Advertising with Google AdWords

It isn't free, but it's effective. If we know how to use it, that is.

With Google AdWords, we're only a few minutes away from seeing a potential increase in traffic to our sites. We could gain a lot of traffic or just a little. And how much traffic we gain isn't completely related to how much we pay.

We could also lose a little or a lot of money.

Let's look at how we can be in the group of people who make money using AdWords.

How Google AdWords works

We've all seen the AdWords ads at the right of Google search results. The same types of ads appear on various websites. The people whose ads appear next to search results chose to have them appear next to those results. They chose to have them appear on websites containing the keywords they selected. They pay varying amounts (CPC or cost per click) when people click on their ads, which link to their sites.

Ads that are clicked on more often appear higher on the list. We can get more click-throughs by writing better ads, and we can get a better ad placement by getting more click-throughs. Which means that our success with AdWords or lack thereof is tied to our efforts as well as to how much we spend.

In addition, AdWords has these advantages over other types of advertising:

• Speed of setup: We can set up an AdWords account and be advertising our products and services within minutes.
• Ease of use
• Flexibility: We decide how much to pay, we can stop an ad when we want to, we can set daily limits of how much to spend, and we can easily change our ads and keywords.
• Ability to target ads: AdWords ads appear only when people are searching for keywords that we've bid on or at sites using those keywords.

What do we need for a Google AdWords campaign?

To start, we need a product or service to sell, of course, and a website for it. The product or service may be ours or an affiliate's.

Whatever we want to sell, chances are that dozens of people are already selling something similar. We'll be more successful if we find a niche that the market isn't saturated with. It's also advisable to do our research before advertising. We want to be sure that there's enough demand for the product or service we want to offer.

With the above, we can sign up for an AdWords account. But with a little more knowledge, we can earn more money.

Key steps to advertising with Google AdWords

The CTR (click-through rate) will be higher with attention paid to these steps.

Research and select keywords

Specific keyword terms offer a better chance of success than general ones do. If you sell pet products, for example, why try to compete with everyone else who's bidding on "pet products"? Instead, compile a list of specific, relevant terms that people search for. For example, "dog clothing" or "dog apparel" is more specific. Terms such as "large dog apparel" or "designer dog clothing" will bring even more targeted visitors.

Alternative terms such as "clothing" versus "apparel" are one variation to consider. So are words that can be spelled different ways or that may be misspelled, as well as singular versus plural forms and other word form variations.

Product listings, site traffic statistics, and our imagination can provide ideas for keywords. For more ideas and to see often they're used in searches, the following tools are useful. Except for the last one, they're free.

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool suggests more specific keywords, related matches, and terms that people who searched for your keywords also searched for.
• Overture Suggestion Tool displays how often terms were searched for in the past month.
• Digital Point Solutions Keyword Suggestion Tool provides both WordTracker and Overture search data.
• Wordtracker has pricing per day, week, month, or year. It provides keyword combinations, how often they're searched for, and how many other sites are competing for those terms.

How many keywords should we advertise with? It isn't uncommon for keyword campaigns to have up to a thousand keywords. Selecting a hundred or so might be more realistic for smaller campaigns.

Write effective AdWords ads

Our aim is to get people to click on our ads. They may look at each ad for only a second or two and then continue to the next ad. We need the right words, the right information, and the right order of information. Most of all, our ads need to be relevant to the keywords.

Look at the keywords from the point of view of searchers. What exactly do those searchers want to find? What details are important to them?

The most important information should appear first. Use the keywords in the title and in the description. Mention features and benefits such as discount pricing, selection range, or free shipping.

Write different ads and track the CTR for each ad to see which ones are more successful. Fine-tune the others.

Optimize your landing pages

After we get people to click on our ads, our next aim is to get them interested in our products or services and to buy. Again, the most important factor is relevance. If people click on our ad expecting to find designer dog clothing, we'd better make sure that the landing page has details about designer dog clothing. It should provide information about the features and benefits in the ad that caused people to click on it to find out more. The content should be clearly organized and easy to read, with a call to action, such as "Add to cart" or "Read more."

The landing page doesn't need to be — and in most cases shouldn't be — the home page. It should be a page containing specifically what searchers are looking for. It also needs to convince site visitors that we are the company, individual, or source of information that will meet their needs.

Just AdWords?

Other methods of advertising can work with AdWords. AdWords allows us to test the effectiveness of different ad content and of our site. Once we know what works and what doesn't work, we may want to introduce other advertising methods as well.

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