Getting the most from a Google AdWords campaign – 6 Top Tips
If you are about to spend money on Google AdWords then it is important that you also look holistically at your website, to make sure you will get maximum benefit from your internet marketing investment. 1 Get your product pricing right Importantly, make sure your prices for products are competitive. They don’t need to be the cheapest just competitive, otherwise you will be pay for click throughs that have very limited hope of converting, wasting time, effort and money on your part. If you want to get people to your site you may even want to consider running your campaign as a loss leader to drive traffic in that is likely to convert for the advertised product, with the hope that they will add other products to their baskets. 2 Know your keywords Google offers some fantastic keyword tools so make sure you use them. Google Trends helps you understand what people are searching for but also helps with – as the name suggests – trends. Highlight want search terms are on the rise in say the last 30 days. Is there value to be had in these terms? The Google AdWords own Keyword Tool can then identify how much competition you will have using your AdWord budget for those terms. Beyond Google and at a cost you could try some competitive intelligence using something like Keyword Spy and identify what they are investing in. 3 Set up Google Analytics correctly The Google family always work well together and by using Google Analytics you can track how much each source and each visitor is worth to you both organically and via AdWords. Being able to see where visitors are coming from and leaving your site from will also give you an insight into more relevant keywords for future AdWords campaigns. 4 Don’t rely on automation Although Google Adwords can be automated and work very well, for best results you do need to keep monitoring your campaigns. By all means have a budget – there is no point spending more than you can afford – but don’t let that be your automation controller. Consider altering your campaign daily by re-adjusting your bid price rather than just having a set budget. With the latter once your budget is used up your ad will no longer be displayed which means you risk missing traffic and certainly any advantage over competitors if there is a sudden rush. If there is a rush better to go slightly over your budget but drive in considerable more traffic, you just need to make sure you are checking your spend regularly. 5 Use variations for best results When designing your AdWords ads don’t just have one option. Use a couple of different calls to action. Consider it as a cheap way of multi-variate testing. You will soon learn what works, when and where. Don’t try to cram too much into an ad either. Create ad groups and have one group per product you are much more likely to see success. 6 Don’t forget your own brands OK organic traffic should put you high up the rankings but AdWords work and place you where people are more likely to click. Someone searching specifically for your brand is highly likely to click as soon as they see your ad and then also convert too, so you are almost guaranteed a winner. In addition, because it is your own brand name the cost per click should also be low and backed by a high conversion rate it is a pretty safe bet. That’s just six ways you can make your Google AdWords campaign more successful, but we are sure you have more. Please let us know.
Why AdSense makes sense
If you have a portfolio of dormant domains and are not yet putting them to use with our 123-reg Parking scheme you may consider spending a few hours of your time developing a basic site and signing it up for Google Adsense. Adsense is perhaps Google’s lesser known advertising programs. The more familiar Google Adwords is actually used as the source of the ads used for the Adsense program but the latter is free to sign up to and free to use. Effectively Adwords users pay money to run these ads so that they themselves can generate money by sending people to their websites, while AdSense enables people running websites (Publishers) to place those ads on their sites and earn money from them. When an ad is clicked, Google pays the publisher about half of what the Adwords advertiser is paying and keeps the other half itself. Relevance Google Adsense works well within any site because the ads that Google shows on a website is relevant to the website’s content. This means the ads appear less conspicious to your visitors and ensures that more clicks come from your visitors who are more likely to be seeing ads that appeal to them. For example, a website page about ‘holidays in turkey’ would be populated via AdSense with ads about ‘holidays in turkey’ or something relevant to the same. So after reading your content, the likelihood is that your visitors will be only too keen to click on relevant links being thrown up in the AdSense panel. So you can earn per click from AdSense but also if you have high volume traffic to your site you can also earn from that too. In addition Google will also pay ‘per-thousand-impressions’ (CPM). So, for every thousand unique visitors your site gets, providing the Adsense ads are being displayed you will get paid whether they click the links or not. Making the most of AdSense Natural ads – through the Google AdSense control panel you can alter the look and design of the ad block as it will be displayed in your page. Try and make this blend as naturally as possible in with the rest of your page – colours, theme, appeal, etc. The more ‘part’ of your site the ad block appears the more likely your visitors will click the ad links displayed. Content is king – we will keep harping on about this but the better the content you have on your page the more likely people will want to read it, recommend it and come back. This will push up your traffic and produce the possibility of CPM payments too. Make sure you use keywords effectively too as the higher you feature in search engine listings the more likely you will pick up natural traffic too. Don’t be tempted to click your own ads – remember Google is one of the most resourceful and technologically advanced companies in the world, they know all the tricks, scams and potential short-cuts used by the less scrupulous. The chances are if you try and abuse the system they will find out and then ban you from the scheme and potentially all other Google tools. The small benefit clearly wouldn’t be worth it. Do you use Google AdSense? Have you used it for dormant domains? What are the returns like?