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Inside Google
AdWords
by: Jennifer Ambrose
For those unfamiliar with Google Adwords, they are the
advertisements which appear in a table to the right side of
your screen when searching Google. These are paid advertising
spots where advertisers bid on keywords to determine their ads
placement.
The most clear benefit of the Google Adwords system is that
you only pay for click throughs, so in other words, you are
paying to have each visitor come to your site.
On the flip side of this, Google Adwords is not going to
generate you any free traffic such as a search engine might.
Google does have guidelines where all ads must receive a
minimum percentage click through or underperforming keywords
are removed.
Also, don't think that you can be tricky with your wording
and trick visitors to read your ad and click. There are real
associates of Google, not robots looking at each ad, and then
each site, to ensure that what you are advertising in your ad
is what is reflected on your website.
The staff also will not accept any ads where symbols are
used instead of words. An example of this might be trying to
use a "+" sign to save on character usage over using the word
"and." They will not allow this and will disable your ad until
you have fixed the problem. Going along with this, they will
also forbid you from using any abbreviations.
There are also no pop-ups allowed on the site that you are
sending your visitors to. Don't try to sneak in an exit pop-up
because they check for that too, and your ad will be disabled
if they find one.
Opening an account is really easy to do. There is a very
short sign-up process where you open your account, select your
keywords, submit your ad, set your daily budget, set your
maximum click through rate and submit your payment to Google.
HINTS:
When you submit your headline or title make sure that it's
a short phrase that includes your main keyword. This is going
to be what the searchers look for first. Some might not even
read your ad, they may click on your ad because of the
headline alone.
As a rule of thumb, try and secure position 2 or 3 when
bidding on keywords. Position 1 will get you more clicks, but
they are going to be people who just click on the first
relevant link they find, and may not be the best buyer for
you.
Don't forget about using common misspellings in your
keyword list.
If you are finding that you are getting a lot of visitors
to your site, but no buyers try and include a negative
qualifier within your Google ad. The most widely used negative
qualifier is going to be price. If the product that you are
selling at your website is $30, list that within your ad, and
it will stop people coming to your site who are only
interested in free information.
There are a lot of pluses and minuses to using Google
Adwords. The only way you are really going to know if this
type of system will work for you, is to give it a try. You can
turn on and off your ad campaigns with the click of a button,
so there is very little risk. Remember, don't set your daily
ad budget too high until you see if the visitors are
converting into buyers.
You can setup your account with Google AdWords at:
http://adwords.google.com
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