Online advertising has rapidly grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, with Google’s recent $900 million deal to advertise on MySpace an example of it’s huge demand and popularity.
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is the most cost-effective form of advertising so it’s vitally important that all aspects of advertising campaigns are managed to achieve maximum return on investment (ROI). Google AdWords is the most popular method of PPC and is an excellent way of increasing targeted website traffic, providing the advertising costs can be justified by ensuring the clicks turn into sales.
Nobody gets it all right the first time and most of the best advertising campaigns are developed over time. Below are 10 tips to get started and help to get the best performance from your Google AdWords advertising budget.
1) Keyword selection
Good keyword selection is essential to ensure you can attract users who are interested in your products and with the potential to become customers. It can be very easy to get carried away and select the most popular keywords recommended by Google AdWords and the highest in terms of clicks from the estimated traffic tool. But remember traffic is not your main goal, a successful advertising campaign is based on bringing quality traffic with the potential to bring sales to your site at a cost that can achieve a positive ROI. To help keep track of the performance of your ad campaigns it is useful to manage the selected keywords in multiple AdGroups and this will also help you to use ad text specific to each keyword.
2) Where to target your ad's
The best performing campaigns generally target the search network which for AdWords means that your ad will appear on Google and it’s network of partner websites. You also have the option of advertising on Google’s content network which includes all AdSense publishers, clicks from the content network can normally be attained at a lower CPC (cost per click) but this generally doesn’t convert into sales as well as the search network and is more likely to receive fraudulent clicks. The content network is normally a good option if your main objective is increased traffic as opposed to converting sales.
It is also important to define the geographic locations you are targeting to produce sales from. If you are a business which only delivers within the UK there is no need to advertise your website outside of the UK as this would be a waste of a large proportion of your clicks. In some cases it is essential to restrict your ad’s visibility further than country level by setting a city or region to advertise in, for example a taxi company in the Oxfordshire region would only want to advertise to users within areas they pickup from.
For companies targeting worldwide users it can be advantageous to create individual AdGroup’s or campaigns for each country. This way sales can be tracked in order to define which countries are producing sales and which need working on or should be dropped.
3) Reviewing your competitors
Define what makes your company stand out from your competitors and try to find a niche in your market that users will be interested in. If your ad can stand out from the rest it is more likely to be clicked. Another good method to stand out from your customers would be to find out if they display their prices within the ad, if this is the case and your prices are lower it would be a good idea to display them as well to entice the user to click your ad instead.
4) Using effective matching options
Most optimized campaigns would use the exact matching option on all keywords to ensure that they are only bidding for that individual search. This is effective for ensuring you are only bidding on relevant keywords and improve your click through rate (CTR). CTR is a very important factor in deciding the cost per click (CPC) so the higher rate you can achieve, the less you are likely to pay for that keyword.
Using only the exact matching option can have the negative effect of only receiving a low amount of traffic as you are only targeting a specific audience. In addition, to attract a wider range of searches it may be worth adding the phrase and broad match versions of your exact match keywords. As these are less specific they are likely to achieve a lower CTR and conversion rate but will increase the amount of clicks. It is important to use the negative matching option effectively with phrase and broad matches to filter out any unrelated searches.
5) Managing your budget
In order to get the best from your daily budget I would suggest on starting with a low budget to begin with. This way you can ensure you are bidding on the right keywords at a cost-effective price without losing too much money. I would strongly suggest defining a separate value for content network bids as these should be achieved at a lower value than the search network. Once a positive ROI is being achieved you can then think about increasing the daily budget.
6) Choosing your Ad Text
Entice users to your site with a genuine interest in your business by describing what you can offer and why it can benefit them. Whenever possible it is also useful to raise your quality score by including the keywords within the ad title or description and by using action keywords such as register, sign-up or browse so that the user knows what to expect on the next page. A high quality score will help to improve the relevancy of your ad which can result in your ad ranking higher than a competitor with a larger bid. For large accounts a quick trick is to use {KeyWord:Default Text}, this will insert the keyword from your AdGroup into your ad text providing that it is within the character limit, otherwise it will use the default text defined.
