All businesses today need a website and a plan to drive traffic to that website. A popular way to do so is from Google Adwords where you can drive thousands of highly targeted traffic to your website and convert them into paying customers.

Here are 5 tips to get you started on a successful Adword campaign:

Understand how Google AdWords works

Adwords can be a very valuable tool in your business marketing when done correctly and thoughfully. Too many people just plug in the keywords that they think web users will use to find their site and leave it at that. Google has a entire section where you can learn many different aspects of Adwords and how to use it effectively. It may take some time to go through it, but it’s well worth it. Otherwise, you’re going to be paying more in money to learn the ropes of Adwords.

Understand keyword types

There are 3 keyword types that can be used with Google AdWords, and each will affect how your ad is triggered:

Broad Match – example: cotton shirts. This type of keyword is entered using no quotation marks or brackets. When a user conducts a search that contains either word, your ad will be triggered. This type of match is not always as effective as you might like it to be and can attract the wrong type of traffic.?

Phrase Match – example: “cotton shirts” Using quotation marks when entering your keywords will narrow the field a bit. Now, only searches that contain the words “cotton shirts” in that order will activate your ad.

Exact Match – example: [cotton shirts] If you enter your keyword with brackets surrounding them, a user must type the exact phrase into the search box. This type of match will allow you to narrow the focus of your campaign and your ad will only be triggered by an exact match.

Relevancy

Your Title tag and Body of your ad should contain the keyword you are targeting. This will get your ad placed as high as possible while enjoying the lowest cost. Google wants to make sure they are serving targeted traffic so more web users will click on the ad. YOU are trying to make the ad as relevant as possible because you only want targeted traffic clicking on the ad. If your ads aren’t relevant, then you will be paying for untargeted traffic to come to your website, and more than likely, they aren’t going to buy anything from you.

Landing Page

This is where Google will make a “Quality Score” of your ad. If you chose the keyword “cotton shirts”, your Title tag should be “Cotton Shirts For Less”, and then the body of your ad would say “Purchase cotton shirts at wholesale price”. Your landing page should include the keyword “cotton shirts” in multiple places so Google knows that the page is relevant to the ad. Google believes that your landing page must be true to your AdWords copy. This will also decrease your price per click in Adwords and with the extra money you can have more pay per click campaigns to drive even more traffic to your site.

Monitor, Review, and Update

This is probably the most important aspect of any campaign. Some things will work, others will not. It’s absolutely imperative that you monitor your keywords and landing pages to see how many people are converting. You want to make sure to keep your keywords as inexpensive as possible while maximizing conversions.

Adwords is a science to be learned, but with the proper time learning how to use it effectively, your business will see massive success in your pay per click campaigns!

Tags: adwords, google adwords, online marketing, pay-per-click, ppc, seo

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.