Tips for Webmasters: How to make money using Google Adwords
Paying for traffic makes only economic sense if you have a website where you sell your own products / services, or if you are an affiliate of such a site. But if you have (or are affiliated with) an e-commerce site, it can be very lucrative using Google Adwords to drive visitors to it. Here are some tips for your first steps with Google Adwords - most of them can be applied to other Pay-Per-Click-Searchengines as well:
- Be specific with your keywords: Don't bid for "tennis" when you're
selling tennis shoes. Remember that you are only interested in potential
customers, you don't want to attract people who are just in some way interested
in the subject. Your best bet is to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who is
looking to buy your product or service. Which search words would you use?
Probably something like "buy tennis shoes", "purchase tennis
shoes", "tennis shop", "tennis shoe store" - you get
the idea. Therefore you should, as a beginner, also:
- Avoid broad matching: Use Google's Keyword Sandbox to see which key phrases
will trigger your ad when you use broad matching, a lot of them will be totally
unrelated to your offer. Remember that you have to pay for every click that
someone makes on your ad, therefore it is better not to show it at all to people
who are not really interested in buying your product. Very helpful in this
regard:
- Use negative keywords: Take all the "bad" keywords / phrases that
you found with Google's Keyword Sandbox tool and include them as negative
keywords in your campaign. In the tennis shoe example this could be something
like "-lessons", "-repairs", or certain brand names that you
don't offer. And don't forget the negative keyword "-free", if you
actually want to sell something.
- Use geo-targetting: If you deliver only to the U.S., show your ads only to
U.S. traffic. If you want to exclude certain areas, you can try also negative
keywords like "-Alaska", this way your ad will not appear, if somebody
is looking for "shoe shops in Alaska".
- Be careful with content targeting and search network: Better turn it off at
first, and try pure Google results alone for a while. Later on you can turn this
options on and see if the additional traffic also results in additional sales.
- Try different creatives: Make a couple of different ads with different landing
pages and compare the results. Note that the landing pages should have the same
content, but with different URLs it is easier to track click through and
conversion rates. But of course you should, in a separate step, also:
- Try different landing pages: Play around with the design, wording, everything.
- Don't get involved in bidding wars: Calculate how much one click is worth to
you (your earnings for one sale divided by the number of clicks you need to get
it: that is your break even point and the maximum you can afford for one click),
and stick to it.
- Learn from your competitors: Study their ads and landing pages. What keywords
are they targetting, which sales pitch do they use? But, in your very own
interest, don't overdo it:
- Play fair: Don't copy the work of others, learn from them, and develop your
own style. Playing dirty tricks will only help you for a short while, if at all,
but get you into big trouble in the long term.
- Study the Google Adwords Guide: The Google Adwords Optimization
Tips are valuable information directly from the horse's mouth.
- Track your results: You need to know which keywords, creatives, and landing
pages actually convert into sales, while others just cost you money. You can use
a spreadsheet or a simple piece of paper, but track your results.
- Learn from the pros: When you have already covered the basics and feel
comfortable with using Google Adwords, you might want to find out how you can
make more money with Google Adwords. I'd recommend that you have a look at GoogleCash, an ebook that you can
download here. Read it. When you have finished
it, read it again. And then once more.