7) Selecting your destination URL
The Google AdWords algorithm now reviews the quality of landing pages so it’s more important than ever to ensure your destination URL is relevant to the keyword bid upon. It is also important to make sure that the user is directed to the webpage they expect to see, rather than being taken to the homepage and having to find the right page for themselves.
8) Conversion tracking
In order to monitor the performance of your account it is important to track conversions so that you can review where sales or leads are coming from to help manage the campaigns based upon results. A cost per conversions value will then be displayed within your reports which will help to make key decisions (such as changing bids, dropping keywords or ad variations) easier. If you are running any other, non-AdWords, advertising campaign you can also set-up a cross-channel to track the conversions from these as well, for example Yahoo! Search Marketing. Research has shown that Google users are generally more likely to purchase online and this is normally reflected with a greater conversion rate from AdWords, although there are advantages to advertising using both methods such as exposure to a wider range of websites and lower CPC’s.
9) Using Reports
Once your campaigns are up and running you'll need to monitor it's performance, making the most of the Google AdWords reports to help make decisions based upon results. The reports will help to visually display detailed statistics on your clicks to show where the ad's are performing well and areas which can be improved upon or should be dropped. Examples of improving the accounts performance are by monitoring conversion rates, cost per conversions, CPC's and CTR's of both keywords and ad variations, ensuring the CPC is being achieved at the lowest possible value while still attaining the desired amount of traffic and most importantly making sure the account is cost-effective.
10) Website analysis tracking
Once your campaigns are up and running you will need to monitor how your users view your website. Google Analytics is excellent for it’s AdWords integration, displaying user stats to find out the users location, search engine, search term and the most popular links clicked on your webpage.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
By: Kevin Gibbons
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Getting Started With Google Adwords
Google and their pay-per-click advertising program Google Adwords are one of the most dominating search advertising mediums on the internet today. Today Google controls a majority of the searches on the web, generating over 70% of the clicks to web sites on the internet.
Because of this dominance in the search engine wars Google’s pay-per-click engine Adwords has taken internet marketing to heights previously unheard of before. Google Adwords matches sellers with buyers quickly and easily and if the savvy internet marketer can take advantage of this they can make good money.
What is Google Adwords?
If you are looking for one of the most promising and profitable marketing opportunities on the internet today then Google Adwords may fit the bill. It is a pay-per-click advertising system that leverages the capabilities of the most popular search engine in the world today. It allows internet marketers to advertise goods and services through affiliate programs based upon the amount they bid for certain searched for keywords and phrases.
If you look at the right hand side of the Google search window in your web browser those listings are the Google Adwords ads. These are also known as “sponsored links” and internet marketers have paid to have their ads with links to their web sites shown here whenever that particular keyword or phrase is searched on Google.
How does Adwords bidding work?
Internet marketers bid on their keywords and phrases using the Adwords system. Bids can start as low as 5 cents per click. As an example a business selling laptop computers may bid on the phrases “laptops for sale” or “cheap laptops” or any variation on those words. The point being that it pays to be as specific with your keywords as possible.
Where an ad is placed within the sponsored listings depends on several factors. How much is bid, the click through rate on the ad itself and the quality score of the web page the traffic is sent to. Bids can range anywhere from 5 cents per click to $50 or more, it just depends on the type of product you are selling and the return you get per sale compared to the click through rate. The top listings usually have the highest bids, but they also have the best ad copy and return on investment.
How to get started using Google Adwords.
If one is looking into using the Google Adwords system as an advertising tool, he can read the guidelines and the terms of conditions on the Google website. There are a few steps you can tackle on how to start using Google Adwords.
The first step is account creation. Google will guide you through this process. However, there are several things that one should take into consideration when creating an account. You should take into mind the different strategies that you may want to employ right from the start in terms of the selection of key words and the combinations of these words to be able to maximize the returns on investment using Google Adwords.
You should also target the right market in terms of selecting the right language and countries in which you would want your ads to appear. If you are selling products which would be of no use to citizens of certain countries or if the option of exporting the products is not available, you will want to limit the countries in which your ads are shown. You don’t want to get charged by generating clicks from people who do not belong to the target market.
