Adwords is without a doubt, a great way to market your business, website or affiliate product. However, Adwords is a challenge because there is a learning curve. You must first understand that a successful Adwords campaign requires strong marketing copy, research and the proper set up.
First you must become familiar with Adwords and how this advertizing program works. Adwords in essence are the advertisements that you see on the right side of the page when you search for something on Google. These advertisements are displayed based on the exact keywords that you searched for in the search bar.
Within Adwords you are able to set everything from your “Maximum Cost Per Click” to a “Maximum Daily Budget” for your ad campaign. Always remember to start small by setting a daily budget of $5.00 - $10.00 a day, you can always increase it later when you are confident with your ads.
Success with Adwords means a more than just selling products or gaining targeted traffic to your website. Google actually gives you a quality score which is mainly based on how well your ad campaigns perform. No one knows exactly how this quality score is calculated, but I can tell you that performance is the key factor. Having a higher quality score means Google will charge you lower “Cost Per Click” or “CPC” for your ads.
There is a particular way to set up your Adwords campaigns in order to achieve more success. Under “Campaign Settings” you want to have certain options checked and leave other options unchecked. To have a more successful campaign you want to check “Rotate” not “Optimize” next to the label “Ad serving”. By doing so your ads will be displayed more evenly rather than having only the better performing ads shown more often.
This will allow you to truly see how your ads are performing rather than only having the ads with higher “Click Through Ratios” or “CTR” perform well. You do not want to have biased ads and therefore biased data to use in evaluating your campaigns. Next, under the “Networks” heading you want to have only “Google Search” checked, not “Content Network”. You want your ads to be displayed solely through Google searches not any other content network searches or any of Google’s partner sites. This will ensure that the right customers reach your ads keeping your campaigns targeted. Untargeted traffic will result in a lower “Click Through Rate” or “CTR” which will lower your quality score.
Now that you know how to set the settings of your campaigns lets talk about keywords.
There are two great tools for researching your keywords:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and
http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com
These two websites will allow you to see how many people search for particular keywords in one day as well as how much advertizing competition there is for those precise keywords. Once you have selected your keywords for your campaign plug them into Adwords and estimate your ad position and search traffic based on your max cost per click.
Some keywords will not have enough data to provide estimations, however most will be able to generate data. Your ad does not need to be in the number one position, but it needs to be on the first page or approximately within the top eleven positions. The reason for this is that over 90% of Adwords sales occur on the first page or within the top ad positions. This makes perfect sense because consumers are typically not going to buy from an ad on the second, third, or fourth page because their attention or eyes will never travel that far.
Once you have your keywords and campaign successfully up and running go through your keywords at least once a week and delete any keywords that are not performing well. For example if one particular keyword has 0 clicks per 90-100 impressions it is probably a good idea to delete that keyword because it is ineffective and will yield a bad click through rate.
By monitoring your keywords routinely, you will have greater success with your Adwords campaigns and a higher click through percentage which will end up costing you less per click. Always remember to start with a small budget, use strong ad copy that grabs your attention and delete poor performing keywords.
Zachary Gaehwiler is an internet marketer with a passion for teaching others how to be successful online. If having a home based business is a goal of yours you should take the time to visit The Wealth Funnel System. http://www.homebusinessforgood.com 415-676-8214
