By implementing a Google's AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign, you can drive additional traffic to your web site when your potential customers use Google to search for your products or services.
It is true that if your web site is well-optimized using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you should be generating traffic to your site naturally (or organically, like SEO experts like to say...) However, even a well-optimized web page doesn't always appear on the first page of the search results. Also, it can take a few months for a new web site to appear in search results.
AdWords have the advantage of instantly placing your web site ad or link prominently on the search results page, either on top (if a link) or on the side (if an ad).
How AdWords Work
You determine one or more keywords or key phrases that will be associated with your link or ad that, if clicked, will direct the search engine user to your web site landing page. If the user conducts a search on keywords that matches yours, Google will place your link or ad prominently in the search results. If the user clicks on your link, you pay Google a fee for that click.
How much does an AdWords campaign cost?
There are two factors involved in determining the cost of an AdWords campaign:
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Cost of Keywords.
Some keywords are more popular than others. Therefore, web site owners are willing to pay more per click to use the more popular keywords. Based on this, Google sets a minimum amount of cost-per-click that they are willing to accept. This minimum can be from a few cents per click to over $10.00 per click (Yikes!). The good news is that the minimum cost-per-click for most keywords is less than 25 cents.
You get to set the maximum cost-per-click that you are willing to pay for a given keyword or phrase. The higher your maximum, the more likely and often your link or ad will appear in the search results. If another web site owner is willing to pay Google a higher cost-per-click, Google will display their link more often and more prominently than yours. In other words, you are bidding against other web site owners for placement. Google will tell you what the current average bid for keywords is when you are setting up your campaign -
Your Budget.
You tell Google how much money you are willing to pay for entire campaign and when this money is used up, Google stops the campaign. This means that you can run a Google AdWords campaign for as little as $25.00 without having to commit large sums of money.
Your AdWords Campaign Strategy
- Start off small. In the beginning, only commit a small amount of money to each campaign. This will allow you to try out the effectiveness of various keywords without wasting too much money. Once you find the keywords that work well, then you can better determine your Return On Investment (ROI) and have confidence in committing more money.
- It is often better to use multiple less frequently searched, low bid keywords and phrases rather than paying more for the higher costing popular keywords. You'll get more bang for the buck this way.
- As a rule of thumb, stay away from keywords and phrases that cost more than 25 cents per click. Any more than this, and the campaign can become expensive, and there had better be a solid return on investment to justify the high cost.
Check out the Google AdWords web page to learn more about using Adwords. Google has a great tutorial.
