a software developer for America Online. He
has a degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT.
