If you have taken the time to research search engine placement, methods of obtaining a high search engine ranking, or Internet advertising, you have probably heard of Google AdWords as an example of pay per click (PPC) advertising.
How AdWords Works
With PPC, you pay only when someone clicks your ad and visits your website. Google Adwords is a relatively new, but popular form of Internet advertising. This medium displays ads based on words that are entered into search engines, such as Google. For example, if someone were searching for chocolate candy, they would most likely see ads for businesses selling something related to chocolate candy within the search result pages.
Selecting the Right Keywords is Crucial for Google AdWords Success
As you can imagine, Google AdWords is an effective form of Internet marketing,and specifically of search engine marketing because it helps you reach your target audience. However, much like using keywords to obtain a high search engine ranking, Google AdWords will only work if you know what your customers will be searching for.
Google AdWords uses a comprehensive matching program to match ads with keywords entered. To assist their advertisers in controlling the Internet advertising and matching process, Google provides three keyword match types: broad, phrase and exact.
Google AdWords Provides Nearly Instant Feedback
The good part about a Google AdWords Internet advertising campaign is the research and analytics that it provides. Success and failure can be easily measured in a much shorter time frame than with traditional online or offline advertising.
If the keywords you choose for the AdWords campaign do not perform well, then you have learned something very important—you are using the wrong keywords for your market. This will help you fine tune your marketing and search engine placement campaigns, because you will quickly learn which keywords work and which ones don’t. Google AdWords can also give you an idea of how large your market is by providing statistics on the number of times your ad was displayed and the number of times it was clicked.
Google AdWords is Pay as You Go
And don’t worry about throwing good Internet advertising money out the window. With Google AdWords, you only pay for ads that receive clicks. If your ad doesn’t generate many clicks, there’s no financial loss. This makes AdWords a very inexpensive method of determining which words or phrases are popular with searchers and which are not. It can also help you determine if you are writing effective ads. You can then take your findings and apply them to your website and other forms of Internet advertising to achieve greater success. A refined knowledge of good keywords for your target market can help your website perform better in an organic search engine optimization campaign too.
Conclusion: Google AdWords Failure Can Result in Success
Can you turn Google AdWords failure into success? Absolutely. You just need to learn from your mistakes and turn those lemons into lemonade.
Note from Your Guide
The Google AdWords program is, without a doubt, the Cadillac of pay-per-click advertising. Its user interface is more robust and easier to use than any other ad platform I've used, and Google offers a considerable amount of assistance, because they want their advertisers to succeed. The more their advertisers succeed, the more money Google makes.
Not long ago, the AdWords program added what they refer to as a "Quality Score" that, in addition to the amount you are willing to pay for each ad click, is used to determine where your ad is displayed on search engine results pages. Factors in the Quality Score calculation include the relevance of the landing page to your ad, your click-through-rate for the ad (percentage of times that someone clicked your ad as it relates to the number of times your ad was displayed on a page), and the time it takes for your landing page to load. For more information on improving your AdWords Quality Score, see Improving Your Quality Score in AdWords, by my guest Dan Smith.
