Introduction to Google Adwords
Google is considered to be the leading search engine company. It provides powerful services to its customers and for that reason, it has grown into a multi-billion dollar empire. The most profitable solution that Google provides is Adwords, cost per click marketing service.
Google Adwords provides simple, yet powerful solutions for marketing experts, small, medium and big companies. But Adwords, unlike many other PPC search engines, has some exceptional differences that set this service apart from the rest. For example, performance based raking algorithm.
Performance Based PPC Services
The best thing about Adwords PPC engine is that it is performance based cost per click search marketing solution. What it actually means is that no matter how much money you have, you won’t buy the number one spot on Adwords. This system determines relevancy and quality of the ad, based on the analysis of its performance in the past. If your ad gets high CTR, then it will be in the higher position. Even if your competitors are bidding larger amounts per click than you, your ad still might have higher position.
However, that may be true in theory. In reality, you simply must bid much higher amount so you could get into the first page of SERPs in order to be able to compete. Because if you’re bidding 10 cents a click and you’re on the last page, you won’t get any decent CTR, which is important to your overall campaign’s performance.
Bidding high is a must thing to do, but even if you bid top dollar for your keywords, you are still not guaranteed to have a top position. And that’s why Adwords is so popular. It gives even bigger competition to its users. It makes people learn this system and master the art, instead of blindly bidding max dollars.
Deeper Look Into Adwords PPC
Opening an account with Google Adwords costs only $5. Almost anyone can do that. You don’t have to be a professional marketing expert. However, if you’re just learning, be careful and don’t waste all the money fast, because it’s easy to do that with this system.
Inside the account itself, Google gives you a couple of useful tools that help you with the management of your account. First, Adwords enables you to target your message by countries and territories. So you can show your ad locally or to the whole world.
Besides geo-targeting, Adwords gives you ability to show your ads when people search for related information to yours on Google’s partner websites.
Google Search & Content Networks
One other thing that makes Adwords so powerful is that it allows you to specify where you want your ads to appear (Google search results pages, search network, Google Adsense websites).
- Search Results – Your ad appears only on Google search results pages.
- Search Network – Your ad appears on such websites, like AOL, Froogle, About, Netscape, AskJeeves, etc.
- Google Adsense – Appears on websites that use Adsense system.
You may specify that your ad would appear only on Google’s search engine or on other networks too. However, you can expect best results from Google’s search as long as people are most targeted. On the other hand, if you want more traffic, you can show your ad on all possible networks.
Keyword Matching Options
Adwords also offers you to use 3 different types of keyword targeting in your campaign.
- Broad Match – Allows you to display your ad when users search for your keyword in any order. Let’s say you target a keyword “fly fishing”. That means your ad will appear when people search for “fly fishing equipment” or “fishing fly”.
- Phrase Match – Your ad will appear in the order you specify. However, there may be other words in the search query that go before or after your keyword. Let’s say you target a keyword “search engine marketing”. So using phrase match, your ad will appear if people search for “free search engine marketing” or “search engine marketing resource”, but it won’t appear if people search for “marketing search engine”.
- Exact Match – Your ad will appear only when people type in the exact phrase, in the exact order that you specify. If you target a keyword “ppc tips”, and someone searches for “powerful ppc tips”, your ad won’t appear.
More Adwords Management Features
In Adwords you can also specify your daily budget. It’s the amount you want to spend on any of your campaigns each day. When your daily budget reaches the limit, your ads stop showing for that day. However, in many cases, you won’t reach your daily budget. So increasing it might help you get little higher position.
Another useful feature is the ability to separate content network bid prices and Google search bidding prices. So for more targeted clicks from Google’s searches you can increase the bidding price for your keywords. But when your ads are displayed on websites that you don’t know about, like Adsense websites, you can decrease the amount for less related clicks. Adwords also offers conversion tracking that enables you to see how many sales or subscriptions you get from your keywords.
In Conclusion
Google Adwords is very effective system that enables anyone with a website and a budget to advertise products or services quickly on the web. It’s really fast, because you can set up and run your Adwords account within fewer than 15 minutes. Of course, learning this system also takes a little time.
Because of the popularity of this system, it may not be easy to profit very quickly. Adwords is very competitive. And cost per click is very high. Some keywords can be 5 or even 10 times higher than in another PPC marketing giant – Yahoo.
Adwords is a smart system that rewards not only the ones that have a high budget, but those who test and track their marketing campaigns. So be prepared to spend some big sums of money, before you start making any profits.