I’ve been involved in Internet marketing, to varying degrees, since 1995. Although that sounds like a lot of experience, it pales in comparison to the throngs of true Internet marketing professionals who make their living based on placement, clicks, and keywords. Not to say I don’t know what I’m doing, but as with any profession, there are always tips and tricks that are passed down and learned and subsequently shared with others. In my case, AdWords is something that I have avoided until recently and thought I would share some of the things I found out during my trials and tribulations.
Let’s start with a couple of basic introductions. AdWords is a Google tool that allows advertisers to pick key words or phrases that will trigger their ads to appear. There are many tools that assist with generating effective keywords, and those will be covered in another posting. Once you choose your trigger words and write a small ad or banner, you then place bids on those words and phrases which indicate the maximum amount you are willing to pay a display medium (website, Google search results) per click on that ad. The more popular the word or phrase, the more expensive it is. Your ads are displayed on Google search results and websites that subscribe to Google AdSense placement. “What is that?” you ask. Well, look at the websites you visit, even esourcedevelopment. AdSense ads are a great way for website owners to make a few cents every time someone clicks on the ads displayed on their page. It also fills the page with relevant information which makes your site more professional and attractive to site visitors.
In our example, let’s say we have a product that is a credit card protective sleeves. I know, it’s a BS product, but it will work for purposes of this demonstration. We create a landing page for people to order our product from and have registered the name creditcardprotector.com (if that site really exists, I better get a little some-some on the back-end). Then you must go to google.com/adwords. If you already have a Google ID, like for Google checkout, you can use that. Setting up your account means that you provide a credit card for billing and have access to the keyword placement tools. After that, we got our product, we got our site page, we got our Google AdWords account, now all we need is visitors!
First thing, let’s think up some keywords to use in our AdWords campaign. Don’t get all excited and start throwing out every word that is even remotely associated with your product because you will go broke. Your daily AdWords budget limit will be met immediately with no quality clicks to show for it. “But, gee, Al,” you may be thinking to yourself, “Isn’t the goal to get people to click?” Yes, it is, but we want quality clicks, not quantity. There are 5 basic keywords and variations you want to use:
”PRODUCT NAME”
“PRODUCTNAME”
”PRDUCTNAME COM”
”PRODUCT NAME REVIEW”
”PRODUCT NAME SCAM”
And that’s about it! Using our example product, we might create keyword phrases like:
”credit card protector”
“creditcardprotector”
“creditcardprotector com”
“credit card protector review”
“credit card protector scam”
Notice the quotes around the phrases? They aren’t just for this example, you want to place quotes around all of your keyword phrases. Why? Again, because without them you will go broke. Without the quotes your ad will show (and be clicked on) by any schlep searching for “credit card,” “review,” or “scam.” I can hear it again… “But Al, as long as people are clicking, isn’t that good?” NO. Bad dog. No biscuit. Remember, our goal is quality, not quantity. Some guy looking for a low interest credit card may see your ad and think “What the heck is a card protector,” only to click off your site after seeing what it is and thinking “Oh…OK.” Sure, you may get an occasional sale, but wouldn’t you rather have a click-through from a guy that is actually searching for “credit card protector?”
In part 2, we will actually set up these words in our Google AdWords account and set daily limits and bids for each phrase.
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