Understanding AdWords: 4 steps to Google greatness

Google is the king of the search engine castle, with 68% of all online searches being made through its sites. Displayed alongside those millions of search results are ads, uniquely tied in to the results with a complex and highly secret algorithm.

Advertising on Google can put your brand out in front of thousands of potential customers, and not just on the search results pages. With the Google content network, relevant ads are also displayed on sites all over the web.

But running a campaign on Google AdWords is different than one you might run offline. Google's focus is on the user experience, ensuring searchers will never be presented with irrelevant or unhelpful ads. What does that mean? Google's clients need to make sure their ads are germane and well-targeted. If not, the chances of having their ads displayed are slim.

Find the perfect key phrases

The right key phrase will bring interested customers to your site, who will act in a way that will bring you a "goal conversion" - like making a purchase, or signing up for a newsletter, or anything else of business value.

• A key phrase is a search term, such as a whole sentence or question. Avoid thinking of "key words" - web searchers rarely use single words as search terms because the results they yield are too broad.
• Use web traffic tools like Webtrends or Google Analytics to see what searches are already bringing traffic to your site. Those will be your golden key phrases.
• Think like a thesaurus. Say you are selling luxury chocolates - what are the other kinds of words people would use to search for your products beside "chocolate"? Why might someone be searching for luxury chocolates?
• Use tools, such as Google's Keyword Tool, or WordTracker, to help find key phrase variations. You simply enter in some of your key phrases and they will return other related terms that searchers are using. Some will even tell you how popular those terms are with advertisers, so you can pick the phrases your competitors haven't yet found.
• Chances are 20% of your phrases will drive 80% of your traffic. But don't be put off experimenting with low traffic phrases, as these may be effective in converting your goals, which ultimately makes them more valuable to your campaign.

 

 

Categorise your key phrases

A few golden key phrases can quickly mushroom into a massive list. Some campaigns will reach into the thousands. How do you manage these lists? Classify them into ad groups.

• Sort your key phrases into logical categories. These categories could be based on product types, product features, customer types, or seasonal behaviours. This will make your campaigns far more manageable and allow you to create in-depth reports later on.
• The key is to be as granular as possible and avoid overlapping. For your luxury chocolates, you might set up separate ad groups for "truffles", for "éclairs" and for "bon-bons". You would not also create a general ad group for "chocolates". You could also consider creating an ad group for Valentine's Day or for people searching for birthday gifts.

 

Write winning ads

You get 95 characters to write the perfect ad, so use them wisely.

• Create different ads for each of your groups. You can have more than one ad for each group, so experiment with words and variations to find out which ones bring you the most goal conversions. Even small adjustments can have huge effects.
• Your headline is key and needs to be closely related to the key phrase the user has searched with. Too vague a connection and you'll lose the click. Someone who searched for truffles won't click on an ad for éclairs.
• Each ad includes a link to your site. Take the impatient searcher to the appropriate landing page on your site; don't just dump them on your homepage. If a user is going to search for a truffle, take them to the page that sells them a truffle.

 

 

Spend some dough and set a budget

AdWords gives you an incredible amount of control when it comes to how you spend your campaign budget.

• Think of AdWords as an auction - you bid against other advertisers for key phrases. In part (as there are other factors involved), the more you pay, the higher up the search results you will go. The most popular key phrases are more expensive because there's more competition.
• You can set your bid for a whole ad group, or drill down to bid individually on each key phrase. You can also use a combination of the above, which allows you the flexibility to keep track of your golden key phrases without having to manage every single one.
• Start by setting a daily budget. Then, if you prefer, you can use Google's "budget optimizer" to automatically bid on your key phrases, earning you the most clicks every day within your specified budget.

 

Use these key steps as a jumping off point for a Google AdWords campaign. But keep in mind that you shouldn't just set one up and let it loose. A well-run campaign requires regular monitoring and experimentation, as the world of Google AdWords is a fluid one, with changing behaviours of searchers and advertisers, and regular updates to the secret Google algorithm.