Success with Adwords

Google's Adwords service has brought success to many businesses by providing them with a large amountl of highly targeted traffic from as little as 2 cents per visitor. However, there is probably an equal number of webmasters who have paid for adwords and seen little benefit or have indeed made substantial losses. If the latter applies to you, then the following may be of some benefit -

1. Design

First of all, decide how the layout of your ad will appear. Secondly, you should consider what you want to be included in the title and what keywords or details you wish to present to potential visitors to your site. Ensure that your text will encourage only targeted visitors to your site in order to avoid the expense of wasted clicks. Read through all the Google TOS and guidelines before placing your ad or else you risk having it disabled which can lead to charges.

A fair proportion of internet surfers are still very experienced and click on adwords without even realising what it is. Therefore it is a good tip to list prices in your text, so that you can put off clicks from those who would have no intention of purchasing your product or service in the first place.

2. Brainstorm

Before beginning a campaign it is advisable to write down as many keywords and phrases as you can think of. The most popular terms are likely to have been bid up to a high price, making all your click-throughs expensive. Think about what your prospective customers would type if they were looking for what you were offering.

When you have thought of as many words as you can, glance over your list and rearrange what you have into new, useable phrases. Some will be way off target and discarded instantly, amongst the others choose the one that sounds best and you should have a great sales pitch that won't break the bank.

3. Optimise

Do not go along with google's suggested cost per click. This is always far higher than necessary. Many advertisers do not understand that their click through rate affects their position to the same degree as how much they pay per click. For example, if you pay 5 cents per click for the phrase "page rank" and your competition pays 10 cents and achieves a click through rate of 0.5%, then in order to surpass this person in position you will only need to double your click through rate, to anything above 1%, whilst still only paying half of what they are Generally speaking, I would always recommend paying half of the google suggested figure for your clicks, the exception being if your business is in a highly competitive field in terms of adwords marketing use.

Now that you have your keywords and pricing in place, you should set your daily budget relatively low for a short time, allowing you to see how successfully this campaign is running, without risking too much money. Leave your campaign to run for a few days, and take good care to note which keywords are leading to sales or enquiries.

4. Experiment

You should continually monitor the performance of your keywords and Ad groups and try to change tiny details from time to time, perhaps one word here and there occassionally. Changing even one word can have an affect on the success of your campaign, either positively or negatively. If you find google disabling your ads because you are failing to obtain enough clicks then go back to brainstorming and generate another set of keywords and phrases which may work better for you.

Even if adwords are working supremely well for you, constant monitoring is important. If other people realise you are generating high profits then it is likely they will start to tap into your market. Continue to experiment with your campaigns to ensure you stay at the forefront of your field.

Lee Munson is the webmaster of http://www.info-sales.co.uk, your link building resource site offering lists of free directories and article submission sites.