Google AdWords

[SB]

June 14th, 2006, 3:53 pm

I am really trying to improve the positioning of a website of mine and as a result i thought i might use the Google AdWords feature where they will charge me a maximum amount per month should people click on the ad link i should have appeared on the search engine under certain search words.

I have never used this before up until recently and i thought i might take this opportunity to see what other members on Ozzu thought of this as a means of improving my listing on Google?

The advert currently shows in the UK, although i would love for this to show on American computer searches as well, i am just really unsure about how much i really would like to pay per month. It is already at quite a low amount.

Does anyone have any tips on better ways to use this facility that Google provides? or are there other Google features out there that can help boost the publicity of my site?

June 18th, 2006, 6:34 pm

how many price,where i can do how does it's work told me too!

[SB]

June 19th, 2006, 8:18 am

That reply makes no sense to me. Could you translate? or reword?

June 19th, 2006, 8:56 am

SB wrote:

That reply makes no sense to me. Could you translate? or reword?

Me too. I have no idea what he is trying to say

June 19th, 2006, 9:30 am

Adwords is definitely a way of getting more people to your site, but there are 2 ways of getting google listed - paid ads and natural listing. Adwords is obviously a paid way of doing it, but optimising your site for natural searches is better - if you don't have to pay for it of course it is!

Optimising your site to get to the first page in a standard google search will likely take a couple of months to get going, and depending on how many people you are competing with for top spot, it can be quite difficult, so adwords is a good way to get traffic to begin with.

If you optimise your adwords campaign, you can lower the cost you pay per click, etc. If you sign in to your google adwords account and go to https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en_US there are quite a few useful tips and adwords is fully explained there, so hopefully optimising your adwords will be a little easier.

Hope this helps!

[SB]

June 19th, 2006, 12:24 pm

thank you for the very useful reply gonzoka.

June 21st, 2006, 12:40 am

Also note that signing up for AdWords will NOT have any affect on your natural rankings. Google will not give you any special treatment.

Look out for the content network, you can get lots of un-targeted clicks not to mention fall victim to fraudulent clicks.

gonzoka has the right idea...optimize your campaigns to get the best bang for the buck...ROI.

Also try different type of ads...how the ad is composed can make or break the click thru rate. Create a few different campaigns and test which one is most effective.

Google introduced a feature a few months back that allows you to select individual sites, running adsense, to have you ad appear on. If you find a great site that relates to your ad, and is running adsense (sites that show google ads based on their content) you can click a link at the bottom of their ads to be included on that site. I think this is better than the content network option since you determine if the site is god or bad. There's a lot of sites that just scrape google results and then run more google ads next to that content...it's really lame!

AdWords is all about ROI...if you can get visitors to you site and earn more than you spend then you're heading in the right direction.

Make sure to target your terms on a finite level, don't be too generic.

I read an article last week that gave an example of a site selling back packs and how trying to optimize the site to the word "back packs" would not drive as much targeted traffic as optimizing for a specific type or brand of back pack. They stated that someone searching for back packs could be looking for a hiking pack, school back pack...etc...those people are not as far along in the buying process as someone that search for CamelBack back pack. Those people already know what they want and are more likely to buy from you than the generic searcher....let me see if I can find a link to that article I'm sure I'm butchering the whole concept that they were talking about....but you get the idea.

June 21st, 2006, 12:54 am

here's an excerpt from the article:

Choosing the Right Keywords

Often times, people make the mistake of optimizing for very general keywords like used cars or online marketing. Although these terms get lots of traffic, it is very unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traffic produces very low conversion rates because they are not targeted prospects.

For example, if you are selling hiking backpacks, it would be much more beneficial for you to target the phrase 'hiking backpacks' rather than the extremely competitive keyword 'backpacks'. It would be even better to target the phrase 'camelbak commander'. This is a specific type of backpack and therefore will attract more buyers than searchers.

Quote:

more buyers than searchers....what a great concept

In fact, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, 28 percent of searchers will type a product name into a search engine. Nine percent type in a brand name and 5 percent type in company names.

The more targeted your keyword phrase, the more likely they are to buy. A person who types in 'backpacks' may be looking for school backpacks or snowboard backpacks. This lends to useless, un-targeted traffic.

However, a person that searches for a specific brand of backpacks knows exactly what they want and they are much further along in the buying process.

Entire article: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2006/jun/14.html

Check out the authors site at the bottom of the article...claims to offer free ways to increase traffic.

[SB]

June 21st, 2006, 1:26 am

That has been great help phaugh. I have been hesitant to actually start more than one ad campaign because of lack of finances at the moment. The site is also a non-profit site at the moment so i would not be making any income from any of the visitors.

I will admit i have search names like "hiking backpacks" and since last week there have been 251 displays of my most shown item yet there has been no clicks. Overall there has been 481 displays yet nobody has felt the need to click on the advert. In a way this is good as i will be owe Google no money at the end of this month, but not so good for the traffic of my website.

I will restructure my ad campaign based on what this article says and see if i can improve the click count. I will also take a look at that link at the bottom of the article page and find out other ways of improving traffic.

Thank you. You have been a good help, i appreciate this.

June 21st, 2006, 1:33 am

Quote:

I have been hesitant to actually start more than one ad campaign because of lack of finances at the moment.

You can have many campaigns but only keep one active at a time...run each one for a week and then compare the results. The campaigns should target the same terms but the ads should be titled and worded differently. Then you can see what works best. Good Luck

June 22nd, 2006, 5:13 am

Yes - a refinement process - trial and error.

It is similar to adsense publishers experimenting with ad-placement to get visitors to notice the ads.

Adwords campaigns is a similar process of refinement - the aim is to refine the quality of traffic ...and therefore ROI

I wish I had a commercial website to try out adwords with but as I dont, I cannot offer any salient advice on the workings of adwords - but I do read these posts and learn from them.

June 22nd, 2006, 5:37 am

Adwords doesnt improve your search engine. That is pay-per-cick which doesnt help in any other ways.

You need good old SEO work to inprove your position!

June 22nd, 2006, 5:40 am

I believe that if you're just testing which ads are better/worse, you can use just one campaign and add multiple ads, and depending upon your settings, google will offer both randomly at first, then show the most efficient one more than the least efficient one. I believe it will also tell you which is working better etc.

Also, if you're targetting mutliple types of people, you can split them into ad groups rather than campaigns this keeps your budget the same and it will be split between them. This allows for more targetted, relevant ads to get more, and cheaper clicks if done correctly.