One of my previous Blogs talked about ways of getting more visitors to your website; one of the most effective methods I suggested was Google Adwords.

This is something you can try yourself with a bit of effort. Allow 2 or 3 hours to set up your account and some time to research your keywords and competitors. There is a lot to learn at first and you will need to monitor and manage your campaign on a weekly basis to make sure you are getting the most out of your budget.

Start with your keywords

Do you know the keywords people are typing into a Google search to find your products or service?

You will probably have some idea which your main keywords are, but to make sure you are picking up all of your most effective search terms, you will need to use software that will give you your top performing keywords.

Google’s keyword tool can help you here and though some of the paid for software will claim that they pick up more relevant keywords, Google’s tool is a good starting place.

Setting up your Google Adwords account

Once you have signed in you can set up:

• where you want your ads to appear – nationally or locally,
• how you want to pay,
• your budget,
• maximum cost per click,
• when you want your ads to appear.

Once this first stage is completed, you can then start your first campaign using your carefully selected keywords.

Create your first Google advert

Have a look at your competition for your selected keywords. You will be competing against their adverts so your own ad needs to stand out.

Include the relevant keyword or keywords in your advert as this is more likely to catch the attention of searchers as it will be relevant to their search, for example: You can write multiple adverts and Google provides statistics to enable you to see which of your adverts is performing best.

A relevant advert will improve the “quality score” of your keyword. The higher your quality score the lower you will have to bid for your keyword, see below.

Bidding price of keywords

Once your adverts are written you can then insert your keywords. I would suggest you always set your keywords up for “Phrase match” or “Exact match” or both, never “Broad match”. You can find out what these terms mean in the Google Help menu.

You will have already set your maximum cost per click for all of your keywords. At this stage you can view each keyword to find out if your keyword has a high enough bid to show on the first page and decide whether to increase the bid so that your related advert will show more often to your target audience. You can automate this process and let Google work out how much you need to pay; however, there is a risk you will be paying more than necessary for your keywords.

Test, measure and evaluate

You need to monitor your campaign at least weekly to ensure your campaign is working for you. Continuous testing of new adverts and adding new keywords or pausing keywords that are not performing is required.

Keyword quality scores

Checking keyword quality scores which measure how relative your keyword is to the advert and the quality of the content on the landing page on your website will affect how much you have to bid for your keyword. If your keyword has a good quality score you will be paying less for your keyword than a competitor who has a low quality score.

Summary

I hope this has given you an insight into how Google Adwords works and don’t forget Bing/Yahoo advertising which can provide another source of traffic to your website.

Pay Per Click advertising provides a controllable and very measurable method of advertising which is difficult to match in traditional methods of advertising such as press adverts.

Warning: PPC advertising is not for every business and you have to make sure that the traffic it brings to your website will convert to enquiries or sales. It is also important to control costs and ensure the value of sales or enquiries covers the cost of your advertising.

To find out more go to our online advertising page

Mark Langston