Adwords: Getting Started

There has never been anything even remotely like Google Adwords in marketing before. Run an ad on Google’s page and within minutes you can have people from all over the world going to your site.

Additionally, your ad will only be shown to searchers who are looking for exactly what
you’re offering, and you pay for the ad only when someone clicks on it. Before you place your ad, you will get an estimate of how many clicks you’ll get, and you can change the ad whenever you want, or you can pause/delete it.

This does not come close to comparison with newspaper adverting, in which you must wait for the publication of the paper, and even then, you have no way of knowing how many people will answer the ad. Also, you can’t make changes to it until the next publication date.

Some complain that Adwords is expensive, but this is not the case when they are used effectively.

To demonstrate, go to: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Type “weight loss” (without the quotes) into the box as in the above example. Then type the characters into the box below it. Click on “Get keyword ideas”.

Use the drop down menu on the right, below “Choose columns to be displayed” and click on “Show all”. You’ll see the “Calculate estimates using a different maximum CPC bid:” dialog (top left). (CPC means cost per click) This allows you to input an amount into the box and see where your ad, based on these keywords, would appear and the estimated cost per click.

The position reflects where on the page your ad would appear. Position 1 it means it will be the first add at the top of the page. Sometimes top results are positioned over the natural results on the left hand side of the page.

Follow the above procedure with your own keywords. This will help you determine the best words to use if you are still unsure. This kind of research is vitally important; the difference it will make to your results is enormous.

Once you’ve completed the process, you can run small Adwords campaigns to test your keywords. Find low cost keywords and run them until you’ve had 100 clicks; then, pause the campaign to evaluate the results. You should aim for a 1% conversion rate; one sale for every 100 clicks. This rate should gradually improve over time, but this is a good place to start.

Your cost per click varies depending on more than just your keyword because the overall relevance of the site is a large factor. In other words, the more relevant your site is to your keyword, the less you’ll pay per click. This is where search engine optimization is useful as it helps to ensure your keywords are used where and how they the maximize returns.

For example, if your site is based on “weight loss” and you run an ad around the key word “weight loss workouts”, it’s not as relevant as it would be to a site based on “weight loss workouts” using an ad around the keyword “weight loss workouts”.

If you have a site based on broad keywords like weight loss, ideally you should base your pages on sub keywords or phrases are direct them to individual pages. These should be keywords you know are being used in search and would lead to a page based on weight loss workouts, a page based on weight loss recipes, a page on weight loss after pregnancy etc.

Your ads’ cost is also affected by the ‘click through rate.’ Once live, your ad be shown on the Google search page when anyone searches using your keyword. Your cost per click decreases each time it is clicked on. Google rewards you for using relevant keywords by charging less per click.

Google must calculate the cost, so you don’t know the final cost per click until that calculation has been done, which can take a little time.

To recap, the main point here is that relevance matters, both to your effectiveness in bringing people to the site and in the cost of the ad. Ultimately, relevance is what Google looks for, so to ensure Google sees your ad as relevant, do the following:

· Keywords should be in the ad headline
· Keywords should be in each line of the ad body
· Keywords should be in the URL
· Keywords should be in the landing page headline