How to make Google AdWords work for you

How to get the most out of Google AdWords

There are two things every business needs from a website: visitors and a way for those visitors to be worth real money to the business. Google is hugely profitable mainly because it offers solutions to both problems and makes them two sides of the same coin. Don’t be fooled, Google makes money no matter what you do, but that doesn’t mean their services will make money for YOU. However, here are some tips:

Google AdWords is a service where you can select keywords and have your three-line text ad (with the URL on the fourth line) appear to the far right of search results when people type that keyword (or potentially related) in the Google search engine. . They also display these ads on third-party sites. Depending on your business, you may or may not want to opt out of paying for ads on these third-party sites entirely (it’s easy to disable), but even if you do keep them, you need to create a separate ad campaign to manage them.

First things first, it is essential to understand how Google handles keywords. If you type a sentence in parentheses like [sydney plumber] then Google will show your ad when (and only when) people type that exact phrase into their search engine (without the brackets). On the other hand, if you type “Plumber from Sydney” as a keyword, your ad will also appear when someone types “Plumber from Sydney”, which is probably fine, but also for “Plumber I went to school with in Sydney”, which is probably less well. It’s a minor problem here, but for other keywords it can be a bigger problem.

If you type your keywords without brackets or quotes, Google will show your ads to almost anyone who thinks they’re typing related keywords. In the past, ads based on keywords like Wedding Favors (without quotes or brackets) would show to people who typed in Baby Shower Favors. Even if your business sells both, you’ll probably want a separate ad that doesn’t say “Wedding Favors for Sale,” since that’s not what those people are looking for. That’s why it’s important to use brackets or at least quotes most of the time, and definitely split keyword groups and campaigns.

The trick to getting the most out of AdWords is to split your ad groups into campaigns wisely and use different ads wisely. Throwing as many keywords as you can into a single campaign that shows a single ad regardless of which keyword was triggered is the absolute worst way to go and you’ll end up losing a lot of money. You should separate your keyword phrases logically and have as many different ads as make sense for the different phrases. This isn’t going to be a no-brainer, but it’s not rocket science either. There is also a trick that can help.

Google allows multiple ads to show for each set of keywords. In fact, they even offer to show the one that gets the most clicks most often, but you should probably turn that off and manage it manually. If you have two ads, you want Google to show each one about 50% of the time. Install the Google Conversion Tracking Code on your “Thank You” page to track how many visitors converted to actual customers, or at least leads. Wait until you have a good sample size.

Assuming that both ads are converting visitors into good leads at roughly the same rate, get rid of the one with a lower click-through rate. If your ad gets more clicks per view than your competition’s, Google will actually show your ad higher up the page without you having to pay more. Having ads that get more clicks (as long as those clicks turn into business for you) means paying less for better ad placement, at least on Google. The next step is to make a copy of the top ad (so you have two identical ads) and then make a new ad. Google should show your new ad 1/3 of the time, just enough to give it some exposure and allow it to test its effectiveness, but in the meantime it mostly shows the ad it knows is good. If you want, you can even do this 3:1 or 9:1 or whatever you want, with multiple copies of your best ad showing more often than the one you’re currently testing (and hoping it works even better). . This method allows you to ALWAYS be testing new ads, but without sacrificing too much to do so.