Mastering Google AdWords

Many people think that Google AdWords is simple: you create ads, your
ads appear on Google (and content sites), and you attract customers to
your website or affiliate link. I am hear to tell you that it is not
that simple. Building a website for PPC is a much different process
than building a search engine optimized website. Although a profitable
website should be balanced to function well for PPC and SEO, since
with PPC you're spending your hard earned money on traffic, you need
to make sure that your web design is achieving results.

However, if you can understand Google AdWords (and really master it),
you can achieve that best targeted traffic in the world and have the
greatest control out of any other advertising source on the market
today. It is my goal to teach you to master this difficult task in
this chapter, so you can prevent making the same mistakes 99% of
internet marketers make when they start out.

Introduction to Google AdWords

Before you get started, you need to know the nature of a Google
AdWords campaign. First, and I know that what I am going to say might
be controversial, Google AdWords is NOT Pay Per Click. At one time, it
was Pay Per Click, but Google has made significant changes to its
system in the past few years.

The reason Google is not Pay Per Click is because the prices you pay
are not directly related to a set amount or what others are paying,
but rather the amount of traffic you actually send to your website. In
other words, you could be paying $0.50 cents per click one day (for
maybe 10 visitors per day) or $0.10 cents another (for maybe 500
visitors per day). Basically, you're not paying per click, per say,
but per 1,000 impressions. This is called Cost Per Mille (CPM).

The amount of clicks and impressions your ad gets do not solely
determine your cost per click, however. Google determines the price
you pay with a technology called a Quality Score. Not only does it
affect the price you pay, but it also effects the position of your ads
and the amount of impressions people see your ads. The quality score
is made of the following elements (and in my experience, in the
following order):

Your keyword's Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

The more people that click on your ad, the lower you're going to pay
per click. If you are targeting a specific keyword, you should get
your CTR up in the beginning, even if that means going outside your
budget a little, so that you're cost per click will stay low. This is
important so that Google trusts your "relevancy".

Your daily budget

Believe it or not, having a low daily budget will result in a high
cost per click. Sometimes, when I'm first starting out on a campaign,
I will change my daily budget to $1,000 in an effort to get lower
prices on clicks. I know that I will never reach $1,000 dollars
because the keywords I bid on are pretty targeted, but I always watch
my AdWords account all day long in the beginning.

The relevance of the keyword and ad text to its ad group

This is one of the most important things, because it is directly
related to your CTR. Your keywords need to me directly related to your
ad text and each relevant keyword or set of keywords should be
organized into their own ad groups. This is the number one mistake
internet marketer's first make, you must separate all of your ads into
groups. Google will initially charge you more per click if it knows by
past performance of the keyword that it will fail with the ad/keyword
arrangement.

Your landing page quality

Finally, your landing page does make a significant impact on your CPC.
The days of throwing AdWords on Google straight to sales pages are
over, you need to have a content driven website or you will not
survive at this business. Even a small articles section will make a
huge impact on your CPC.

Now, if you dive into Google AdWords right now with no experience
whatsoever, you will most likely loose thousands of dollars, trust me,
I made the same mistakes everyone else had in the beginning and I'd
like to give you some tips to ensure that you don't go broke.

Not having a keyword appropriate display URL

In Google AdWords, there are two URLs: the display URL and the
hyperlink URL. The display URL is restricted to a small length and can
be any URL of your choice (even if it's not the same one you are using
to send the user to). The problem is that most people simple type in
"www.yourdomain.com", which is common sense to do. However, by doing
this, they are missing out on some valuable advertising space.
Remember, Google will bold keywords in your advertisement that the
user searched for, so you need to have the keyword scattered in as
many spots as possible. So, instead type "yoursite.com/YourKeyword" or
"Keyword.yoursite.com". Also, remember to remove the "www" because it
is not necessary and also capitalize beginnings of words in a phrase
or domain name.

Not separating Google Search Advertisements from those on the Content Network

You need to have an entirely different campaign for advertisements
that are used on the Content Network (a.k.a AdSense). You should also
bid differently on the Content Network than you would on the Search
Network. Unlike the Search Network, the Content Network does not place
relevancy based on your quality score, rather, what content is on your
website.

Not turning Optimized Ad Serving off

Google, by default, will serve your ads using their algorithm so that
you maintain your budget and not run through all of your money all at
once. Although it's beneficial, because it automatically determines
the effectiveness on how their served, it's a better idea to turn the
option off so that you can make the decision yourself. Remember,
Google is trying to make money, that is their bottom line.

Not organizing your keywords into Ad Groups

This is the mistake most people make. By default, Google creates one
campaign with one Ad Group and all of your keywords go into that one
Ad Group. The problem you are not able to stay organized so your ads
are created to be vague enough to work with every keyword BAD IDEA! I
recommend having hundreds of Ad Groups if you have to, so that your
advertisement is as targeted as possible. This will lower your CPC,
lift your Quality Score, increase your CTR, and hopefully increase
your conversion rate.

Not split-testing your advertisements

Create two advertisements for every Ad Group. Google will
automatically rotate them and choose the one that performs best.
Continue to change out your lower performing ad for a one better than
your higher performing ad until you achieve the results you're looking
for. You can also turn this ad serving capability off and rotate 50%
of the time and you can almost instantly see which one performs
better.

Not using negative keywords

Negative keywords allow you to not show your ad when the negative
keyword is in the search phrase. This is important when you want to
weed out disqualifiers, such as "free".

Not having a relevant website

So many beginners think they can create an ad, set up a page to
collect e-mail addresses or make a quick sale, and throw AdWords money
at the website and make an income off of it. If you do this, Google
will penalize you almost immediately In fact, if you do not have
relevant content on your website, good luck getting that past Google
because in my experience it ALWAYS lowers your Quality Score. Even
though you're selling a product, it is very important to have a
website full of quality content that people want to read. This could
be fixed by creating a blog on your website that is free and full of
great articles. Just make sure it's updated frequently!

Allowing the campaign to continue when you're not making money

If you're product costs $20, spending more than $20 on one Ad Group is
causing you a significant loss. Keep your conversion rates high by
fixing what breaks quickly. Remember, you could go through a
significant amount of money before profits begin to rake in.

Not split testing your website content

It's amazing how much a headline can make an impact on a sale. Use
Google's Website Optimizer and randomly change content throughout your
sales page to get the best conversion rate.

Finally, the last mistake is giving up

So many beginners quit because they don't understand what they're
doing and they're loosing a ton of money. Don't quit, just ask for
help!

Article Source: http://articlekarma.com

This article can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author's name and all the URLs mentioned in the article and biography must be kept. Written by Andrew J. McClary, of Amazing Design Secrets. www.amazingdesignsecrets.com. How to Design Websites and Make Money Doing It!

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