Get Going with Google Adwords
There’s no bigger internet advertising option than Adwords, and Adwords has made Google an online giant since the’90′s internet crash. Google has grown Adwords to offer an astonishing array of new options for building up traffic and generating website revenue. Largely due to Adwords, website designers have transformed the net from a place for your company gimmick to a profit-making dynamo, but before you get going to your on Google Adwords profits, there are a few basics you need to know.
Signing up for Adwords takes no more than five minutes. You can fund your account with just $10. The first thing you will notice when you log into Adwords is that there are many options. Once you have your account up and running, the first and foremost important task in front of you is to choose your keywords. Don’t spend a lot of time exploring Adwords tools quite yet.
There are excellent services for finding keywords, and you can use them on a trial basis for a week for free. But the best keywords are ones you think up yourself. Why? Users judge your site on content, not keywords. And to a large extent, Google’s page ranking algorithm does, too. Just because a keyword promises to bring in a lot of traffic does not mean you should use it. In fact, overusing any word in your content can hurt you, and hurt you a lot.
Where do you get your list of keywords? Start by brainstorming. Think of a list of keywords your customers would search for, making sure, of course, that they could find the content they want on your site. It’s OK to plug them into the keyword suggestion tool, but just because a keyword pops up that promises to bring lots of traffic, don’t pay for it, unless it matches your site. Many keyword suggestions will not be very useful for you, but anything that stands out as having a high search volume and low competition and also describes your services is a good place to start.
Limit the number of keywords you use in your first campaign. You won’t be able to test your results, at least you won’t be able to test your results very easily, if you start with more than 10 to 15. More than 15 keywords can make it very hard to control your budget while you are waiting to find out if the keywords generate revenue. Next create a single ad, direct, to the point, and suggesting at least one major feature of your site. When you have your keywords, and your ad, then it’s time to set your budget.
Most site owners who use Google Adwords set budgets on a daily rate. This means that if your budget if $100 a day, Adwords will run ads until your $100 is spent, and not run any more that day. The cycle starts again the next day, assuming there are funds or credit for your Adwords account. You can also set your campaign to run just certain hours of the day, if you think you will get more actual customers at one time of day or another. Or you can program your campaign to spend money evenly through the day. Be sure to set your demographic targets, city, state, country, continent, or world, appropriately for your sales goals. If you are selling bikini wax, for instance, you probably don’t want to run your ads in Saudi Arabia.
With Google Adwords, you have total control over how your ads appear. You control when they appear. You control how much you pay for a click and where your ads are displayed. As you learn to use all these tools in ways that drive your traffic and generate sales, Google Adwords will prove to be your most useful tool for growing your site and your profits.
Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.
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