Adwords Basics

[GT Web]

Google Adwords is far and away the most popular PPC advertising platform on the internet. The reasons for this are simple: a well designed user interface, a large number and variety of publishers to show the ads and, most importantly, a long history of positive ROI rates for advertisers. Adwords can be intimidating to new users, but it really isn't very difficult to learn the skills you need to get started.

This article is meant to be a basic introduction to Adwords. So if you are already very familiar with it, this might be review. The first problem most people have with Adwords is setting to and sticking with a budget. Most people get frustrated because they haven't bid enough for their clicks, resulting in their ads having a low position. After a couple days of poor results, most new advertisers quickly increase their bids and the results is a pile of expensive traffic that brings back little, if any, return. When you make your Adwords account, set a small budget. Use keyword tools (many of which are available on the links page of this website) to determine which searches are most popular and try to find searches that other advertisers haven't thought of. This is the best way of getting cheap traffic to your website(s), since less competition means lower cost per click.

However, cheap traffic is not necessarily good traffic. Let me repeat that again, just because you are getting cheap clicks from Adwords does not mean you are using your advertising dollars effectively. Targeted traffic is the key. If your website is selling software tutorials and you bid on phrases such as “free software” or “download photoshop” you might very well get many, many visitors (very inexpensively), but I can guarantee that your conversion rate (sales/visitor) will be horrible. Even key phrases like “free tutorials” will fail to create a positive return. Generally, never use the word “free” in your ads, unless you are actually giving something away for free. Users will click, costing you money, but are almost never interested in shelling out cash for a product.

Conversely, using key phrases with the words “buy” or “purchase” will decrease the number of clicks you receive, but will certainly increase your conversion rate and ROI. Going back to my previous example, bidding on key phrases such as “buy dreamweaver tutorials”or “professional photoshop tutorials” will give you visitors that are interested in buying the product you are selling and willing to spend money if your product matches their needs. In my next article on Adwords, I will discuss strategies to write high quality ads to help improve your click through and conversion rates.

[jaydub]

Thanks Daniel...

[URLtrader]

Thanks for the basics. Keep up the good work.

URLtrader

[petrosc]

another nice article , thanks

[typist]

thanks GT Web

[Namerhunt]

Thought I would throw in some wisdom.

Negative keywords:
I have 123 keywords and 5320 negative keywords for one site's PPC alone. The banning of keyword variations is very important to effectively filter your traffic from "average" to "great targeted traffic". "Free" would be the first negative keyword, for reasons GT already explained.

[PRED]

THANKS

whats best tool to check for bid prices on keywords
now overture is dead, is wordtracker best? or is there a better link someone has for free tool to check click bids and being able to then bid a cent more or find niche keywords

i have restarted using my adwords account and am very rusty as never really got going with it

cheers in advance