Basics of Google AdWords Optimisation

The benefits of Pay Per Click (PPC) internet advertising compared with usual techniques is just this: almost all conventional techniques are broadcast methods to people who have shown little interest in purchasing your service. Think radio ads etc. They are all broadcast adverts. Sure there some directed than others, if you are selling marketing services to companies, you advertise in a marketing magazine, but that's a crude technique these days.

Search MSN for "marketing" and down the right hand side, you'll see ads by websites who are paying the search engine to have their link and site shown there on the first page of results. This is Paid Advertising on the Search Engines and this is why Google now makes more than $6 Billion per year!

What about someone searching Google for "what is the best truck engine size"? That's a potential customer that right at that absolute moment in time is interested in finding out a very specific thing. If you expect to sell a service that can help them, you'd better hope that you're on the first page of MSN or which ever Search Engine you prefer. What's its value to you to have that person visit your site within a few seconds of entering that into Google?

Sure, you might search engine optimize your website to make sure you have Better Search Engine Placement for that keywords, but it takes time and effort and a reasonable investment of money. This is where Pay Per Click marketing really is most effective, and is poorly utilised I think. Your website might be on the first page of Google the same day for your search term for a very small budget. In a short time you'd have some idea of the quantity of users that will positively look for that term, browse your site, and buy your service. This is up to date, research into your niche market for a bargain budget that you simply can't get any other way.

Let's say that you are paying 20p per click, and 500 people click your link making a combined total spend of 100. Lets say your conversion rate is a average one percent, so you've got 5 new sales and more importantly five additional customers that you can now sell to again. All for 100 spent! How much is your typical user worth to you? Isn't this worth it?

Another important thing to understand is how Google ranks the sponsored Pay Per Click marketing ads. In essence it's a real time auction. The top bidder comes out on top. If you bid 20p and someone else bids 25p, they will rank above yours. It is in fact definitely more complicated than that: if you have a better quality Pay Per Click ads, it's definitely possible for you to rank higher than the 25p ad because Google will give boosts to higher performing PPC Adverts. What this means is that if your Pay Per Click (PPC) Management Firm knows what they are doing with PPC bid management, it's likely you will get improved rankings (i.e. more traffic) for a lower budget. So your limited online internet marketing budget works harder and you save budget. Conversely, if your AdWords ad campaign is controlled by someone who doesn't know their job, it will cost you more.

Here are some of the tasks a specialist Google Advertising Professional should be doing (Eg Intrinsic-Marketing.co.uk who provide Economical Search Engine Optimization) whilst managing your campaign, if yours isn't, we strongly propose you get a review of your PPC campaign immediately:

First Page Is King - The objective of Pay Per Click bid management is to get on the first page of your Google etc fast. However, where there is in excess of 8 (normally) even Pay Per Click Adverts can drop off the first page. Where there is competition such as this, there's absolutely little point doing a Pay Per Click marketing campaign if you are not on the 1st page, so either boost your Cost Per Click (CPC) settings, or forget it.

Improved Website Return on Investment(ROI) through Tracking Conversions - This is modern marketing, this is not normal marketing, so use that to your gain. The technology exists to track every sale and from where it comes. You will learn exactly which advert converts to sales and which do not. It's one thing to have significant traffic, it's another to have a lot of sales. What would you rather have for PPC paid advertising: an ad that generates a thousand clicks and 1% sales, or one that generates a hundred leads and ten percent sales? For both you achieve the same sales, but the first costs you ten times as much in PPC advertising budget.

Landing Page Optimisation - A common issue is not matching the webpage that consumers land on when they click your advert, to the words found in your ad; which should be aimed at what the consumer searched for. This simply means that when the consumer clicks your Advert, they get to see what they expect. Would you believe that internet users are lazy! Incredibly did you know that 1/2 of all internet consumers leave a website in under 8 seconds because they don't find what they expected! Do this before doing SEO Testimonials

A/B Splt Testing Your Ads - This is good PPC technique and simply means having more than one ad and testing which performs the best. Let me give you one example, we had 2 adverts which were the same in every way except the start of the title. One started "Learn to Prevent . . ." and the other began with "Stop . . ." Split testing determined that 5 percent of the users who saw the "Learn to Prevent . . ." clicked it. BUT 8% of the consumers who saw the "Stop . . ." ad clicked that one. Guess what, we dropped the first advert and got a better quality Ad which in due course Google promoted to the premium advertising position on the page, for the same CPC!

Many Ad Groups - The first rookie mistake is to group all your keywords together to supply a single advert. This is typically bad. Keywords must be divided into separate groups with Ad text that reflects the keywords searched for.

Exact Matching/Broad/Phrase - Google Pay Per Click Advertising allow 3 alternative ways to match search terms to your keywords, but many online marketers just go for the broad matching option. You could double your targeted traffic from intelligent use of the other options which many lazy Google Advertising Professionals don't bother with.