The Google Adwords system is an excellent way to start marketing a new website on the Internet quickly, especially in the early months after a launch when exposure on the “natural” listings of Google is poor (when your new website is in the theoretical Google “sandbox”).
The Google Adwords system generates the “Sponsored Links” ads that you see on the right hand side or top of the results page when you do a search on Google. They have the following benefits:
- Can be managed in real time, i.e. changes are put live immediately.
- Your website appears in the first page of Google, if your budget is suitable.
- The ads can be targeted to specific geographic areas, and times during the day and week.
- Monthly spend can be capped.
- Full reporting is available, allowing you to manage the campaign properly and fine-tune as required.
- The results of the campaign can provide excellent keyword success data, which can be fed back into your overall search engine marketing efforts.
For established websites, and the more savvy amongst you, Adwords also provides the opportunity for exposure on Google for keywords and phrases that your website doesn’t naturally perform well for on the Google organic results. So you can complement your success in the Google organic listings by targeting a Google Adwords campaign at the phrases your website doesn’t naturally do well with.
How does it work?
The basic model is reasonably simple. You create a campaign in the Adwords system, and are able to create variations of the campaign (called Adgroups). So if you are selling website development services (the overall campaign) you might have an Adgroup within that campaign for brochure websites and another Adgroup for shopping websites. Furthermore you can create Ad Variations within an Adgroup as well. These are what actually display on Google (ie the “Ads”) and allow you to try different variations of your ad so that you can see which ones are more successful (i.e. attract more clicks to your website).
Finally you set a pool of keywords to be associated with your Adgroups. These are essentially the phrases for which your ads will appear on Google when someone does a search. So people search with phrases, if the phrase matches one of your phrases then your ad will appear. If your ad attracts eyeballs, then the searcher may click on your ad and be taken to your website, thus driving leads to your website. You pay Google when someone clicks on your ad. (OK you experts out there, I know it’s a bit more complicated than that…)
Costs for Google Adwords:
The costs for your Google Adwords campaign depend on what keyphrases you lodge against your Ads. More generic ones are more expensive (because there is more competition for them), so you can try more targeted or niche phrases which can keep the cost lower and drive more targeted traffic to your website. Luckily Google allows you to run “predictions” about how much various phrases might cost you, before you set things live on Google, so that you can plan your budgeting. The good news is that you can cap your monthly spend to a set amount, and tell Google whether to spread your budget out over the month (and so your ad exposure is spread over the month), or to burn it up all at once.
Finally:
Many people tell me that Google Adwords campaigns just don’t work. They do! But you’ve got to manage Google Adword campaigns them properly, dig in and think about how your campaign is performing on an ongoing basis. Look regularly at the impressive amount of data that is presented to you and make informed adjustments to your campaign regularly. Do your keyword research: Google provides a free tool right there in your Adwords account for you to do that. Do this and you will see your Adwords campaign flourish, generating good quality leads with great Return On Investment.
BTW:
By the way, use that data will you? If your Adwords campaign demonstrates some really popular and relevant keywords used in searches, then feed those keywords back into your website so that it can start to perform well for those phrases in the organic listings.
Author: Ashley Bryan
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This comment was originally posted on Twitter