AdWords 101

If you don’t know about Google AdWords, get ready to learn about one of the most powerful tools on the Internet. Google Adwords is the best way of promoting your business and your site to the largest community of Internet users in the world, the users of Google?s search engine and Google’s search partners. There is no greater opportunity on the Internet to attract and hold traffic to your site through paid advertising. But it you are not firmly grounded in the principles of what Adwords is and how Adwords works, you won’t get the results you need, and you may even waste your advertising budget.

Step #1 for creating ads that get traffic to your site from Adwords is to make sure you know what your potential visitors are looking for. It’s not all about keywords. You need to get into your visitors’ heads to know what they are looking for when they visit your site.

Do some basic keyword research. List the keywords that are already on your site. Be objective about how the content on your site will attract customers and motivate them to come back or to make purchases. Use WordTracker and Keyword Discovery to find more keywords. Start brainstorming a list of words and phrases that you think potential customers will look for on the net. Make the longest list you possibly can. You don’t have to whittle it down straight away, but you will find a few high performers that will give you high Click Thru Rates (CTR) and conversions as your Adwords campaign matures.

Don’t try to use all your keywords all at once. After you set up your Adwords account, Step #2 is to begin bringing a manageable list of search terms from your comprehensive list of keywords into your campaign. Create that first ad from the most promising keywords. Write just one more ad with the same keywords but different ad copy to see what really encourages your CTR. Making the ads slightly different helps you establish which wording gets you more traffic for your money. You will repeat this process over and over again as your AdWords campaign matures. You will find small changes in wording, punctuation, and capitalization that bring in incremental improvement?and sometimes dramatic improvement?in your click thrus and conversions.

If there’s a basic rule for Adwords survival, it’s setting your advertising budgets low until you have completed your Adwords testing. Sometimes just $100 a week will get you the data you need to make your site truly profitable. Other times, it takes a lot more than $100 a week to test ads for a broader niche. Either way, always check your returns against your investment. Adwords allows you to do this by inserting values for goals, such as a sale of a product. You will measure conversions to compute whether you have made your money back and by how much.

Always aim to make at least 50% return on your investment. A 50% return will ensure a profitable campaign that allows you to fund expansion of your site and gives you some profits to pocket. Paying attention to CTR and conversion rates makes it possible for you to grow your site from the sales you make with Adwords.