The creation of an AdGroup is also a basic step in using the Google Adwords system. One should be able to conceptualize and design an enticing advertisement and select the right combination of keywords.
Writing the advertisement.
You will be given 3 lines in which to write your ad. There is a line for your title and 2 lines of actual ad body that you can use. The title line is composed of a maximum of 25 characters and the 2 lines of ad body can be a maximum of 35 characters. Because of these limitations it is important that you choose your words carefully for maximum effect.
Linking to what you are selling.
Your ad should catch the attention of your prospective buyer. If you have done this well and they click your ad you want to link them to the most appropriate page of the web site where your product is located. You don’t just automatically want to send your prospective buyer to your home page. If they are ready to buy they do not want to have to search through your web site to find what they want. Send them to the product page right away and if you have done your research and ad creation correctly you will be rewarded with a sale.
These are the basic steps needed to get started using Google Adwords. While there is a learning curve there are many resources available on the internet explaining how to use Google Adwords effectively and efficiently.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
By: Andrew Bicknell
Because of this dominance in the search engine wars Google’s pay-per-click engine Adwords has taken internet marketing to heights previously unheard of before. Google Adwords matches sellers with buyers quickly and easily and if the savvy internet marketer can take advantage of this they can make good money.
What is Google Adwords?
If you are looking for one of the most promising and profitable marketing opportunities on the internet today then Google Adwords may fit the bill. It is a pay-per-click advertising system that leverages the capabilities of the most popular search engine in the world today. It allows internet marketers to advertise goods and services through affiliate programs based upon the amount they bid for certain searched for keywords and phrases.
If you look at the right hand side of the Google search window in your web browser those listings are the Google Adwords ads. These are also known as “sponsored links” and internet marketers have paid to have their ads with links to their web sites shown here whenever that particular keyword or phrase is searched on Google.
How does Adwords bidding work?
Internet marketers bid on their keywords and phrases using the Adwords system. Bids can start as low as 5 cents per click. As an example a business selling laptop computers may bid on the phrases “laptops for sale” or “cheap laptops” or any variation on those words. The point being that it pays to be as specific with your keywords as possible.
Where an ad is placed within the sponsored listings depends on several factors. How much is bid, the click through rate on the ad itself and the quality score of the web page the traffic is sent to. Bids can range anywhere from 5 cents per click to $50 or more, it just depends on the type of product you are selling and the return you get per sale compared to the click through rate. The top listings usually have the highest bids, but they also have the best ad copy and return on investment.
How to get started using Google Adwords.
If one is looking into using the Google Adwords system as an advertising tool, he can read the guidelines and the terms of conditions on the Google website. There are a few steps you can tackle on how to start using Google Adwords.
The first step is account creation. Google will guide you through this process. However, there are several things that one should take into consideration when creating an account. You should take into mind the different strategies that you may want to employ right from the start in terms of the selection of key words and the combinations of these words to be able to maximize the returns on investment using Google Adwords.
You should also target the right market in terms of selecting the right language and countries in which you would want your ads to appear. If you are selling products which would be of no use to citizens of certain countries or if the option of exporting the products is not available, you will want to limit the countries in which your ads are shown. You don’t want to get charged by generating clicks from people who do not belong to the target market.
The creation of an AdGroup is also a basic step in using the Google Adwords system. One should be able to conceptualize and design an enticing advertisement and select the right combination of keywords.
Writing the advertisement.
You will be given 3 lines in which to write your ad. There is a line for your title and 2 lines of actual ad body that you can use. The title line is composed of a maximum of 25 characters and the 2 lines of ad body can be a maximum of 35 characters. Because of these limitations it is important that you choose your words carefully for maximum effect.
Linking to what you are selling.
Your ad should catch the attention of your prospective buyer. If you have done this well and they click your ad you want to link them to the most appropriate page of the web site where your product is located. You don’t just automatically want to send your prospective buyer to your home page. If they are ready to buy they do not want to have to search through your web site to find what they want. Send them to the product page right away and if you have done your research and ad creation correctly you will be rewarded with a sale.
These are the basic steps needed to get started using Google Adwords. While there is a learning curve there are many resources available on the internet explaining how to use Google Adwords effectively and efficiently.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
By: Andrew Bicknell
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